A tumblr dedicated to the great American author E.B. White
theatlantic: A Pig, a Girl, and a Spider: ‘Charlotte’s Web’ at 60 Some books are so much a part of our childhood experience that when we hear their titles we can almost smell the pages of the book itself, remember where we were when we first opened it, and conjure up entire scenes and memories of reading it for the first or many times thereafter. Charlotte’s Web is one of those books. Today, the most famous book by the masterful E.B. White has turned 60. It is no worse for wear in terms of readability and resonance, even amid a world of Y.A. dystopias, fantasies, and futuristic plots and themes. The simple tale of a pig, a girl, and a spider, beginning with a life saved (Wilbur’s, by the girl, Fern, and later by Charlotte the spider) and ending with a death—but then new life—is threaded through with the personal conflicts, conversations, and camaraderie of the various barnyard creatures involved. It’s one for the ages. Read more. [Image: Paramount]

theatlantic:

A Pig, a Girl, and a Spider: ‘Charlotte’s Web’ at 60

Some books are so much a part of our childhood experience that when we hear their titles we can almost smell the pages of the book itself, remember where we were when we first opened it, and conjure up entire scenes and memories of reading it for the first or many times thereafter. Charlotte’s Web is one of those books. Today, the most famous book by the masterful E.B. White has turned 60. It is no worse for wear in terms of readability and resonance, even amid a world of Y.A. dystopias, fantasies, and futuristic plots and themes. The simple tale of a pig, a girl, and a spider, beginning with a life saved (Wilbur’s, by the girl, Fern, and later by Charlotte the spider) and ending with a death—but then new life—is threaded through with the personal conflicts, conversations, and camaraderie of the various barnyard creatures involved. It’s one for the ages.

Read more. [Image: Paramount]

EB White knew how to turn down an invitation. 

EB White knew how to turn down an invitation. 

“A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.”

—E. B. White on the social responsibility of the writer, a worthy aspiration to remember and live up to in today’s media climate increasingly plagued by negativism, sensationalism, and journalistic laziness.

(Source: , via explore-blog)

“Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.”

—An unwitting critique of The Huffington Post and its ilk by E. B. White circa 1959.

(Source: , via explore-blog)

nostrich: I love this. Ben Yagoda wrote “Fanfare for the Comma Man” for The Times earlier this week: If you’re writing for publication, something else that comes into play is house style. This is seen most famously in the so-called Oxford comma — the one that goes after the second-to-last item in a series. Referring to the Philadelphia Phillies outfield as “Pence, Victorino and a left fielder-by-committee” would be fine in this newspaper but not in The New Yorker, which would change it to “Pence, Victorino, and a left fielder-by-committee.” The New Yorker has always been scrupulous, bordering on fetishistic, about commas, in large part because of its founder Harold Ross’s mania for precision and clarity. E.B. White, who was subject to the magazine’s editing for more than five decades, remarked in a Paris Review interview, “Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.” There are many examples, but one particular comma use is consistently and pretty much only found in The New Yorker. (That E.B. White anecdote has done a few rounds of the internetosphere by now, but I always really like it.) Which drew a response from “the keeper of the comma shaker” at The New Yorker: Everyone knows that The New Yorker is famously fuddy-duddy for its use of “close” punctuation. The copy editor from whom I inherited the comma shaker was herself not a fan of our style on commas; hence her painstaking creation of this one-of-a-kind item—a cannister (we spell it with two “n”s) about the size of a giant can of grated cheese, wrapped in brown paper flecked with hand-drawn commas, and topped with a perforated blue lid. The joke, of course, is that we are overliberal in our use of commas and ought to be more judicious.

nostrich:

I love this. Ben Yagoda wrote “Fanfare for the Comma Man” for The Times earlier this week:

If you’re writing for publication, something else that comes into play is house style. This is seen most famously in the so-called Oxford comma — the one that goes after the second-to-last item in a series. Referring to the Philadelphia Phillies outfield as “Pence, Victorino and a left fielder-by-committee” would be fine in this newspaper but not in The New Yorker, which would change it to “Pence, Victorino, and a left fielder-by-committee.”

The New Yorker has always been scrupulous, bordering on fetishistic, about commas, in large part because of its founder Harold Ross’s mania for precision and clarity. E.B. White, who was subject to the magazine’s editing for more than five decades, remarked in a Paris Review interview, “Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.” There are many examples, but one particular comma use is consistently and pretty much only found in The New Yorker.

(That E.B. White anecdote has done a few rounds of the internetosphere by now, but I always really like it.) Which drew a response from “the keeper of the comma shaker” at The New Yorker:

Everyone knows that The New Yorker is famously fuddy-duddy for its use of “close” punctuation. The copy editor from whom I inherited the comma shaker was herself not a fan of our style on commas; hence her painstaking creation of this one-of-a-kind item—a cannister (we spell it with two “n”s) about the size of a giant can of grated cheese, wrapped in brown paper flecked with hand-drawn commas, and topped with a perforated blue lid. The joke, of course, is that we are overliberal in our use of commas and ought to be more judicious.

“A library is many things. It’s a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It’s a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books… A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your questions answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people — people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.”

—

26 years ago today, the world lost E. B. White – remember him with his poetic letter to children on the love of libraries

(via curiositycounts)

capitalnewyork: liquidnight: “There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.” — E.B. White, Here is New York [photo via All Things Amazing, photographer unknown] Required reading, always. 

capitalnewyork:

liquidnight:

“There are roughly three New Yorks.

There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable.

Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night.

Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.”

— E.B. White, Here is New York

[photo via All Things Amazing, photographer unknown]

Required reading, always. 

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”

—E.B. White 

(Source: johnsteinbeck-)

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