Appendix

Reading “Once More to the Lake”

I offer here a reading of “Once More to the Lake,” probably the most anthologized of White’s essays. It also treats the familiar, funda-

mental subject of time and in a strategic, brilliant manner. White’s differences from Montaigne readily appear and his literary, artistic skills are on vivid display. The essay also shows White integrating past and present, the thing represented and the representing, that is, the writing itself. It seems, therefore, a fitting post- postscript.

The last paragraph of “Once More to the Lake” is elegiac, wistful, plaintive, with a beauty of pathos nearly sublime in effect. It smacks a bit of the self- centered, I suppose, but in so doing it captures a timelessness that very nearly transcends that self: White describes himself watching his son take his swim trunks off the line and put them on “his hard little body, skinny and bare,” seeing him “wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy gar-ment. As he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.”1 The observer here becomes the observed.

Understood as the way you get from the first word to the last, the plot of “Once More to the Lake” is entirely familiar; it is also ideational. Like the later fine essay by Scott Russell Sanders, “Under the Influence,” the essay is about time, and its plot has the essayist returning to a site of youthful happiness in the company of his young son, with whom he comes to identify as he does with his own father; there is a journey (toward understanding) here, and a “course of interpretive discovery.”2 Difference names the issue, as it does in “The Ring of Time,” and White again wres-tles with circularity. Although difference far outstrips similarity,

134 E. B. WHITE

“Once More to the Lake” calls to mind T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, itself an essay in verse. Time may be humankind’s quintessential concern; certainly it is the essay’s perennial subject, as well as one that forever lay heavily on White’s mind. For the Romantics, of course— think of Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci”— time was the enemy, the inveterate, determined destroyer: time gave you a “luminous” or sublime moment and then took it away. Eliot says no: “time the destroyer is time the preserver,” and “only through time time is conquered.”

White is completely secular or at least appears to be. He some-times joins Henry Thoreau in offering “religious feeling without religious images”— although in “Once More to the Lake” arresting religious terms pop up: “I wondered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot— the coves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind, the camps and the paths behind the camps” and “I remembered being very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral”3— both within the essay’s first two paragraphs. At this point, it is clear, return has taken on significance often associated with the religious.

In this intensified situation, the lake itself acquires considerable significance. White opens, in fact, by contrasting his memories of Augusts beginning “along about 1904” when his family vacationed at “a camp on a lake in Maine” with his subsequent life as “a salt- water man.” Back then, “none of us ever thought there was any place in the world like that lake in Maine.” Thirty- five or so years later— the essay is dated August 1941— “sometimes in summer there are days when the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind that blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity of a lake in the woods.” White takes off “for the lake where we used to go, for a week’s fishing and to revisit old haunts.”4

On the way, he begins “to wonder what it would be like,” sus-pecting time’s negative effects and experiencing the way that “you remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing.” What White remembers “clearest of all” has to do with that wished- for “placidity.”5 White’s writing is not just restrained, but also efficient, clean, representing only the essential points (he offers no identification, for example, of “the others” at camp or the name

READING “ONCE MORE TO THE LAKE” 135

of the lake or his son, for that matter), and never directly alluding to other writers, leaving recall solely up to his reader. The writing deals with what matters.

White describes “his” lake’s distinctive features, its lack of “wild-ness,” its location in “farming country,” the convenience of being able to eat at the farmhouse, the way that, to a child, certain places in the lake seemed “infinitely remote and primeval.” White fears that over time the tarred road had crept nearer the “holy” place, and sure enough, “the tar” “led within half a mile of the shore.”6

Nevertheless, father and son settle in: “I could tell it was going to be pretty much the same as it had been before.” The smells return, and “the boy” is up first, headed for the shore and a boat. Then, soon: “I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father.” As a result, with the “sensation” occurring throughout the visit, “I seemed to be living a dual existence,” for in the midst of the simplest acts, “it would be not I but my father who was saying the words or making the gesture. It gave me a creepy sensation.”7 I notice White’s scrupulous syntax: “it would be not I” rather than the perhaps more expected “it would not be I,” emphasis rightly falling on perceived self- difference.

That the issue is not time’s supposed circularity but, quite dif-ferently, the absence or obliteration of time becomes clear as White records more instances of perceived sameness. The sensation for the reader is not so much “creepy” as chilling. By this point, the reader understands that the unnamed lake itself, in its “placidity” and lack of “wildness,” stands for timelessness. White then directly observes the timelessness all about him— notice that there is little if any reflection (just as the lake reflects nothing). Sameness reigns supreme, White now convinced that “the years were a mirage and that there had been no years.” Always worried, as we have seen, about the advance of years, White also finds the boat to be the same, the waves to be the same, the colors the same— nowhere were there signs of intervening years. White then looks at the boy, and “it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn’t know which rod I was at the end of.”8 The pervasive sameness settles finally here on White and “the boy.” This is no memoir, nor is it autobiography, the writing carefully steered away from the historical and the merely personal.

136 E. B. WHITE

White notes that they caught two bass and then took a swim before lunch, sameness still reigning, the lake ever-faithful: it was, in fact, “exactly where we had left it, the same number of inches from the dock, and there was only the merest suggestion of a breeze.” All about, though, the wind could be seen blowing sticks and twigs around, there was evidence of a mussel, of a school of minnows, and other people were swimming in the lake. Still, “This seemed an utterly enchanted sea, this lake you could leave to its own devices for a few hours and come back to, and find that it had not stirred, this constant and trustworthy body of water.” So White repeats: “There had been no years.”9

The plot now takes a slight turn, a ripple of wind in the placid lake of timelessness, the breaking- in of time, a site suddenly of inter-section. Everything still depends on what White sees; his observa-tions focus his thinking, his ideas springing directly from what he carefully notices.

On the way to the farmhouse for dinner, he notices that the famil-iar road now has but two tracks; always before, there had been three, and he misses “the middle alternative.”10 The winds— or, rather, the breeze— of change quickly subside, and the lake regains its placid-ity, returning to its sameness. The tennis court appears unchanged, the choices for dessert are familiar, and the country girls the same: “there having been no passage of time, only the illusion of it as in a dropped curtain— the waitresses were still fifteen; their hair had been washed, that was the only difference— they had been to the movies and seen the pretty girls with the clean hair.”11

Almost counter to White’s wishes and his determined efforts, time’s potency is felt, for the waitresses have been to movies, and their hair is different. White declares himself “reassured,” but his sentences describe a compromised situation.

