EB White

I’ve been wanting to write about EB White for quite some time now, but felt as if I needed a special reason or occasion to frame the endeavor. But I’m not putting it off any longer. Today is the day. The special reason is simply that I want to; I love the way EB White writes.

Recently, I read a short biography of White at the back of a collection of his essays which began with something he had written on the occasion of his 58th birthday: “The theme of my life is complexity-through-joy.” Like most of what Mr. White writes, “complexity-through-joy” stayed with me. I’m pretty much a sucker for anything that has “joy” woven into it for it’s a state to which I aspire and a state to which I, sadly and bafflingly, set up numerous roadblocks against. There’s also something about the phrase that reminds me of acting class where one is urged to make one’s actions toward achieving a goal “simple and strong” so that the “complexities” of who you are are allowed to shine through. Simplicity first, complexity second. Joy first and complexity follows. (Funny to think of joy as being simple.) I’m also impressed with the idea of someone being able to come up with a theme for their life. Granted EB has four years on me and I have no doubt that when I’m 58 I’ll have life themes galore, but I have a hard enough time coming up with the theme of something I’m writing let alone the theme of my life. And “complexity-through-joy” sounds so pithy and wise. If I were hard-pressed to come up with a life theme right now it would hover between “spirituality-through-restlessness” or “tolerance through chickens.”

I’ve felt a deep kinship with EB over the past few years. One of the reasons is my recent move to New England and realizing how much this place speaks to me, which parallels a similar move and realization he made in the 1930’s. I find myself traveling back and forth often between Vermont and New York City, as he did between Maine and New York, many times because of work, but more importantly to seek a balance between the country and the city, both of which I love and long for; I know the same rang true for him. I can’t help smiling as I read his work from sheer delight. I find myself sharing passages to Richard, or I'll read an entire essay out loud to him or to other friends, for sharing EB White with others is a sharing of affection to me. His writing is true, thought out. There’s a mastery of his craft that’s never showy, always accessible, and a wisdom mixed with vulnerability, a low hum of self doubt behind it all. He reveals himself through his writing and I love him for it.

Though my affection for Mr. White and his work has deepened considerably in recent years, I realize that our “acquaintance” spans back over most of my life. My first experience probably mirrors most people’s - the reading of “Charlotte’s Web.” The book was still fairly new when I attended kindergarten at Northcrest Elementary School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Every afternoon in that long ago autumn I would sit cross-legged on the floor as Miss McNamara would read the next chapter of the saga. I'd stare up at that book cover as she read, a cover I'm glad to report has become iconic and hasn't changed in all its reprintings. There's something assuring in that. I have a feeling that the reading was intended to lull all of us into a post-graham crackers and milk naptime stupor, but I sat up alert, wide-eyed, mesmerized, eating up every word. Nothing like a good story to keep the sandman at bay. So many gifts came from that book. I certainly looked at spiders differently from then on, which is no small feat when one’s mother is terrified by the very mention of them. And when Charlotte died I was SHOCKED and DEEPLY STRICKEN!! I FELT IT, people. I think “Charlotte’s Web” was the first time that the concept of death was introduced into my life. I thought about it, talked about it. It stuck with me. And what more can a writer ask – or any artist, actor, sculptor, creator – then to have something of theirs “stick.”

My second encounter would’ve been in high school in the early 1970’s with the reprinting of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”, that thin blue paperback version, a well-worn copy of which I’ve carried with me for years. I bought the updated, red hardbound “gift” version with all those kicky new pictures a few Christmases back and loved the added remembrances of EB and Will Strunk, White’s English instructor from his days at Cornell and the author of the original book. I still read and reread “Elements of Style”, hoping it too will stick. Practice, practice. It did hearten me when I read recenlty that White first expected the task of editing Strunk’s original work for re-publication in the early 50’s to be a breeze and that he was surprised and increasingly daunted not only by the immensity of the task itself, but on discovering that he didn’t feel he’d adhered to a lot Strunk’s rules himself; he (White) had written without rules in mind, working it out in his own way, along the way, until he felt and knew it was right.

After “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Elements of Style” in high school, it was about 30 years before White walked into my life again, in a used book store in Los Angeles. It was another worn blue paperback that called to me from the stacks, a collection of his essays entitled “One Man’s Meat.” It sounded slightly salacious, and maybe that was the original impulse to reach for the book, but in short order I found that “One Man’s Meat” had been the title of a monthly column White had written for Harold Ross at the New Yorker, sending his installments in from his North Brookline house on the Maine coast where he’d moved with his family. I realized I knew next to nothing about him and these essays would serve as my first introduction to his life and I took to them immediately. An added plus was that they’d been written from the mid-thirties through the early-forties, my favorite period of American history (next to the Civil War). The history nerd in me rose from the ashes and relished every mention of FDR, the New Deal, and the coming war, reliving it as if it were happening for the first time (ie “I wonder if Hitler’s going to win this time?!”). I am convinced I lived back then, but that's a topic for a later entry.

