An E.B. White Reader

by William W. Watt (Editor), Robert W. Bradford (Editor)

Collection of E.B. White's essays, with sections on writing pedagogy, classic essays. And, yes, "The Death of a Pig," is included.

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

Reviews

[Gavin]

"It has been ambitious and plucky of me to attempt to describe what is indescribable, and I have failed, as I knew I would. But I have discharged my duty to my society; and besides, a writer, like an acrobat, must occasionally try a stunt that is too much for him."

Oh, but you haven't failed E.B., you just haven't!

White takes a quotidian event, observable by anyone, and manages to describe it in just the right order on the page, with just the right good humor and without a single unnecessary word. The latent joy on the first warm day of spring, for example, is a sensation we have all known, but I would struggle to explain this sensation in sentence form. E.B. White does not struggle, and his exposition often had me nodding my head YES in vigorous agreement and shaking my head WOW in admiring disbelief at lines so apt. Take his thoughts on heft, which I found in two different essays in this collection:

"Living things are always harder to lift, somehow, than inanimate objects, and I think any mover would rather walk up three flights with a heavy bureau than go into a waltz with a rubber plant. There is really no way for a man to put his arms around a big house plant and still remain a gentleman."

"I noticed that although [my dachshund Fred] weighed far less than the pig, he was harder to drag, being possessed of the vital spark."

We all go through our day making such subconscious observations about anything and everything, but few have the capacity to communicate these thoughts to strangers in the way E.B. is able. It was a blessing and a curse to read these essays as I write my own book of essays – a blessing to have E.B. as an authorial role model, but a curse to have the bar set so depressingly high.

"I know that quite frequently in the course of delivering himself of a poem a poet will find himself in possession of a lyric bauble – a line as smooth as velvet to the ear, as pretty as a feather to the eye, yet a line definitely out of plumb with the frame of the poem. What to do with a trinket like this is always troubling to a poet, who is naturally grateful to his Muse for small favors. Usually he just drops the shining object into the body of the poem somewhere and hopes it won’t look too giddy."

You got me pegged, Eebs!

[Jay]

The best American essayist of the past centure (with apologies to Wendell Berry)

[Shireen]

if your only exposure to e.b.white is Charlotte's Web, you're missing out. witty, thoughtful expository writing on politics, nature, and more. his comments from 75 years ago are still relevant.

[Michael McDonough]

A primer of good, solid, honest, and witty writing. They don't make em like this anymore.