And indeed, White follows with a lyrical paragraph not so far from the familiar ubi sunt? theme. Time here insinuates itself, first as summer with its clear difference from the other seasons, then as a bucolic past with implicit differences from the (mechanized) pres-ent. Summer lures you into thinking of endlessness, will- o’- the- wisp. It is a pastoral scene, worthy of a painting— indeed, the controlling image comes from painting. It is almost stereotypical, White himself painting such a postcard as he describes, stylized and idealized. The

READING “ONCE MORE TO THE LAKE” 137

opening few words set the tone and herald the poetic, Romantic bent of the ensuing sentences, replete with melancholy and nostalgia: “Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade- proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end.” White finds here “the American family at play, escaping the city heat, wondering whether the newcomers in the camp at the head of the cove were ‘common’ or ‘nice,’ wondering whether it was true that the people who drove up for Sunday dinner at the farmhouse were turned away because there wasn’t enough chicken.”12 The placid image here, too, is very nearly shattered by the family’s less- than- idealized “wonder-ing.” The last sentence does its own wondering, quietly intimating values somewhat at odds with the picture- perfect setting and its self- paintings.

Regardless, it was good— back then. Memory attaches to the small details that make up one’s own painting of the scene there and then, and White paints his lovingly, capturing the slowness that breeds such attention to particulars as has led to this sort of writing. For the first time in this essay, he acknowledges the place of memory acting on the later scene of his return to the lake (i.e., “as I kept remem-bering all this”). He cannot, then, keep the present and present- day existence from asserting itself, inserting itself— even if at para-graph’s end as a mere parenthesis (i.e., “Arriving was less exciting nowadays”). More is involved than saved memories, for memory, says White, had saved those good times. The created effect is to put you as reader in the scene, too, an effect bolstered by the turn to sec-ond person and the mention of “your father’s authority,” a singular way of referring to his own father that could, but does not, refer to himself.13 Nowadays there is not much to remember, too little worth remembering, romance shattered, gone forever. Details used to mat-ter, they accumulated, and they made meaning. Fuss was good.

White now says only one thing broke the illusion— appropriately he labels it a sound— but in truth the illusion of something seen in memory’s not- quite- relentless eye has been breaking apart for some time. There is simply no way of keeping time at bay, for it is relentless, ruthless, differentiating. Sparring with this inevitability, White proceeds to another reiteration, although the words appear in a different order, perhaps intentionally, for peace matters most,

138 E. B. WHITE

jollity least: “Peace and goodness and jollity. The only thing that was wrong now, really, was the sound of the place, an unfamiliar ner-vous sound of the outboard motors.” This note jars, for then there were only inboard motors, and their noise was a “sedative,” making “a sleepy sound across the lake.”14 This slight sound at evening has been drowned out, thanks to the outboards that everyone now pos-sesses. The sounds now are merely annoying.

“Once More to the Lake” is plotted along the axis that there is no time. But time keeps breaking in, and dividing, White’s revelries of the past as essentially present— now. The pattern apparent thus reverses Eliot’s Incarnational one that structures his essay- poem Four Quartets: paradigmatic in the Incarnation, timelessness comes into time, intersecting with it, giving every moment meaning, mak-ing each moment “burn” with meaning, in fact. Structurally, White’s essay reflects its titular and central action: there is a return, a coming back, so that time can never appear transcended.

The remainder of the paragraph from which I was just quot-ing moves, however, from present to past, an earlier time, in being recalled by present actions and events. Always, it is a matter of com-parison, one thing being known in and by its relation to another. The situation now described, in short, mirrors the essay’s occasion: the past breaks in and comments on the present— in a problematic, compromised way, at that. The matter remains sounds— and their breaking in, disrupting “placidity” as the outboards whine like mos-quitoes. “My boy” seeks to master the one they had rented.15 The subject matter has shifted, the texture is now different, too. For the first time in “Once More to the Lake,” a certain emphasis appears on “the boy,” who, naturally enough, finds present- day contrap-tions enthralling. The difference between father and son may now overwhelm that between past and present; the matter is authority, masked (rather than compromised) by the desire of control over gadgets and machines: the “great desire was to achieve mastery,” and the way thereto, appropriately, lies in “choking it a little (but not too much).” White himself, of course, has had nothing else in mind but mastery over time. He continues writing, himself no doubt “the boy” of the past that he describes: White watches him, remembering how you could gain control over the motor, but “if a boy felt he had complete mastery over his motor, he was tempted to keep it running

READING “ONCE MORE TO THE LAKE” 139

beyond its time and then reverse it a few feet from the dock. It took a cool nerve,” and if you weren’t spot- on, “the boat would leap ahead, charging bull- fashion at the dock.”16 Then, you could make landing— that is, get back, return home safely— by almost choking the engine to death, but not quite, gaining a measure of artistic tri-umph, at least. Then, at least, in the essayist’s past, there was art, even the spiritual, entailed, and the boater bore responsibility for know-ing and performing well. Then, you could artfully manage reversing. Including time? You had, though, to be precise, exact, perfect, for otherwise bullheadedness would appear as you charged and likely overran the dock. Coasting was, in any case, never quite desirable.

No close transition exists to the next idea/paragraph, which has the texture of summary. “We had a good week at the camp,” White begins, rather perfunctorily, with singular lack of enthusiasm. With its compounds, the next sentence captures the routine, the lack of significant differentiation: “The bass were biting well and the sun shone endlessly, day after day.” They were tired at night, and sleep “came easily.”17 Once again, though, the past returns, almost hauntingly now, this, too, without evident enthusiasm or, indeed, encouragement.18 White then does something altogether different, at least in this essay. At first, you are not absolutely certain that he is describing the way it was decades earlier or the present summer, for there was a pervasive sameness in and of that past; a few facts do, of course, clue you in to the contrary before you reach the decisive last sentence here (the “tarred road,” for instance, the presence of cars and Coca- Cola)— the point may be the obliteration of difference that White is now experiencing:

After breakfast we would go up to the store and the things were in the same place— the minnows in a bottle, the plugs and spinners disar-ranged and pawed over by the youngsters from the boys’ camp, the Fig Newtons and the Beeman’s gum. Outside, the road was tarred and cars stood in front of the store. Inside, all was just as it had always been, except there was more Coca- Cola and not so much Moxie and root beer and birch beer and sarsaparilla . . . Everywhere we went I had trouble making out which was I, the one walking at my side, the one walking in my pants.19

Thus occurs the essay’s most dramatic realization of its main idea.

