Customer Reviews

Letters of E.B. White

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Transparent writing consists of prose that doesn't tell; it is prose that shows. E. B. White is the master of this. His prose takes you where he wants you to be and, once there, shows you the sights, lets you smell the aromas and hear the sounds.
A modest man, E. B. White claims often that writing for him is difficult and painful. Yet this collection of letters shows that from the beginning, Elwyn Brooks White had an innate ability to write simply, clearly, and charmingly.
Whether he is thanking young readers for compliments, advising aspiring writers on writing, or berating a famous author for endorsing a product, he is witty, clear, and compassionate.
Reading these letters you will think, cry, laugh, and even wince, but you will not frown in confusion as you wonder what the writer is trying to say. As a very beneficial side effect, reading E. B. White will often improve your own writing.
Am I biased? You bet! Years of reading the stilted, jargon-laced writing of business, and the contrived, artificial efforts at "style" of many authors, reading anything by E. B. White is like talking to your best friend.

E.B. White was a well known writer for The New Yorker, but I think his real genius was in writing letters to friends and family. He wrote about the ordinary and made it more than interesting, but fun. (His description of how to set up your room when admitted to the hospital is hysterical!) But he also wrote about hard times in life, his wife's illness, his own aging, death of friends and family. He wrote with honesty, clarity, and gusto. Letter writing (and READING a letter also) should never be a chore. Reading White's letters never is. I keep this book on the nightstand by my bed.

Letters of E.B. White, Dorothy Lobrano Goth, Ed.; Harper & Row, Publishers (1976); Revised Edition (2006; paperback, 2007; Amazon review "Hardcover Original 5 Stars; Revised Edition No Stars" sent/accepted 08/18/10)

The original hardcover review: "The perfect book is the book where you don't care what page you're on, & this is the perfect book."

Post Note (08/18/10): In case you're thinking of purchasing the Revised Edition of the Letters (2006), don't.

Recently, a friend exhibited an interest in Mr. White after being swiftly won over by sampling a page or two of White's "Wild Flag" (Houghton Mifflin Co.; 1943-46).

I figured his best next venture would be the Letters & foraged into the Amazon marketplace, where I found the "Letters of E.B. White, Revised Edition." I'm game. A paperback copy was purchased.

I was appalled, successively, by:

Richard Grant's cliché-infested "Praise for The Revised Edition" ("deft," etc.) is exactly the sort of cheapjack media log-rolling that Andy White regarded with heart-felt contempt;

John Updike's weirdly disengaged "Foreword" also featured the telltale "deft" (a word most likely to surface when a writer is uninspired by what he's been commissioned to endorse) - & the word "unease," promiscuously employed no less than five times (buy a thesaurus!). Its final paragraph ends with the tone of his writing tailing off into a void of invisible conviction;

(Updike's incessant characterization of White's "unease" should be balanced by what Updike had written earlier which, fortunately, was quoted by White's biographer, Scott Elledge (p. 130, "E.B. White, A Biography," 1985 paperback edition): "What struck me in [White's] walk, in the encouraging memos he once or twice wrote me, & in [what he wrote for `Notes & Comment'] was how much fun he had in him than us younger residents of those halls [of The New Yorker]" magazine.)

And Martha White's graceless & clumsy "Editor's Note" was offensive.

Dorothy Lobrano Guth was the original editor, having done at least eighty percent of the work that was then recycled into the revised edition - hard toil that went inexplicably & rudely unacknowledged by M. White.

(Thankfully, it is emphatically stated right on the front cover of the book: "Originally Edited By" DLG. This makes M. White's silence/omission all the more glaring.)

Additionally, Guth's original empathetic, personable "Acknowledgments" - thanking each one of the many people who had assisted her in the 1976 publication of the original edition - is nowhere to be found in the revised edition, which is outrageous.

And had M. White competently edited, as a matter of professional courtesy, she would have provided a list of the letters in the original edition (by my count, 64) that she left out of the revised edition; & an asterisk next to the letters in the first 14 chapters in the revised edition (by my count, 17) not published in the original edition (the letters in the final two chapters of the revised edition are all "new").

