Writings from the New Yorker 1925-1976

by E. B. White

  It was a long, untroubled day. There is nothing like it. Sitting in the grandstand, watching, between trotting races, a trained bear riding a bicycle. All beginnings are wonderful. We rode home in the cool of the evening, wondering what a bear thinks about when he first sees a bicycle.

  SAVE THE GRIZZLIES

  1/23/32

  A COMMITTEE HAS APPROACHED US to ask if we would help in the work of protecting and preserving the brown and grizzly bears of Alaska. Need we say we will? Once we spent six weeks in Alaska, and although we never happened to have an opportunity to protect a grizzly from the predatory old paper-pulp interests, which threaten their extinction, we always stood ready to. We are still ready. The islands of the Inside Passage, where the bears live, seemed to us lovely, perfect. We should not want one of them changed by the extinction of so much as one bear, or the establishment of even one pulp mill. Grizzlies are certainly less dangerous than the tabloids that are printed from paper pulp.

  Of course it is our ill fortune always to see both sides of every question. The letter from the Committee on Protection and Preservation of Alaska Brown and Grizzly Bears was written, we notice, on paper. In other words, the Committee are using paper in their campaign against paper pulp. We think they really ought to send out their communications on parchment, preferably made from the hides of sheep especially killed for the purpose by grizzly bears. You see? We’re no good in any cause. Too open-minded.

  DANISH MOOSE

  10/29/49

  A DANE TOLD US the other day (and he seemed neither melancholy nor wholly cheerful) that Denmark has two moose. Denmark used to have only one moose (a bull), but a second arrived—swam over from Sweden, or took the ferry. The Danes were worried lest the new arrival prove to be a female. “Denmark is such a small country; we cannot have it too full of mooses.” The second moose, however, was another bull. People felt relieved, but they know that it is only a question of time before some Swedish cow moose learns that there are extra men south of the border.

  ALARM-GEESE

  3/21/53

  THE MOST STIMULATING PIECE of news we’ve heard since Malenkov* came to power is that the British are using geese in Malaya to fight Communist guerrillas. The geese are employed as watchdogs, to sound a warning at the approach of the foe. It happens that we have had quite a good deal to do with geese in our time, and we feel it advisable to pass along a word of caution to the British. Geese, we have found, are alert and articulate and they practically never sleep, but they are also undiscriminating, gossipy, and as easily diverted as children. For every alarum they sound to announce a guerrilla, they will most certainly utter a hundred to announce a British subaltern who is passing by. Everything and everybody interests a goose, and they play no favorites. Geese have their moods, too, and when geese are in one of their moods, an entire band of guerrillas could walk boldly into camp without stirring up so much as a small greeting. Furthermore, geese sometimes get together and retell old tales, and while at it they make as much noise as though they were announcing the invasion of the planet by little green men. We have an idea that the British will get some real help from geese, but if they feel obliged to act on every report a goose turns in while on duty, they’re going to suffer a nervous breakdown into the bargain.

  TURTLE BLOOD BANK

  1/31/53

  WE STROLLED UP TO Hunter College the other evening for a meeting of the New York Zoological Society. Saw movies of grizzly cubs, learned the four methods of locomotion of snakes, and were told that the Society has established a turtle blood bank. Medical men, it seems, are interested in turtle blood, because turtles don’t suffer from arteriosclerosis in old age. The doctors are wondering whether there is some special property of turtle blood that prevents the arteries from hardening. It could be, of course. But there is also the possibility that a turtle’s blood vessels stay in nice shape because of the way turtles conduct their lives. Turtles rarely pass up a chance to relax in the sun on a partly submerged log. No two turtles ever lunched together with the idea of promoting anything. No turtle ever went around complaining that there is no profit in book publishing except from the subsidiary rights. Turtles do not work day and night to perfect explosive devices that wipe out Pacific islands and eventually render turtles sterile. Turtles never use the word “implementation” or the phrases “hard core” and “in the last analysis.” No turtle ever rang another turtle back on the phone. In the last analysis, a turtle, although lacking know-how, knows how to live. A turtle, by its admirable habits, gets to the hard core of life. That may be why its arteries are so soft.