140 E. B. WHITE

The penultimate paragraph of “Once More to the Lake” continues the dramatic representation of similarity between past and present. Appropriately, or so it seems, the central event described, connect-ing the years, is a thunderstorm, in other words, the opposite of the “placidity” with which White had associated the lake decades earlier. The opening sentence here feels a bit odd, with its reference to “that lake,” perhaps an acknowledgment of difference and a certain dis-tancing. There is no doubt that this is the climactic scene in “Once More to the Lake,” the dramatic references serving, as elsewhere in White, to accentuate the point at the same time as he anticipates and disarms charges of melodrama. Now familiarity reigns, and it is the thing: “It was like the revival of an old melodrama that I had seen long ago with childish awe. The second- act climax of the drama of the electrical disturbance over a lake in America had not changed in any important respect. This was the big scene, still the big scene. The whole thing was so familiar.” First, the sky darkens, and then come the sounds of the “kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals,” followed by “crackling light against the dark”: “it was all the same.” The paragraph is made of compounds doing the trick of linkage, a chain of events connected without differentiation, all parts of an enduring whole— and all accentuated by a final sentence that is not a sentence at all, but a part of a further compound, serv-ing to lighten the mood, alongside the repeated joking, and saving romance (or at least melodrama) from potential tragedy: “And the comedian who waded in carrying an umbrella.”20 The dark clouds, the booming thunder, the bright lightning, and the rain— they give way to placidity, again, after sounds not at all right.

Difference yet asserts itself most forcefully. First, White and his son part ways, in the sense that the younger opts to go swimming, while the essayist has “no thought of going in.” But as “the boy” pulls up “around his vitals the small, soggy, icy” trunks, White records that “suddenly my groin felt the chill of death”: similarity and dif-ference yoked, distinction established without transcending or elid-ing similarity— a restrained and quite proper, undramatic ending, rendered with powerful effect, even of pity and terror.

Notes

Preface

1. E. B. White, Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 145; Cynthia Ozick, Metaphor and Memory (New York: Knopf, 1989), 109; White, Essays, 22.

2. White, Essays, 143, 145. 3. Ibid., 147. 4. Ibid., vii. 5. Ibid., 234. I am less interested, then, in getting inside White’s

head as a writer than in participating in the essays themselves as they take on meaning in the only way that texts can: in read-ers alert to language and to its rhymes. White is the Magister. I do not so much bring insight to White as derive insight from his writing.

6. T. S. Eliot’s words in dedicating The Waste Land to Ezra Pound. 7. E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web (New York: Harper and Row,

1952), 77. 8. That most of the essays I treat here are included in the 1977

Essays reflects White’s own preferences, for he selected them for that volume. There are, of course, many other essays, from One Man’s Meat (1943), The Second Tree from the Corner (1954), and The Points of My Compass (1962); these volumes also contain poems and various prose writings that substan-tially differ from the essays that most directly attest to White’s artistry. It does not, I think, detract from the interest of my book that the essays I consider are not only those that White himself liked best but also those that most readers know and cherish.

9. White, Essays, 240. 10. On “answerable style,” see the various essays and books by

Geoffrey Hartman, as well as my Geoffrey Hartman: Criticism

142 NOTES

as Answerable Style (London: Routledge, 1990). On the differ-ence between essays and articles, see, especially, William H. Gass, “Emerson and the Essay,” Habitations of the Word (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 9– 49.

11. White, Essays, vii. 12. Ibid. 13. Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism,” in Poetry and Prose

of Alexander Pope, ed. Aubrey Williams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 641.

14. Benjamin De Mott, in The Saturday Review of Literature, 20 (Aug. 1977): 63, qtd. in Scott Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1984), 385.

Introduction

1. Joseph Wood Krutch, “No Essays, Please!,” The Saturday Review of Literature 4, no. 10 (1951): 18–19, 35.

2. George Core, “Stretching the Limits of the Essay,” in Essays on the Essay: Redefining the Genre, ed. Alexander J. Butrym (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), 217.

3. Annie Dillard, introduction to Best American Essays 1988 (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1988).

4. E. B. White, Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), vii. 5. Eduardo Nicol, qtd. in Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Per-

sonal Essay (New York: Anchor- Doubleday, 1994), xxxvii. 6. White, Essays, vii. 7. I borrow the term that was apparently invented by my student

Micaiah Swihart. 8. White, Essays, vii. 9. Ibid., 145. 10. Lopate, The Art of the Personal Essay, xxxii. 11. White, Essays, 16. 12. Ibid., 234– 35. 13. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943). 14. White, Essays, 235. 15. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 3rd. ed. (London: Faber and Faber,

1951), 347– 48. 16. White, Essays, 234– 36.

NOTES 143

17. E. B. White, The Points of My Compass (New York: Harper and Row, 1952), xi.

18. White, Essays, 71. 19. Ibid., 236. 20. See Georg Lukàcs, Soul and Form, trans. Anna Bostock (Cam-

bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), 9. 21. See, for instance, my Tracing the Essay: Through Experience to

Meaning (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005). 22. Jonathan Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” and Other Writings, ed.

Louis A. Landa (Boston: Riverside- Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 352.

Chapter 1

1. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943). 2. Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” in The Portable Thoreau,

ed. Carl Bode (New York: Penguin, 1947), 592– 93. 3. Scott Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography (New York: Norton,

1984), 317. 4. E. B. White, Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 8. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 8– 9. 7. Ibid., 9. 8. Ibid., 9– 10. 9. Ibid., 8. 10. Ibid., 12. 11. Ibid., 235. 12. Ibid., 40, 38. 13. Ibid., 42. 14. Janice M. Alberghene, “Writing in Charlotte’s Web,” Children’s

Literature in Education 16, no. 1 (Spring 1983), 33. 15. E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web (New York: Harper and Row,

1952), 41. 16. Ibid., 105. 17. Recall White’s essay on Walden, “A Slight Sound at Evening.” 18. See, for example, White, Charlotte’s Web, 99. 19. White, Charlotte’s Web, 139– 40. 20. Ibid., 149.

