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Loading... Letters of E. B. Whiteby E. B. White
   the preppy handbook (29) No current Talk conversations about this book.  TraSea | Apr 29, 2024 |  no reviews | add a review
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Originally edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth, and revised and updated by Martha White. With a foreword by John Updike. These letters are, of course, beautifully written but above all personal, precise, and honest. They evoke E.B. White's life in New York and in Maine at every stage of his life. They are full of memorable characters: White's family, the New Yorker staff and contributors, literary types and show business people, farmers from Maine and sophisticates from New York-Katherine S. White, Harold Ross, James Thurber, Alexander Woolcott, Groucho Marx, John Updike, and many, many more. Each decade has its own look and taste and feel. Places, too-from Belgrade (Maine) to Turtle Bay (NYC) to the S.S. Buford, Alaska-bound in 1923-are brought to life in White's descriptions. There is no other book of letters to compare with this; it is a book to treasure and savor at one's leisure. As White wrote in this book, "A man who publishes his letters becomes nudist--nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin....a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time." No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)818.5209Literature English (North America) Authors, American and American miscellany 20th Century 1900-1945 BiographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.11)
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Wikipedia in English (2)
2
What a charming and pithy letter writer was Mr. White. I guess that's no surprise given that he became a co-author of the famous "Elements of Style" on just that subject.
I loved meeting his friends and family in this way, and learning his views. Despite enjoying a bevy of "litry" friends and several friends outside that realm as well, he seems on the whole, to have been a shy person, never accepting an offer to speak to, or even belong to any group, nor even make an appearance to receive a national award from a president (both Kennedy and Nixon show up in these pages).
I mostly loved his interest in, affection for, and attendance to creatures in all shapes and sizes.
What struck me too, about the book, that seems unique to a book of letters, was the passage of time. He doesn’t mention his age until he’s in his 50’s, by which time we've already had visits to the hospital for one thing or another for he or his wife, and then, occasionally, an age number is dropped, and each time is a call to reminisce about the days of old, even though I wasn’t alive when he was young. Imagining, at times, my folks in those days, I'd gotten fond of his memories, as though they were mine and I missed our younger days of better health and less clash, grit, and modernity in our world. (