Reading "One Man's Meat" was akin to welcoming an old friend back into my life and feeling as if no time had passed. And in hindsight choosing that unassuming book from all the books in the stacks almost seems preordained, part of some plan. I'd just begun toying with the idea of moving back east, but “The East” meant NYC, not New England or Vermont. True, I’d had a soft spot for that part of the country for a long time, but still moving there made no sense. Maybe EB knew something I didn’t know. Something about his stories spoke to something in me, something beyond simply enjoying them. And I found that I wanted to read more about him and by him. I got his Collected Correspondences and devoured it, I listened to him narrating his children’s books – a flat, nasally, and uninflected voice, slightly New England, just this side of uninteresting, but I relished hearing a voice to go with the pictures of him I'd seen. I came across his “Here is New York” essay in an original printing at my friend’s while visiting the city and it felt so right to take the book along as a friend on my subway rides and walks throughout the city that day (By the way, I read while I walk. Again, another possible future blog entry). I found that people on the subway would notice me reading the book and ask me about it, engage in conversations about him. It was grand. I think that EB had the same love I have for New York. It vitalizes me, it opens and enlivens me, I can feel all its ages and times pulse through me, such a grand and sordid history it has. And such a grand place to work. A similar love and kinship for New York booms out of that essay. Well, “boom” isn’t really a word I’d associate with EB. No. The book enwraps you, embraces you, insinuates itself into you so you feel those feelings and thoughts are yours.

I mentioned earlier in another blog entry of EB’s love for “Walden” and Thoreau that is spoken of so beautifully in his essay “A Slight Sound at Evening.” Within it he imagines conjuring Thoreau to the present time and accompanying him about. I can imagine doing the same with EB. I would’ve loved to have met him. Of course, I would’ve loved to have visited him and Katherine at their Maine home, go down to the small boat house and see where he wrote, but having them over to our place would’ve been just fine with me too. I can picture having a drink together, sitting around and talking. I’d be nervous thinking what I was going to talk about with a renowned author, a hero of mine AND his fiction editor wife. How would I ever hold up my side of the conversation? But I have a feeling that he’d put me at my ease. And now that I think for a moment, there’d be plenty to talk about: Richard’s newly arrived chicks, the goose eggs - I think EB would especially be interested in them. Then we’d walk across the road to our pond, feed the trout and the Canadian Geese, enjoy the slow coming of evening. We’d manage. He might even be interested in the theatre and films we’d been in. I don’t know. I’d try to make him laugh. I imagine him being a bit stoic, like Jimmy Burrows, the great television director. But Jimmy has a great laugh that jolts counter to his seemingly sour puss. Everyone has their own unique laugh. I wonder what EB’s would’ve been like? A chortle? A soft giggle? There’s a picture of he and Katherine sitting on a couch beside one another in later life sharing a big guffaw together. It’s quite wonderful.

A friend of mine in New York recently suggested over lunch that I should do a one-man show about White, I speak so highly of him all the time and one-man shows are in my blood. What an intriguing idea for an undertaking. So I've been doing extra research, wondering about what one would have to do to get the rights to passages from his pieces, imagining the structure of the piece. I have a dear friend in California who worked under White at the New Yorker when my friend was young and he had a few memories of White that I relished. He shared that he and White were never chums, White was too hallowed a personage for him to approach in that fashion, but he remembered being so surprised at Mr. White’s slightness, both in manner and appearance. A faint, bristly moustache, but other than that, no distinguishing features. He feared a high wind “might blow him down.” Whereas by contrast he felt that Katherine would’ve broken him if she’d sat on him. White was in the background alot. He didn't like speaking in public, rarely did, even when he was given prestigious awards. So why would someone like that want to talk to an audience about their life's work? It’s already tricky trying to dramatize the life of a writer, especially in a one-man venue. What’s the premise? Why is he talking to us? What moved him to do so? Did he come back from the grave bothered because nobody knows who he is anymore? I can’t imagine EB coming back from the grave to toot his own horn. That’s an intriguing obstacle to overcome in a one-man show when the main character is a man who’d rather not talk, but write, that's where he showed up, that's where he spoke. Maybe the lights could come up on a desk with all his books and essays strewn about on it and that’s it for 2 hours. It's all an intriguing idea. More to follow I'm sure.

In the same brief bio of EB that I quoted at the beginning, there’s another quote of his that I cherish. It’s from a 1961 New York Times interview where he says, “All that I ever hope to say in books is that I love the world.” How wonderful again to distill down the aim, the goal of one's life. Through your gift, your talent, you aspire to share with the world your love for it. You take joy - maybe quiet joy - in living, and you share what you come up with with others, in all its complexity.

Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
The Trumpet of the Swan
Death of a Pig
Is Sex Necessary? (with James Thurber)
Here is New York
A Slight Sound at Evening
Elements of Style (with Will Strunk)
One Man's Meat

and on and on and on

Thanks for a complexity of joys, EB.