E. B. White

I have been reading the essays of E.B. White. I read them in my youth but took nothing from them. In fact, the only White I remember is the White of Strunk and White, whose Manual of Style my dissertation advisor made me memorize.

What a wise man. White, I mean, not my dissertation advisor. I wish his wisdom had penetrated much earlier in my life.

Some scattered pearls:

(These qutoes are all from Essays of E. B. White, New York: HarperCollins, 1977, Perennial Classics edition, 1999.)

From "Coon Tree" (pp. 47-48):
I am not convinced that atomic energy, which is currently said to be man's best hope for a better life, is his best hope at all, or even a good bet. I am not sure energy is his basic problem, although the weight of opinion is against me. I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

Almost every bulletin I receive from my county agent is full of wild schemes for boxing Nature's ears or throwing dust in her eyes, and the last issue of the Rural New-Yorker contained a tiny item saying that poultry-men had "volunteered" to quit feeding diphenyl-para-phenylene-diamine to chickens, because it can cause illness in "persons", one of the tardiest pieces of volunteer activity I ever heard of.

Yesterday, it was reported in the news that atomic radiation is cumulative and not matter how small the dose, it harms the person receiving it and all his descendents. Thus, a lifetime of dental X-rays and other familiar bombardments and fallouts may finally spell not better teeth and better medicine but no teeth and no medicine, and a chicken dinner may become just another word for bellyache. The raccoon, for all her limitations, seems to me better adjusted to life on earth than men are: she has never taken a tranquilizing pill, has never been x-rayed to see whether she is going to have twins, has never added DPPD to the broiler mash, and is not out at night looking for thorium in rocks. She is out looking for frogs in the pond.

From "Bedfellows" (pp. 101-2) White on his dog Fred:

Fred was a window gazer and bird watcher, particularly during his later years, when hardened arteries slowed him up and made it necessary for him to substitute sedentary pleasures for active sport. I think of him as he used to look on our bed in Maine, an old four-poster, too high for him to reach unassisted. Whenever the bed was occupied during the daylight hours, whether because one of us was sick or was napping, Fred would appear in the doorway and enter without knocking. On his big gray face would be a look of quiet amusement (at having caught somebody in bed during the daytime) coupled with his usual look of fake respectability. ...

Once up, he settled into his pose of bird watching, propped luxuriously against a pillow, as close as he could get to the window, his great soft brown eyes alight with expectation and scientific knowledge. He seemed never to tire of his work. He watched steadily and managed to give the impression that he was a secret agent of the Department of Justice.

Spotting a flicker or a starling on the wing, he would turn and make a quick report.

"I just saw an eagle go by," he would say. "It was carrying a baby."

This was not precisely a lie. Fred was like a child in many ways, and sought always to blow things up to proportions that satisfied his imagination and his love of adventure. He was the Cecil B. deMille of dogs. ... Fred saw in every bird, every squirrel, every housefly, every rat, every skunk, every porcupine, a security risk and a present danger to his republic. He had a dossier on almost every living creature, as well as on several inanimate objects, including my son's football.