October 2015: E.B. White

In October, we'll tackle E.B. White ... his works that is. :)

In the meantime, here's an interesting New Yorker article that I read several years back that talks about White's contributions to children's literature:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/21/the-lion-and-the-mouse

I nominated E.B. White since he has written more than just Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and I love The Elements of Style. I am interested in reading White's essays; however, I have One Man's Meat on my shelf so that's what I will be reading for October. It is a collection of columns he wrote for Harper's Magazine.

I have to write according to Associated Press guidelines so I don't read other style books--it's just too confusing. Since Elements of Style is out, I'm going to choose one of the essay collections. I'm thinking about the dog essays.

>1 sweetiegherkin: Thanks for posting this article. Anne Carroll Moore sounds like she was an annoyance. I wonder what she would think of the children's book written about her. http://www.missmoorethoughtotherwise.com/#!

I had no idea how much E.B. White's wife was involved in children's libraries and literature!

The part about E.B. White changing Mrs. Frederick C. Little's second son's birth to an arrival is interesting. Is arrival supposed to imply adoption so White could appease Harold Ross?

>4 Tara1Reads: Yeah, I'm not sure if she would be pleased with that title or not!

I also serendipitously stumbled upon this article the other day:
http://blog.longreads.com/2015/06/30/e-b-white-on-the-secret-of-writing-for-chil...

Charlotte's Web was one of my favorites as a child; I never read Stuart Little for some reason though. I saw the Stuart Little movie with Geena Davis and I think Michael J. Fox and didn't think much of it; same with a live theater production I saw of Stuart Little a year or so ago with my niece and nephew. Maybe the charm just doesn't work if you wait until adulthood to hear the story. I also have The Elements of Style at home and occasionally had to reference it for academic writings (although like Jackie I had to use AP guidelines for my professional writings). My thought at this point is to read some of White's essays; I'm leaning toward Is Sex Necessary? because these essays are supposed to be humorous / satirical.

This Paris Review interview with E.B. White came over my radar and it was very interesting so thought I would share: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4155/the-art-of-the-essay-no-1-e-b-whit...

A few points that stood out:

- To think of the The New Yorker as the upstart, non-pretentious literary magazine on the scene! Boggles the mind ...
- Funny to hear of a writer who isn't a reader. The two usually go hand-in-hand. But I also love this quote from White: "I’ve never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living."
- White's description of his writing process was rather fascinating. Usually you hear about writers closeted away in an attic or separate apartment where no one can bother them; he's instead right in the middle of his family's action. Reminded me a bit of Jane Austen secretly scribbling away on her novels in the drawing room, except that White doesn't have to hide his activity. Again, another stellar quote: "A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."
- Here's an image of The New Yorker cover by White: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xDn7MP79LQM/VVH0ku_UclI/AAAAAAAApJA/DKq20zGIaiQ/s640/n...
- White is so effusive in his praise of his wife & her contributions to The New Yorker's success. How sweet!
- The article is in an 1969 issue of The Paris Review, but the interview must be from an earlier time; wish that date was indicated somewhere.

>6 sweetiegherkin: I like this part: "People are animals, and the city is full of people in strange plumage, defending their territorial rights, digging for their supper."

White seems like he was quite the character. He said he didn't know anything about art but he did those New Yorker covers!

Today is the anniversary of White's death.

>7 Tara1Reads: Yes, that's a great line, too. I feel like he was very modest. There were a lot of times in this interview where he would profess not to know much or be good at a particular thing and then he would show a lot of aptitude for it (reading, writing style, etc.)

Wow, I didn't know it was the anniversary today. What a coincidence.

>8 sweetiegherkin: Definitely.

I had no idea what he was talking about when he said he had a fear of platforms and then he said something about being allergic to them?? Is he talking about stages/platforms?

I didn't know either. I just happened to see it at the bottom of my LT homepage.

The context was about whether writers all need to have unhappy childhoods in order to be creative. He basically said he had a happy childhood but had the usual (relatively small) issues - one being a fear of platforms (which I took to mean speaking in public) and another being allergic to pollen. Then he said something to the effect that he didn't know what made a good writer, unless maybe it was fear and allergies.

So I did indeed pick up Is Sex Necessary? from my library. This is a humorous book co-written by White and James Thurber as a parody of clinical writings based on Freudian psychoanalysis. The book consists of eight chapters/essays, which more or less each stand on their own, although they all tie together under the same theme and style of satire. Despite its perhaps rather shocking title (given the time period it was written), the book is neither pornographic nor remotely explicit. At most, it mentions hand holding, knees touching when a couple is sitting next to one another, and an occasional kiss; it is therefore pretty tame and chaste for our day and age. (Perhaps ironically, it does devote two chapters to the ridiculousness of how parents and children can't talk openly about sex with one another and instead rely on "the birds and the bees" type talks that benefit no one with their vagueness and discomfort.) Instead, the book is rather more about relationships and how things can go wrong.