144 NOTES

21. White, Essays, vii. 22. Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography, 348; italics added. 23. White, Charlotte’s Web, 184. 24. Ibid., 164. 25. Ibid., 183; italics added. 26. White, Essays, 235. 27. White, Charlotte’s Web, 153. 28. Ibid., 163– 64. 29. Ibid., 165. 30. Ibid., 171. 31. White, Essays, 39. 32. Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography, 293. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 293. 35. Ibid., 303. 36. Ibid. 37. E. B. White, The Trumpet of the Swan (New York: Harper and

Row, 1970), 162 (italics White’s). 38. T. S. Eliot, Essays Ancient and Modern (London: Faber and

Faber, 1936), 68n. 39. White, The Trumpet of the Swan, 210. 40. Ibid., 202. 41. E. B. White, Stuart Little (New York: Harper and Row, 1945),

129. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 129– 31. 44. Ibid., 131. 45. White is, as I suggest throughout this book, a reader’s writer

and so appeals particularly to undergraduates; his appeal to graduate students, I have found, lies mainly with creative writ-ing students, who discover a writer with desirable skills in the use of language and the reading of people and nature alike. For undergraduates, honors freshmen, as well as upper- division students, I have found an effective compass for exploring the essays to lie in what I call writing- as- reading. This, it seems to me, is an effective way of introducing any reader to White’s essays, bringing her or him into White country and provid-ing a compass by which to steer. What White himself refers

NOTES 145

to, in “Home- Coming,” as “the kindly erasures of the snow,” portends, at once, discovery, opportunity, and challenge, along with the likelihood of some danger of mistaking one’s way.

46. Of course, in a review of Scott Elledge’s biography of White, Russell Lynes opined years ago that all three of the “children’s books” are “narrative essays,” an insight vitiated, I think, by a failure to distinguish among the quite different stories (Russell Lynes, “The Dividing Line of Stuart Little’s Father,” review of E. B. White: A Biography, by Scott Elledge, New York Times, February 26, 1984, Book Review, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/26/books/the-divided-line-of-stuart-little-s-father.html?pagewanted=all.).

47. I have discussed this matter in Literary Paths toward Religious Understanding (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 59– 78.

48. White, Stuart Little, 1– 2. 49. Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose,

ed. Sally Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1961), 63– 86.

50. White, Stuart Little, 84. 51. Ibid., 84– 85. 52. Ibid., 86– 87. 53. Ibid., 90– 1. 54. Ibid., 91. 55. Ibid., 92. 56. Ibid., 93, 94. 57. Ibid., 98. 58. Ibid., 100. 59. Ibid., 100– 101. 60. Ibid., 104. 61. Ibid., 106. 62. Ibid., 110. 63. Ibid., 112. 64. Ibid, 111. 65. Ibid, 116– 17. 66. Ibid., 121. 67. Ibid., 122. 68. Ibid., 123– 24. 69. Ibid., 131.

146 NOTES

70. E. B. White, Letters of E. B. White, rev. ed., ed. Dorothy Lobrano Guth and Martha White (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 253.

71. Ibid., 252. 72. Edward Hoagland, “What I Think, What I Am,” in The Art

of the Essay, ed. Lydia Fakundiny (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 691– 92.

Chapter 2

1. E. B. White, Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 235. 2. Ibid., 259. 3. Ibid., 258, 261. 4. Ibid., 259, 261. 5. On the essay’s fundamental irony, see Georg Lukàcs, “On the

Nature and Form of the Essay,” Soul and Form, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), esp. 9, and my own Tracing the Essay: Through Experience to Meaning (Ath-ens: University of Georgia Press, 2005).

6. White, Essays, vii. 7. Jane Austen, Letters 1796– 1817, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1955); letter of December 16, 1816, to J. Edward Austen.

8. See my On the Familiar Essay: Challenging Academic Ortho-doxies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

9. White, Essays, viii. 10. Michel de Montaigne, “Of Practice,” in The Art of the Essay,

ed. Lydia Fakundiny (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 687. 11. I have discussed “A Modest Proposal” at some length in Read-

ing Essays: An Invitation (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 55– 61.

12. White, Essays, vii. 13. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, in Poetry and Prose,

ed. Aubrey Williams (Boston: Riverside- Houghton Mifflin, 1969), line 297.

14. I refer to a letter of June 25, 1983, now in my possession. 15. Roger Angell, Let Me Finish (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006),

119, which rhymes with the account by James Thurber men-tioned in note 16.

NOTES 147

16. James Thurber, “E. B. W.,” The Saturday Review of Literature 18, no. 25 (1938), 8.

17. Ibid. 18. Robert L. Root, Jr., E. B. White: The Emergence of an Essayist

(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999). 19. White, Letters of E. B. White, rev. ed., ed. Dorothy Lobrano

Guth and Martha White (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 416– 17.

20. Letter of December 5, 1959, to John Wesley Fuller, not included in White’s revised Letters but published as An Answer from White (Champaign, IL: Sign of the Rolling Stone, 1969). I am grateful to Ken Lopez Books for making a photocopy of their copy available to me. My department chair, Marta Caminero- Santangelo, later made it possible for me to acquire this copy.

21. White, Essays, 234. 22. See my On the Familiar Essay, 16–17, 67, 77–79. 23. Lukàcs, Soul and Form, esp. 9. 24. White, Essays, 234. 25. Ibid., 236. 26. Ibid., 234. 27. Ibid., 239. 28. Ibid. 29. Cynthia Ozick, “The Seam of the Snail,” Metaphor and Mem-

ory (New York: Knopf, 1989), 109. 30. White, Essays, 259. 31. Qtd. in Scott Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography (New York:

Norton, 1984), 359. 32. White, Essays, 238. 33. Ibid., 234– 35. 34. Ibid., 235. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid.; italics added. 37. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943). 38. White, Essays, 234. 39. Ibid., 237. 40. Ibid., 240. 41. Ibid., 241. 42. Ibid., 236. 43. Ibid., 239– 40.

148 NOTES

44. Ibid., 240. 45. Ibid., 241– 42. 46. Paul H. Fry, The Reach of Criticism: Method and Perception in

Literary Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 200.

47. White, Essays, viii. 48. Ibid. 49. Montaigne, “Of Practice,” 685– 86. 50. Ibid. 51. White, Essays, viii. 52. Ibid. 53. Lukàcs, Soul and Form, 9. 54. Graham Good, The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay

(London: Routledge, 1988). 55. Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay (New York:

Anchor- Doubleday, 1994), xiv. 56. White, Essays, 241. 57. Henry David Thoreau, The Portable Thoreau, ed. Carl Bode

(New York: Penguin, 1947), 259. 58. Lopate, The Art of the Personal Essay, xxxii. 59. On the idea of self- fashioning, see O. B. Hardison, Jr., “Bind-

ing Proteus: An Essay on the Essay,” in Essays on the Essay: Redefining the Genre, ed. Alexander J. Butrym (Athens: Uni-versity of Georgia Press, 1989), 11– 28.