  Afterthought: It is worth noting that Chinese do not appear to suffer from arteriosclerosis nearly as much as do Occidentals, and Chinese are heavy eaters of terrapin. Maybe the answer is a double-barrelled one: we should all spend more time on a log in the sun and should eat more turtle soup. With a dash of sherry, of course.

  2

  The Word

  VERMIN

  10/7/44

  The mouse of Thought infests my head.

  He knows my cupboard and the crumb.

  Vermin! I despise vermin.

  I have no trap, no skill with traps,

  No bait, no hope, no cheese, no bread—

  I fumble with the task to no avail.

  I’ve seen him several times lately.

  He is too quick for me,

  I see only his tail.

  THE COST OF HYPHENS

  12/15/28

  THE PAIN WHICH ATTENDS all literary composition is in-creased, in some cases, by the writer’s knowing how much per word he will receive for his effort. We came upon a writer at his work recently, and were allowed to sit quietly by while he finished his stint. Quite casually he mentioned that he was getting fifty cents a word. A moment or two later his face became contorted with signs of an internal distress. With his hand poised above the machine, he seemed to be fighting something out with himself. Finally he turned to us. “Listen,” he said, grimly, “do you hyphenate ‘willy-nilly’?” We nodded, and saw him wince as he inserted the little mark, at a cost of half a dollar.

  TRAVEL BROCHURE

  1/26/35

  THE ADVENTURE-MAD TRAVEL-BUREAU PEOPLE run a high fever all the year round, deliriously mumbling of far places regardless of season. More than any other group, they arrange life for us in neat grooves. We have just this moment been skirting through a prospectus of winter and spring trips presented to us by a dutiful and precise agent. The trips are divided into “short” and “long.” “There’s Mexico,” says the booklet. “Ten days, $180.” And “there’s the Mediterranean, 29 days, $485.” Our fancy flits along, jog-step, taking in the sights. And then, as a sudden afterthought, the joyous booklet writer really hits his stride. “There’s the WORLD,” he cries. “97 days, $833-50”

  We had never had the planet laid so neatly at our feet, as though dropped there by a spaniel.

  NO VERBS

  7/29/39

  ON A FETID AFTERNOON LIKE THIS, when all the nobility goes out of a writer and parts of speech lie scattered around the room among cigarette butts and crushed paper cups, we envy the gossip columnists their lot. We particularly envy them their ability to earn a living by talking in participles. You have, of course, observed this phenomenon of the American press—the sentence with no verb. From a literary standpoint it is the prose invention of the century, for it enables the writer to sound as though he were saying something without actually saying it. Thus: “Mrs. Oral Ferrous on the Starlight Roof, chatting with Count de Guiche.” Or, “Captain Montmorency Squall, sitting with Mrs. Vincent Trip in a black lace gown and two ropes of pearls.” The absence, in these participial items, of any predicate is extremely exciting to the reader, who figures anything might happen. Outside of the columnists, the only person we know who talks entirely in participles is a French-Italian lady who has done our laundry beautifully for years without the use of a single verb. Her sentences don’t even have subjects—just participles and adverbs.


  It is perhaps only fair to columnists and to the subjects of their stillborn sentences to confess that, a year or more ago, when we discovered that unfinished sentences were having a bad effect on our nerves, we took to completing all sentences under our breath—using a standard predicate. We found that the predicate “ought to be in bed” served well enough, and that is the one we still use. Almost any old predicate will do, however. The important thing is to add it.

  WRITER AT WORK

  3/26/27

  THE WEEK HAS PRODUCED two cases of mortal man’s in-tense itch to see, with his own eyes, a poet or a writer at work. The first case is that of the novelist who will write a book in a glass cage on a Paris boulevard—a chapter every working hour. But the second instance is even more plaintive, richer in human frailty. It concerns our own Edna Millay, who contem-plates a trip to Washington. “It would be good,” says a Washington news story, “to have this tender poet here in cherry blossom time and to hear her version of this glorious spectacle.” (Even the theme is laid out for her, like clean linen.)