The book is clearly dated in some respects, although some amusing observations still ring true. Again, given the time period it was written (the late 1920s), it is not surprising that the book is entirely male-centric and heteronormative in its treatment of the subject of romantic relationships and marriage. A gross number of stereotypes are made (e.g., the nagging wife for one), but I let all these slide in the name of satire -- perhaps these thoughts were how Thurber and White really felt, or perhaps they just made for what the authors perceived as funnier content. (Truth be told, I suspect the former and wouldn't stand for such nonsense in a book written today, but something approaching 90 years in age gets a reprieve from me.)

The edition I had was the "Coming of Age" update, re-released in the 1950s with a new introduction by White. In it, he describes the first chapter "The Nature of the American Male: A Study of Pedestalism" as one of the finest, giving all the credit entirely to Thurber for that contribution. To my taste, this was probably the least funny of all the chapters in the book. Meanwhile, the second chapter "How to Tell Love from Passion" was by far the most amusing and had me chuckling aloud quite a bit. It had so many wonderfully hilarious passages, such as:

- "I have mentioned that the question of deciding whether a feeling be love or passion arises at inopportune moments, such as at the start of a letter. Let us say you have sat down to write a letter to your lady. There has been a normal amount of preparation for the ordeal, such as clearing a space on the desk (in doing which you have become momentarily interested in a little article in last month's Scribner's called, "Plumbing the Savage," and have stood for a minute reading the first page and deciding to let it go), and the normal amount of false alarms, such as sitting down and discovering that you have no cigarettes. (Note: if you think you can write the letter without cigarettes, it is not love, it is passion.)"
- "I have seldom met an individual of literary tastes or propensities in whom the writing of love was not directly attributable to the love of writing. A person of this sort falls terribly in love, but in the end it turns out that he is more bemused by a sheet of white paper that a sheet of white bed linen. He would rather leap into print with his lady than leap into bed with her."
- "The young man, instead of losing himself in the kiss, finds himself in it. What's more, the girl to him loses her identity -- she becomes just anyone on whom he is imposing his masculinity. Instead of his soul being full of the ecstasy which is traditionally associated with love's expression, his soul is just fiddling around. The young man is thinking to himself: "Say, this is pretty nice!" Well, that scares him. Up to this point in the affair he has been satisfied that his feeling was that of love. Now he doesn't know what to think. In all his life he has never come across a character in a book or a movie who, embracing his beloved, was heard to say, "This is pretty nice," unless that character was a villain. He becomes a mass of conflicting emotions, and is so thoroughly skeptical and worried about the state of his heart that he will probably take to reading sociological books to find out if it's O.K. to go ahead ... "
- "The medical profession recognizes two distinct types of men: first, the type that believes that to love a woman is not to desire her; second, the type that believes to desire a woman is not to love her. The medical profession rests."
- "I have taken up the question of Man's uncertainty about love and passion in two different circumstances - at the start of a letter, and in the middle of an embrace. It was originally my intention also to show how this uncertainty overcomes one at the end of a day in the country when a man is so tired that he not only can't distinguish love from passion, but has all he can do to distinguish one station on the New Haven railroad from another and often gets out at 125th Street by mistake."

As with most parodies, it helps to have a background understanding of the original works or concepts that are being skewered. While specific titles and authors referenced were lost on me, I've read enough studies from psychoanalysts and behaviorists back when I was a psychology major in college that I definitely appreciated a lot of the little digs and humorous anecdotes told as "case histories." However, trading on stereotypes of female-male relationships as the authors do helps make the book readily accessible to lay readers as well. Again like many parodies, sometimes it feels like the joke goes on a little too long. Even though this book only clocks in at 190 pages complete with introduction and other ancillary materials, it still felt like it could have been shortened by one chapter and thus been more succinctly humorous.

The book contains 50+ sketch drawings by Thurber (later inked by White) scattered throughout its pages. These are sometimes more related to the written materials than at other times. Apparently Thurber was nicknamed "the Ugly Artist" because his drawings are so simple and seemingly unfinished, but his flowing lines with an almost cartoonish execution fit well with this book's tone. I found myself chuckling a good deal over some of these, especially given their accompanying captions. (Given that in the Paris Review interview linked above in this discussion, White references writing captions for his day job and that in the note on the illustrations accompanying this book, White mentions how he rescued some of the drawings from the waste bin, I have a sneaking suspicion that he was the one behind these brilliant captions.) These two were particularly good examples:


Caption: "Here we have that strange, alert furtiveness which instantly overtakes a man when he beholds a woman doing something which he does not thoroughly understand."