60. White, Essays, viii. 61. Montaigne was, of course, a renowned skeptic (que sais- je?),

and signs of skepticism certainly appear in White, but I cau-tion against any easy equating of White and the tradition that stems from Sextus Empiricus. White’s thinking is character-ized, not so much by doubt, as the possession of earned, prac-tical knowledge.

62. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 641. 63. Anne Fadiman, At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays (New

York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), xi. 64. Ibid., x. 65. Ibid., x– xi. 66. William H. Gass, “Emerson and the Essay,” Habitations of the

Word (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), esp. 25– 26.

NOTES 149

67. White, Letters, 398. 68. White, Essays, viii. 69. White, Letters, 470. 70. Ibid., 531. 71. White, Essays, vii. 72. Ibid., 225. 73. White, Letters, 263– 64. 74. Ibid., 358. 75. Ibid., 462. 76. Ibid., 463. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid.; italics added. 79. Ibid., 600. 80. Ibid., 354– 55. 81. Angell, Let Me Finish, 126– 27. 82. Ibid., 133. 83. Ibid., 132– 33. 84. Isobel Russell, Katharine and E. B. White: An Affectionate

Memoir (New York: Norton, 1988), 42. 85. Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography, 282. 86. White, Essays, 237. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., 80. 89. Ibid., 256– 57. 90. Ibid., 125. 91. Ibid., 126. 92. Ibid., 143. 93. Ibid., 145. 94. Ibid., 83. 95. Ibid., 87. 96. Ibid., 18. 97. Ibid., 202. 98. Ibid., 6. 99. Ibid., 90. 100. Ibid., 97. 101. Ibid., 152. 102. Ibid., 41, 42. 103. Ibid., 17.

150 NOTES

104. Ibid., 82. 105. Ibid., 81. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid., 87. 108. Ibid., 17. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid., 18, 21. 111. Ibid., 24. 112. Ibid. 113. Ibid., 142. 114. Ibid. 115. Ibid. 116. Ibid., 143. 117. Ibid., 147. 118. Ibid., 143. 119. Ibid., 145. 120. Ibid., 144. 121. Ibid., 147. 122. Ibid. 123. Ibid., 147– 48. 124. Ibid., 148. 125. Ibid. 126. Ibid.

Chapter 3

1. E. B. White, Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 239– 40.

2. Ibid., 4– 5. 3. Ibid., 5. 4. Ibid., 3. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 258. 7. Ibid., 259. 8. Ibid., 258. 9. Ibid., 235. 10. Ibid., 239. 11. Ibid., 85.

NOTES 151

12. Ibid., 40– 41. 13. Ibid., 40. 14. Ibid., 235. 15. Ibid., 37. 16. Ibid., 40. 17. Ibid., 41. 18. Ibid., 40. 19. Ibid., 44. 20. Ibid., 45. 21. Ibid., 42. 22. Ibid., 112, 114. 23. Ibid., 115. 24. Ibid., 117. 25. Ibid., 51– 52. 26. Ibid., 52. 27. Ibid., 12. 28. Ibid., 9. 29. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, in Poetry and Prose, ed.

Aubrey Williams (Boston: Riverside- Houghton Mifflin, 1969), line 294.

30. White, Essays, 9. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 9– 10. 33. Robert P. Tristam Coffin, An Attic Room: Essays on the Jovial

and Beautiful Life (New York: Doubleday, 1929), 169. 34. Ibid., 170. 35. Ibid., 171. 36. Ibid.; italics added. 37. Ibid., 177. 38. Ibid., 177– 78. 39. Ibid., 178. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 178– 80. 42. White, Essays, 153. 43. Ibid., 150. 44. Scott Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography (New York: Norton,

1984), 343; White, Essays, 150. 45. White, Essays, ibid.

152 NOTES

46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 151– 52. 52. Ibid., 152. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Lowell Bair (New

York: Bantam, 1959), 168. 56. White, Essays, 152. 57. Ibid., 152– 53. 58. Ibid., 153. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. Henry David Thoreau, The Portable Thoreau, ed. Carl Bode

(New York: Penguin, 1947), 344. 63. White, Essays, 153. 64. Ibid., 48. 65. Ibid., 46. 66. Ibid., 48. 67. Ibid., 48– 49. 68. Ibid., 53. 69. Ibid., 54. 70. Ibid., 8. 71. Ibid., 7. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid., 8.

Chapter 4

1. E. B. White, Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 97. 2. Ibid., 71. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 79. 5. Ibid., 72.

NOTES 153

6. Ibid., 71. 7. Ibid., 77. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 73. 10. Ibid., 74– 75. 11. Ibid., 76. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 100. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 101. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 102. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., 104. 21. Ibid., 105. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 107. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 107– 8. 26. Ibid., 108. 27. Ibid., 92. 28. Ibid., 90. 29. Ibid., 91. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 92. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 93. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 94. 38. Ibid., 95. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 96. 41. Ibid., 97. 42. Ibid., 96. 43. Ibid., 97.

154 NOTES

44. Ibid., 97– 98. 45. Ibid., 98. 46. Ibid., 98– 99. 47. Ibid., 99; italics added. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid., 80. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., 83; italics added. 53. Ibid., 85. 54. Ibid., 80. 55. Ibid., 81. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 82– 83. 59. Ibid., 83. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., 84. 63. Ibid., 85. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., 85– 86. 66. Ibid., 86. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid., 81. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., 86. 73. Ibid., 82. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., 87. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., 88. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid.

NOTES 155

83. Scott Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1984), 341.

84. See Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp: Essays Written in the Coun-try (London, 1863).

85. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943). 86. White, Essays, 205. 87. Ibid., 206. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., 206– 7. 91. Ibid., 207. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid., 85. 95. Ibid., 207; italics added. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid.; italics added.

Postscript

1. E. B. White, Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 9. 2. Ibid., 40. 3. Ibid, 46. 4. Ibid., 148. 5. Ibid., 147. 6. Ibid., 145. 7. Ibid., 148. 8. Ibid., 151. 9. Ibid., 46. 10. Ibid., 52. 11. Ibid., 50. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 51; italics added. 14. William Wordsworth, “London, 1802,” in The Norton Anthol-

ogy of English Literature, 6th ed., ed. M. H. Abrams et al. (New York: Norton, 1993),vol. 2, 199– 200.

156 NOTES

Appendix

1. E. B. White, Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 202. 2. Paul H. Fry, The Reach of Criticism: Method and Perception in

Literary Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 200.

3. White, Essays, 197, 198. 4. Ibid., 197. 5. Ibid., 197– 98. 6. Ibid., 198. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 198– 99. 9. Ibid., 199. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 199– 200. 12. Ibid., 200. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 201. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid.

