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From: jfh@browngr.UUCP (John F. Hughes)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: E.B. White
Message-ID: <10136@browngr.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 30-Mar-85 22:51:02 EST
Article-I.D.: browngr.10136
Posted: Sat Mar 30 22:51:02 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Apr-85 07:49:53 EST
Reply-To: jfh@browngr.UUCP (John (Spike) Hughes)
Organization: Brown University Computer Science
Lines: 56

E.B. White, the author of Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet
of the Swan, is about 86 years old. Most people know him only for the three
books just mentioned, which they read when they were very young.
   His other work is worth reading!

   He revised "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk, which lots of people
have read in writing courses. Thinking of it as a text, they found it a drag.
Try it as pleasure reading sometime--it's pretty remarkable.
   White also worked as an essayist for Harper's for many years, as well as
writing some essays and poetry for The New Yorker. He also edited their
'newsbreaks', which are the little quotations (from various publications)
which The New Yorker uses to fill out the bottoms of pages--White wrote
the wry comments on these newsbreaks.
   There is a biography of him by Scott Elledge, but it suffers some from
comparison with White's work. The biographer doesn't write as well as the
biographee.
   Some good books to read: try Charlotte's Web again (did you know that
the farmer and his wife are Mr. and Mrs. Arable?), or The Essays of E.B.
White, or The Second Tree From the Corner.
   Some particularly good essays are (I think): Once More to the Lake,
The Years of Wonder, and Afternoon of an American Boy.
   White also wrote a much anthologized science fiction piece called
The Morning of the Day They Did It. He doesn't think of it as his best
work, but it is interesting to read...
   Here's a brief excerpt for those who don't believe--it's from a Harper's
essay called "Two Letters, Both Open". The letters are to the SPCA and the
IRS. This is from the SPCA letter:

    Dear Sirs:
	I have your letter, undated, saying that I am harboring an unlicensed
    dog in violation of the law. If by "harboring" you mean getting up two or
    three times every night to pull Minnie's blanket up over her, I am harbor-
    ing a dog all right. The blanket keeps slipping off. I suppose you are
    wondering by now why I don't get her a sweater instead. That's a joke on
    you. She has a knitted sweater, but she doesn't like to wear it for
    sleeping; her legs are so short they work out of a sweater and her
    toenails get caught in the mesh, and this disturbs her rest. If Minnie
    doesn't get her rest, she feels it right away. I do myself, and of course
    with this night duty of mine, the way the blanket slips and all, I haven't
    had any real rest in years. Minnie is twelve.
       In spite of what your inspector reported, she has a license. She is
    licensed in the State of Maine as an unspayed bitch, or what is more
    commonly called an "unspaded" bitch. She wears her metal license tag, but
    I must say I don't particularly care for it, as it is in the shape of
    a hydrant, which seems to me a feeble gag, besides being pointless in the
    case of a female. It is hard to believe that any state in the Union would
    circulate a gag like that and make people pay money for it, but Maine
    is always thinking of something...

Notice that the punctuation is perfect, the choice of words is wonderful. Graves
and Hodges, in "The Reader Over Your Shoulder," remark that the reader's eye
should never stop at a phrase; if it does, the writing is bad. White's writing
might be called bad in this sense: every now and then there is a phrase so
lovely that one rereads it for the sheer joy of it.
   I hope this sends you to your library to look for his stuff.
     -jfh