It's a shame that Andy White had not been there to prevent her use of the absurdly redundant slang, "copied out" (editor's note, p. 618. If nothing can be "copied in", the reverse reveals itself as grammatical nonsense. It is incredible that something like this could appear in a book of the letters of a renowned writing stylist who had famously endorsed Will Strunk's advice: "Omit unnecessary words!").

Incredibly, NONE OF THIS MATTERS.

All of the above was irrevocably upstaged by Harper Perennial's technical incompetence. The size of the type employed is so small as to be illegible; the ink density is practically non-existent (illegibility factor squared), & the quality of the flimsy paper is unacceptable.

Hold the book up with the spine of the binding in the palm of your hand, with the book bottom facing you.

It tilts & flounders & flops like a garage driveway-destined annual edition of the Yellow Pages.

So, for all of these reasons, spend a little extra money & buy the hard-cover edition of the original Letters. Fortunately, I had recently found one in a used book store in Maine; little did I know how valuable this discovery would be. It was gratefully given to my friend in appreciation for all that he has done for us in past years.

The Revised Edition, a disgrace, at some point will be discarded.

I have read all his letters. Several more than once. In doing so, I have come up with a list of positions that E.B. White took since the mid 1930s. Very few people can be right about everything. I think he was right maybe 99% of the time. (Don't know what the 1% wrong would be though).

1. He was against the isolationist stance promoted by the Lindberghs. White was against all wars up to this one, but he could not accept what Hitler was doing in Europe. He saw the danger and wrote about it. He was not the first one to write. There were many people who actually lived or traveled extensively in Europe during this time that spoke out first, but White was an eloquent spokesman against Nazis and isolationism.

2. He was a strong advocate of world government. He was the first writer who had a national forum to write on it. And he wrote a lot. For a time fully one-third of his editorials in The New Yorker were on that subject. It hasn't worked out as well as he had hoped, but much of that is because the United States has not backed the United Nations in the way we should have. Also, White was strongly against the veto power given to the major nations (particular the Soviet Union). Again, I think time has proven him right.

3. He was the first to criticize the House Un-American Activities Committee. And it was at a time when Congress, by a vote of 346-17, agreed to issue subpoenas to the Hollywood Ten. To come and support these 10 people and look directly into the eyes of 346 members of Congress and tell them "you're wrong", took a great act of courage. Unfortunately, there weren't many others like him at the time.

4. He spoke out against Joseph McCarthy even when Eisenhower was afraid to publicly do so. It was his eloquence and his ability to shape people's minds with his words that helped stop this political rock that was rolling down a very steep hill.

5. He was against nuclear testing. He was the first one to ever do so in an editorial.

6. He wrote extensively on the environment. He called attention to the many violations of city ordinances that prohibited belched, black, soft-coal smoke from entering our urban atmosphere. Between 1959 and 1960 he wrote 17 columns on environmental pollution that The New Yorker published anonymously under the heading "These Precious Days."

7. He was in the forefront against racial discrimination. He wrote this in Harper's Magazine in February 1941:

There are two moving picture theaters in the town to which my key (he was vacationing in the Florida Keys) is attached by a bridge. In one of them, colored people are allowed in the balcony. In the other, colored people are not allowed at all. I saw a patriotic newsreel there the other day that ended with a picture of the American flag blowing in the breeze, and the words: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Everyone clapped, but I decided I could not clap for liberty and justice (for all) while I was in a theater from which Negroes had been barred. And I felt there were too many people in the world who think liberty and justice for all means liberty and justice for themselves and their friends. I sat there wondering what would happen to me if I were to jump up and say in a loud voice: "If you folks like liberty and justice so much, why do you keep Negroes from this theater?" I am sure it would have surprised everybody very much and it is the kind of thing I dream about dong but never do. If I had done it I suppose the management would have taken me by the arm and marched me out of the theater, on the grounds that it is disturbing the peace to speak up for liberty just as the feature is coming on. .......It is conceivable that the Negroes of a hundred years from now will enjoy a greater degree of liberty if the present restrictions on today's Negroes are not relaxed too fast. But that doesn't get today's Negroes in to see Hedy Lamarr.

I'm a huge fan of E.B. White's and a committed reader of The New Yorker magazine. If the authors of the era and the mechanics of writing/publication are of interest, you would probably enjoy this. Best read leisurely . . .