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Index

Adams, Bristow, 61Addison, Joseph, 30Adorno, Theodor, 60Angell, Roger, 45, 66Arnold, Matthew, 59Atkins, G. Douglas

worksOn the Familiar Essay, 44Reading Essays, 2Tracing the Essay, 43– 44

Augustine, Saint, 83Austen, Jane, 43

Bacon, Francis, 56Belloc, Hilaire, 12, 60, 88Benchley, Robert, 62Browning, Robert, 130

change, ix, 11, 17, 18, 23, 25, 26, 77, 78, 85, 91, 95, 102– 4, 112, 124, 126– 29, 131, 135– 40

Chesterton, G. K., 12Chudleigh, Mary, 56Coffin, Robert P. Tristam

work“Princes of the Coast” (in The

Attic Room), 87Coles, Robert, 19Conrad, Joseph, 30Cornwallis, Sir William, 57Cowley, Abraham, 56Cowley, Malcolm, 27, 28, 37, 38

Currier and Ives, 91

De Mott, Benjamin, xiiDe Pirandello, Luigi, 30Derrida, Jacques, xii, 60Dictionary of Literature in English,

42Dillard, Annie, 1, 2, 41, 42, 65, 67Dryden, John, 7, 56Dwyer, Tim, 29

Ecclesiastes, 88Eisenhower, Dwight D., 115, 116Eliot, George

workAdam Bede, 30

Eliot, T. S., 4, 12, 6, 7, 18, 25, 44, 74, 131

worksFour Quartets, 8, 10, 15, 24,

120, 134, 138“Little Gidding,” 8

Elledge, Scott, 4, 16, 24, 62, 67, 91, 119, 126

essayand the academy, x, 1, 7, 43the age of, 1as art, 2and the art of living, xiiand the article, x, 1, 17, 31, 59– 60and authenticity, xand both/and, 2

164 INDEX

essay (continued)its characteristic modesty,

restraint, and humility, 21, 43

its characteristic tension, xii, 44, 60

derivation of the word, 130its difference from story, 31, 39and egoism, 6, 55, 57, 59the familiar, 5– 6, 44, 56– 61and familiarity, 86fiction in, 30as fourth genre, 1, 12and “Gen’rous Converse” (Pope),

xii, 58as homely form, 15and honesty as prime virtue, 44its humility, xiits in- between nature, 2, 12, 31, 44as indirect, 43, 55, 56its irony, 6, 12, 43, 48, 57its limitations, 39, 43and literature, xi, 12and memoir, 58as middle- age form, 11– 12its near- death, 1as performance, 70the personal, 5, 44, 56, 60and pleasure, x, 7reveals the extra- ordinary in the

ordinary, 12as rooted, 39and second- class citizenry, 1, 43and self- expression, 56and slow reading, xand smallness, 43, 44, 56its sneakiness, 44speaker as critical in, 31, 32, 43and the speaker as the essayist,

31– 32, 44and story, 3, 5, 39, 58and time, 8, 18, 85

and truth telling, 44its turn, 1the Victorian, of ideas, 59– 60and voice, 31, 32, 44and White’s fictional prose, x– xiand the writing as what matters,

6, 57See also essayistic spirit; Smith,

Alexander; White, E. B.essayistic spirit

as disembodied, 30, 43

Fadiman, Anne, 12, 58, 60Fadiman, Clifton, 58– 59Fakundiny, Lydia, 29Faulkner, William, 62Fielding, Henry, 30Finny, Sterling. See White, E. B.Ford Times, 119Fred (the dachshund), ix, 69, 71–

72, 112– 19, 121, 127Fuller, John Wesley, 47– 48

Gass, William H., 60

Harrison, Thomas, 30Hazlitt, William, 12Heath Anthology, The, 42Heidegger, Martin, 60Hemingway, Ernest, 41Hesse, Hermann

workSiddhartha, 30, 31

Hoagland, Edward, 12work

“What I Think, What I Am,” 39

Homerwork

Odyssey, The, 15Hurston, Zora Neale, 124Huxley, Thomas Henry, 59

INDEX 165

Johnson, Samuel, 30Joyce, James, 44

Kazin, Alfred, 12Keats, John

work“La Belle Dame sans Merci,”

134Kennedy, John F., 111, 118Krutch, Joseph Wood, 1

Lamb, Charles, 59Lardner, Ring, 62Lawder, Doug, Jr., 64Lopate, Phillip, 6, 56, 57Lukàcs, Georg, 12, 48, 56, 60

Macaulay, Thomas, 59Macmillan, 46Maine, 92– 94, 98, 99, 102, 105, 124

and appropriateness, 86, 87and authenticity, 90, 96and change, 103– 4and coming together, 90– 91and cooking, 87and embodiment, 91as gift, 86, 90, 99its mixed, impure nature, 86, 89and participation, 91and personality, 90and serenity, 87as “state of mind,” 88, 114and work, 89, 90and writers, 87– 90

Mairs, Nancy, 56Mansfield, Jane, 70Martin, Mary, 70Maxwell, William, 42McPhee, John, 124Melville, Herman, 30Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 62Milton, John, 132

Mitchell, Margaret, 98, 129Montaigne, Michel de, xi, xii, 1, 3,

6, 12, 49, 54– 57, 61, 62, 132, 133

Moore, Anne Carroll, 37, 38Musil, Robert, 30

New Yorker, The, xiii, 16, 45, 46, 64, 101

Nicol, Eduardo, 2, 25Norris, John, 56Norton Anthology, The, 12, 42

O’Connor, Flannery, 6, 31O’Hagan, Andrew, 60Oxford Anthology, The, 42Ozick, Cynthia, 50, 60

Pater, Walter, 59Pickering, Sam, 60, 132Plato, 19Poe, Edgar Allan

work“Philosophy of Composition,

The,” 50Pope, Alexander, xii, 44

workEssay on Criticism, An, 48

Preusser, Judith W., 63– 64

Root, Robert L., Jr., 46Ross, Harold, 46, 66Ruskin, John, 59Russell, Isobel, 66, 67

Sanders, Scott Russell, 12, 133Saturday Review, The, 1, 45Selzer, Richard, 2Seneca, 61Smith, Alexander

on the essay and the writer’s mood, 120

166 INDEX

Steele, Richard, 30Stein, Matthew, 131St. Nicholas, 62, 65Stone, Fred, 70Strunk, William, Jr., 41, 42, 50, 68,

