A delightful, witty, spirited collection of short pieces and essays by the inimitable E. B. White.
Three years after E. B. White's death, Rebecca Dale discovered a cache of his New Yorker writings that had yet to be collected. There's certainly nothing mediocre about these 161 pieces, which range from nature vignettes (a New York City sparrow extols urban life) to musings on language, business, and liberty. White's 1953 fantasia of visiting Thoreau's Walden Pond with Joseph McCarthy is peerless. "Wait a minute!" the senator realizes. "This man was Communist-inspired. That accounts for his sour attitude about housing--" The satire is strong, but so is the celebration. A short piece on a skating fest ends: "Ice is an odd substance to have at last freed the body in its persistent attempt to catch up with the spirit." And speaking of which, in "Fred On Space" White asks his dead dachshund how he feels about the first dog launched by the Russians. Fred is far from impressed: "The excuse you men give is that you must continually add to the store of human knowledge--a store that already resembles a supermarket and is beginning to hypnotize the customers."
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
If this is the Great & Powerful E.B. White I think I'll pass.:
If this is the Great & Powerful E.B. White I think I'll pass. It's a collection of vignettes about everything and nothing. Ladles of words dipped from his stream of consciousness. I was bored.
read it again--and again:
I say, and not for the first time or after reading his first book (I've read them all, again and again) that anyone who wants to learn to write contemporary English as it should be written should close himself in a room with EB White for as long as it takes. He or she might even learn to be a better person from the example.
Writings from The New Yorker by E. B. White:
I intend to have the very first item in this read at my memorial service - which I hope won't be soon! Some of this was slightly dated, but always good reading. He had such a unique take on his world and such a down-to-earth way of looking at the goings-on around him.
eclectic selection of his writings:
This book is perfect for the business traveller. It is a quick read in part because the pieces are brief, and in part because of E.B. White's flawless command of the English language. The compilers of this anthology may not have a key to E.B. White's soul, as other reviewers expected, but why should that matter?
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