Customer Reviews

QUO VADIMUS ? or The Case for The Bicycle

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Quo Vadimus? or The Case For The Bicycle, E.B. White; Garden City Publishing Co., Inc. (a 1946 reprint; orig. Harper & Brothers, with orig. copyrights 1927-38)

Another collection of short bursts of Whiteiana, unbeatable. My vote for Best Story is "Fin de Saison - Palm Beach," from the era when cynical society newspaper editors limited their reporting to the meaningless meanderings of wintering mega-wealthy socialites, starting each November & concluding around March:

"A lady from the lower middle classes had the misfortune to be stung by a Portuguese Man o'War while bathing this morning off the foot of Australian Avenue. She suffered severe pain in both 'legs.' The Florida press maintained a dignified silence."

Obtained while browsing in a wonderful odds-&-ends shop in Stonington, Deer Isle, Maine (population 1,152, 0.61% Native American), which had an entire shelf devoted to books written by White & other fine authors of the golden era of The New Yorker magazine [late 1920s-late 1950s].

I left a few behind for the next book lover. Just a few. They might still be there. Better hurry up & go get 'em.

Inexplicably, White's "Dusk In Fierce Pajamas," which leads off "Easy Essays On Hard Subjects," first failed to impress when it was featured in "Fierce Pajamas, An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker" (2001).

And yet, this time around, it was as if I had never read it, & loved it.

This explains how one's overall reaction to a badly assembled & produced anthology can actually alter your perception of the individual contents within it (see Amazon review of FP, "Cheap Binding, Bad Editing," David Remnick & Henry Finder, editors. Someone at the now-defunct Elaine's must have loved the idea).

What the reference to "The Case For The Bicycle" means remains a mystery. But it is not necessary to understand everything.

*****

Notes On 1946: Never To Be Seen Again, On Any Dust Jacket - "This book is printed from the plates of the original edition. The text is complete & unabridged. The low price is made possible by the elimination of original production costs & the author's acceptance of a reduced royalty."

All that, printed in the smallest type, is presented in a triangular format located at the bottom of the left inside dust jacket flap.