80Swift, Jonathan, 82, 112, 119

worksGulliver’s Travels, 30, 31“Modest Proposal, A,” 31, 44Tale of a Tub, A, 13

Temple, Sir William, 132Thoreau, Henry David, xi– xiii, 5,

10, 12, 15, 17, 41, 57, 64, 68, 79– 81, 96, 107, 124, 125, 128– 30, 132, 134

his purity perplex, 18, 97works

Maine Woods, The, 87Walden, 7– 9, 23, 42, 48, 49,

51– 54, 67, 103“Walking,” 32, 86

Thurber, James, 45, 46time, ix, 11, 15, 17, 18, 24– 26, 53,

77, 78, 85, 87, 92, 127, 133– 40Truman, Harry S, 114, 115

Walker, Alice, 125Walters, Barbara, 104White, E. B.

and academic study, 46– 48advises regarding writing, 63– 65affirms life’s newness and joy, 9,

19, 23, 25, 42, 53and alertness, xii, xiii, 4, 82, 98appreciates life’s mixed nature,

22– 24and the art of living, xii, 10and the art of peace, 10and autobiography, 3, 6, 45, 46,

55– 57, 61

as character, 6characterized, ix, 10, 19, 39characterizes own writing, 65clings to the past, 128companionable, x, 4, 9, 42, 48,

54compared with Montaigne, 54–

55, 57– 58and “the complete consort

dancing together” (Eliot), 8, 54

and complexity, 23, 24, 71, 82and “complexity- through- joy,” 7,

10, 16, 18, 62concern for the reader, 81different from satirists, 81and difficulty, 10, 17, 18, 24, 25,

53, 67– 68, 82, 85, 128and direction, 56, 60, 61, 65and drama, 5, 6, 13, 44, 52, 60–

62, 65, 69– 73, 95, 96, 112, 139, 140

as E. B. (Tyler) White, 45effects of reading him, 12and egoism, 6, 55, 57, 59engages in “stunt,” ix, 5– 6, 69,

75– 77, 128and the essay as artful, 60and the essay and criticism, 60and essayist and fiction writer as

one, 24and the familiar, 4– 6and the familiar essay, xiv, 2– 3,

5, 6as familiar essayist, 56– 57, 128finds writing difficult, 74, 76, 80his beginnings as writer, 62– 63his distinctiveness, 39his essays as charged, xi, xiv, 4– 5,

7, 11, 20, 51, 74, 75, 108, 127, 129, 131

his essays for everyone, 20

INDEX 167

his essays and literature, xi, 2– 3, 12

his essays needing no commentary, x– xi

his essays and stories, 3, 5his extended fiction, 20, 22, 29,

39his “Gen’rous Converse” (Pope),

9his humility, 21, 22his irony, 6, 57his love of the world, 10his love of writing, 62– 63his nearly allegorical statements,

6, 16, 20, 74, 102his nostalgia, 18, 82, 137his political opinions, 101– 19his readers, x– xi, 3– 4, 19, 42his shyness, 45his speech accepting National

Medal for Literature, 22his subject matter (often, time),

4, 8, 18, 43his sympathy for the reader, 81his voice (crafted), 3, 44, 46, 48,

57, 58holds that writer keeps alive, 22and honesty, 62, 67and ideas, 3, 60and immanence/transcendence,

56and imposture, 62and impurity, 16, 23and Incarnational pattern, 8as indirect, 43, 51, 56integrates, 65on interdependence, 110invites participation, 4, 9, 10,

13, 42invites to life’s dance, ix, 42, 48,

51, 52, 54and journalism, 63– 65

as Lee Strout White, 44– 45and letting go, 79and “the literal desire,” 83– 84and livability, 84, 85, 129and living well, 12made criticism part of the

familiar essay, 60and the “made thing,” 3, 6, 58, 60and Maine’s mixed, impure

nature, 86and music, xiiand nature, 81, 82and nature writing, 41and observer/observed, 56, 57opposes centralized planning,

102, 105and orthodoxy, 117and paragraphs, xiii, 11, 49– 50and participation, 52, 55, 67and parts- whole, 5and the past, 82, 128and the performance of writing,

73, 75as performer, ix, 42, 61, 63, 65–

66, 69– 76, 109, 112, 129, 139and pleasure, 3, 6, 7, 9prefers the unironed, 85and the present situation of

writing, 68– 69a reader’s writer, 42, 144n45the real man nowhere to be seen,

61and the receptive earth, 11as recording secretary, ix, 69, 74,

75, 128and religion, 12and “religious feeling without

religious images,” 8, 18, 97, 134

and rhymes, xiv, 7, 8, 16, 31, 36, 50

and satire, 46– 48

168 INDEX

White, E. B. (continued)and the scene of writing, 61and second- class citizenry, xi, 1,

2, 22, 43, 61and self- deprecation, 43, 52, 57,

63– 64, 109, 118, 119self- reflexiveness in, 44, 46, 50,

67– 69and sentences, xiv, 5, 9, 50and simplicity, 10, 18, 53, 79– 81,

85, 129– 30as skeptical, 24, 82, 106, 110,

114, 116, 148n61for slowing down, 9, 51, 54and the small, 109and the smell of authenticity, 27,

128, 129stands with his reader, 9as Sterling Finny, 44, 46on the study of literature, 63– 64and surrender of personality, 4teaches respect, 132and the theme of alertness, xii,

82, 98and Transcendentalism, 80treasures the concrete, 110as truth teller, 24, 69turns the essay, 6, 12in university curricula, 42– 43unwelcome in the academy, xand the value of adversity, 18,

25, 68, 128as vir bonus, 9and “the way life should be,” 85,

128, 131at work, 66– 68works

Alice through the Cellophane, 101

“Bedfellows,” x, 39, 68– 70, 101and absence of purity, 114character sketch of Fred in,

112– 18

difficulty writing, 115, 118drama in, 71– 72as familiar essay, 102and half truths, 115and the inclusion and

embrace of differences, 102, 113, 117

loyalty theme in, 115metaphor of, 112opposes institutionalization

of faith, 117opposes standard for

political rectitude, 116, 118

and orthodoxy, 117and the Other, 114, 115, 117participates in Fred’s lot,

119and politics and faith, 115readers’ reception of Fred,

118reaffirms the world, 117and tension, 117tone of, 113

Charlotte’s Web, ix, 3, 5, 27, 29, 66, 67, 125

and borrowed words, 21Charlotte’s “masterpiece”

in, 22embraces life’s complexity,

24and joy, 23links writing and living, 22,

23and the truths of the human

condition, 24on weaving and writing, 20and the writer as egotistical,

20and the writer as humble,

21– 22“Coon Tree,” 18, 24, 71, 81, 92

and impurity, 82

INDEX 169

and pageantry, 71, 72, 83“Death of a Pig,” x, 5, 20, 39,

57– 58, 75, 113drama in, 72, 73as fiction, 73and slapstick, 71as about the speaker, 72