Caption: "American men, more than any others, permit the complexities of the psycho-physical world to get them down. Often, while down, they will pass each other going somewhere, and exchange a small greeting."

Overall, this book was a fairly entertaining and quick read, and I was glad to see a different side of a beloved children's author as he writes for an adult audience instead. But I'm not sure that I would go out of my way to recommend this title, as I think it may appeal to a small subset of people.

Anybody started on their E.B. White selections for this month?

>12 sweetiegherkin: My E.B. White selection is at the top of my must-read soon pile so I will get to it this month. I am glad you enjoyed Is Sex Necessary?

Cool, looking forward to your thoughts on One Man's Meat. :)

edited to correct the things that autocorrect "fixed"

I am starting One Man's Meat today.

I finished One Man's Meat and I loved it!

I read the second edition which has been updated to include columns from not only Harper's Magazine but the New Yorker too. The essays were rearranged to be in chronological order by the date White wrote them so that the whole collection of One Man's Meat spans 1938-1943.

The writing is sometimes satirical and humorous which seems to be classic E.B. White. His writing is also beautiful and the conclusions he brings many of these essays to are very quote-worthy.

Since these essays coincided with WWII, it was a topic that was very much on E.B. White's mind so many of these essays are about war vs. peace, freedom, democracy, diplomacy and foreign relations, uniting with other countries, patriotism, etc. But during this time in White's life, he, his wife Katherine, and their children, all packed up and moved to a small coastal town in Maine where he started keeping sheep, chickens, and some pigs and eventually a cow. White grows vegetables, does some boating and makes his own boat, and goes hunting. There are many essays about city life vs. country life since he mostly lives in Maine but his family still makes regular trips into New York City. The essays almost alternate being about something farm-related and then something political but many times the topics interweave.

Many of the things we discussed earlier in this thread are mentioned in the book. Even Anne Carroll Moore is mentioned and White discusses children's literature and the books his wife, Katherine, is reading and reviewing for the publishers. Many of the quotes in the above articles are from the essays included in One Man's Meat.

I still think White was very prescient and much smarter and more literary than he gave himself credit for. It was obvious from One Man's Meat that he was a reader. White read very widely including newspapers, magazines, the children's books his wife got from publishers, farming manuals, dog training guides, Mein Kampf, some Charles Darwin and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, new books that were coming out at that time about WWII, poetry, etc. I have almost a full notebook page of the writers and books he referenced. And White made a few predictions about what would happen in the U.S. in the coming years some of which have came true and some of which haven't although some of it is debatable.

I honestly wasn't expecting to like this book as much as I did but it's just a treasure trove of insights and great writing. I can't wait to read more E.B. White essays.

Now for a quote that I think E.B. White was true to his word on: "Even in evil times, a writer should cultivate only what naturally absorbs his fancy, whether it be freedom or cinch bugs, and should write in the way that comes easy."

>16 Tara1Reads: Cool, I'm glad you enjoyed it so much. The bit about country life v. city life reminded me of a book I read several years back now, Idyll Banter by Chris Bohjalian. What were some of the predictions White made that came true / didn't come true?

>17 sweetiegherkin: I kept seeing Idyll Banter come up in my library's catalog when I was searching for other things and I kept ignoring it even though I saw that it was by Chris Bohjalian. But now that I actually took the time to see what it's about it looks interesting. I have liked the two novels by Bohjalian that I have read.

White said some things about television since they were beginning to be more widespread in the late 30s when that particular essay was written. I think he was right in how TV changed the way people do things and influenced society but he could've never predicted how far-reaching the effects of TV have been.

Most of his other statements I was referring to are related to WWII or something political. I can't remember which essay it is in to look it up right now but I think he said something about France during WWII.

Parts of FDR's New Deal were being rolled out during the time White was writing these essays and White had some reservations about certain aspects of the legislation potentially being taken too far and/or not being implemented in the best way.

>18 Tara1Reads: Being nonfiction essays, Idyll Banter is a lot different than his novels, but I still thought it was interesting.

Interesting to hear some of White's thoughts on the big things in his day.

A fun find — a review of Charlotte’s Web when it came out, by the author Eudora Welty: http://lithub.com/just-about-perfecteudora-welty-on-charlottes-web/