Elements of Style, The (with William Strunk Jr.), 5, 42, 46, 68, 80

Essays, 39, 48, 54, 61, 79, 91, 101, 102, 111

Foreword, 3, 6, 22, 44, 57, 61, 62

Every Day Is Saturday, xiii“Farewell to Model T,” x, 45“Good- Bye to Forty- Eighth

Street,” 70, 79, 86“Here Is New York,” x, 68– 69“Home- Coming,” x, 15, 17, 85,

93, 125, 127and impurity, 16and invitation, 86– 87and issue of familiarity, 86,

88, 90, 99and joy because of hardship,

99manner and matter reflect

each other in, 86sees tension and conflict as

good, 117and things done right,

86– 87and time, 87

Is Sex Necessary? (with James Thurber), 46

Lady Is Cold, The, 45“Letter from the East,” 10, 65,

101and change, 102– 4and character of response,

103– 5and love of the earth, 103

opposes governmental encroachment, 104– 5

questions “improvement,” 104

“Once More to the Lake,” x, 43, 70

and authority, 138, 139different from Montaigne,

133dramatic realization in, 139,

140and familiarity, 140and illusion regarding “I,”

135, 137the issue of placidity in,

134– 40and observer observed, 133reverses Incarnational

pattern, 138and Romantic bent, 137and time, 133– 36turn from the merely

personal, 135ubi sunt? theme in, 136and voice, 133, 138– 40yokes similarity and

difference, 140One Man’s Meat, 39Points of My Compass, The,

10– 11, 39, 65“Report in January, A,” 84– 85,

98, 102, 127being (living) vs. doing in,

129– 31deconstructs oppositions,

130– 31and gift, 129and imminent spring, 131and the place of writing, 132

“Report in Spring, A,” 127“Ring of Time, The,” ix, x, 5,

39, 102, 108, 112, 128– 29, 133

170 INDEX

White, E. B. (continued)and the definition of writer,

74and the difficulty of writing,

74, 76and participation, 77, 78and the social crisis, 74– 77and the South’s softness, 75,

76, 78White’s efforts at

integration, 76, 78White’s “stunt” in, 75– 77writing as performance in,

69, 70, 73, 75“Sea and the Wind That

Blows, The,” 102, 119its refusal to disjoin

differences, 122love and fear in, 120as lyrical, 120tension in, 120– 22as unusual for White, 120and White’s love of boats,

120and writing, 120– 22

Second Tree from the Corner, The, 39, 64

“Slight Sound at Evening, A,” ix, 5, 7, 11

and alertness, 52, 53and the art of living, 48on companionship, 54its difference from

conventional criticism, 52

and the effects of reading, 49

as familiar criticism, 48and invitation, 54and irony, 48

and judgment, 49, 50, 53and paragraphs, 49– 50and parity of writer and

reader, 52and participation, 50– 53and the present moment of

writing, 68– 70and reader reception, 51and responsible reading,

48, 53and rhymes, 50and the scene of writing, 67on sentences, 49– 51and simplicity, 53timelessness intersects with

time, 53and usefulness, 51– 54and virtue of slowing down,

51, 52and the writer’s self-

discovery, 50“Sootfall and Fallout,” 70,

101approves nuclear testing,

111deconstructs oppositions,

111its difference from “Unity,”

108, 109environmentalism in, 110as familiar essay, 109and interdependence, 110,

111as letter and discourse, 71,

102, 108, 111and the receptive earth, 112redefines politics, 110– 11

Stuart Little, 3, 5, 20, 26, 27, 125

and adversity, 37

INDEX 171

and the crossing of aims, 34– 36

defended by “K,” 37– 38embraces North, 30, 31,

37, 38and the essay, 29– 38its so- called inconclusive

ending, 28, 37, 38readings of, 37– 38and reality, 36, 37and setting, 33– 34Stuart’s lack of (self- )

control in, 35, 36, 38White’s own opinions in, 32

“Talk of the Town,” 46Trumpet of the Swan, The, 3,

20, 21, 26, 28and the meaning of surface

things, 25“Unity,” 101, 110

advocates a federal world government, 102

criticizes both the East and the West, 106

defines peace, 106its directness, 105– 6and disarmament, 106– 7and the “I” as rhetorical

concession, 106and “liberty- in- unity,” 107–

8, 111not a familiar essay, 102,

105skepticism in, 106its urban feel, 105

“What Do Our Hearts Treasure?,” 15, 102, 109, 127– 28

adjusting/remedying in, 93– 95, 98, 129

and the appropriate, 97and authenticity, 96and being/doing, 98changed perspective in,

95– 98and Christmas matters as

content, 95and death, 93, 94the difference place makes,

92and the familiar, 91– 94, 96,

97, 99and Florida’s

“inappropriateness,” 93, 97

and gift, 90, 96, 97, 99and indirectness, 28Katharine’s role in, 93, 96and Maine, 91, 93, 94, 97, 98and need of impedimenta,

92, 94, 95, 97, 98and north, 26– 28, 91– 94, 96recognition scene in, 95and the religious, 97and softness, 94, 95, 97, 98spectacle in, 71unreality in, 95White’s skepticism in, 97– 98

Wild Flag, The, 101“Will Strunk,” 5, 108“Winter of the Great Snows,

The,” 98“World of Tomorrow, The,” 83

and the City of God, 83and the City of Man, 83, 84

and writing and living, 10, 42, 80

and writing as posing, 62and writing as self- discovery, 50writing as what matters in, 6, 57

172 INDEX

White, Katharine Sergeant (“K”), ix, 11, 27, 37, 45, 63, 66, 67, 76, 82, 85, 91– 93, 95– 97, 109, 115, 116, 126, 128

White, Lee Strout. See White, E. B.White, Martha, 4White, Stanley Hart, 62Wiley, Shirley, 63Williams, William Carlos, 44Wilson, Edmund, 62Women’s Home Companion, 62

Wood, James, 60Woolf, Virginia, 12, 44Wordsworth, William, 7, 125

calls his lyrics “short essays,” 132

work“Lucy Gray,” 45

Wyvell, Conrad, 63

Yaddo, 65Yale Review, The, 48