  MOTIVATION

  5/3/30

  WHEN HE HEARD ABOUT THE National Arts Club prize for a book which would “reveal the soul of America,” one of our dearest friends sat right down and got to work. He had a good plot, and seemed, when we left him, to be much interested in getting it down on paper. When, a day or two later, we saw him again, we were surprised to learn that he had given up the project. It seems that when he read about the prize in the newspaper, he thought it said thirty thousand dollars; later he looked up the clipping and discovered it said three thousand dollars. True to the soul of America, he gave the thing up immediately.

  WRITING AS A PROFESSION

  5/11/29

  “WRITING IS NOT AN OCCUPATION,” writes Sherwood Anderson. “When it becomes an occupation a certain amateur spirit is gone out of it. Who wants to lose that?” Nobody does, replies this semi-pro, sitting here straining at his typewriter. Nobody does, yet few writers have the courage to buy a country newspaper, or even to quit a city writing job for anything at all. What Mr. Anderson says is pretty true. Some of the best writings of writers, it seems to us, were done before they actually thought of themselves as engaged in producing literature. Some of the best humor of humorists was produced before ever they heard the distant laughter of their multitudes. Probably what Mr. Anderson means, more specifically, is that life is apt to be translated most accurately by a person who sees it break through the mist at unexpected moments—a person who experiences sudden clear images. A writer, being conscientious, is always straining his eyes for this moment, peering ahead and around; consequently when the moment of revelation comes, his eyes are poppy and tired and his sensitized mind has become fogged by the too-frequent half-stimuli of imagined sight. No figure is more pitiful to contemplate than a novelist with a thousand-dollar advance from a publishing house and a date when the manuscript is due. He knows he must invite his soul, but he is compelled to add: “And don’t be late, soul!”

  HONOR ROLL

  1/11/30

  THE Nation HAS PUT The New Yorker on its Honor Roll for 1929, along with Rear Admiral Byrd, the New York Telegram, Professor Michelson, Eva Le Gallienne, and the United States Senate. Here are the very words of the announcement: “The New Yorker, for being consistently amusing, good-tempered, intelligent, resourceful, and good-to-look-at.” We are naturally grateful; it is the first time anybody has put us on an honor list. But after thus elevating us, the Nation, in an explanatory paragraph, plunges us into despair. “We had great trouble,” said they, “in deciding whether to give first place, on the score of humor, to the New Yorker or to the Department of State. We finally gave it to the New Yorker on the ground that our cheerful contemporary is always good-natured, which the State Department sometimes is not. But we confess that we find the State Department a great deal funnier than the New Yorker.” To us this comparison seems unfair. No magazine, whether weekly or annual, could ever hope to be as funny as the State Department. We defy most magazines to be as funny, even, as the Passport Bureau. In a comedic moment of history such as today, with its funny taxes, its funny prohibition, its funny prosperity, and its funny talk of peace, a mere publication whose aim is to interpret the times is somewhat at a loss to compete, in entertaining qualities, with the institutions themselves. We often feel like giving up and going home.

  UNWRITTEN

  4/26/30

  SOMETIMES WE REGRET OUR FAILURE to Write about things that really interest us. The reason we fail is probably that to write about them would prove embarrassing. The things that interested us during the past week, for example, and that we were unable or unwilling to write about (things that stand out clear as pictures in our head) were: the look in the eye of a man whose overcoat, with velvet collar, was held together by a bit of string; the appearance of an office after the building had shut down for the night, and the obvious futility of the litter; the head and shoulders of a woman in a lighted window, combing her hair with infinite care, making it smooth and neat so that it would attract someone who would want to muss it up; Os-good Perkins in love with Lillian Gish; a man on a bicycle on Fifth Avenue; a short eulogy of John James Audubon, who spent his life loafing around, painting birds; an entry in Art Young’s diary, about a sick farmer who didn’t know what was the matter with himself but thought it was probably biliousness; and the sudden impulse that we had (and very nearly gratified) to upend a large desk for the satisfaction of seeing everything on it slide off slowly onto the floor.

  ACCELERATING CULTURE

  5/21/38

  A CALL HAS GONE OUT TO WRITERS to meet on Sunday in the cause of a Federal Bureau of Fine Arts. “In issuing this call,” said the letter we received, “we are moved by a belief that it is the desire of all writers . . . to have the advance of culture accelerated, the base of art broadened, and the economic place of artists reasonably secure.”

  Here, in a sentence, is the issue. One must decide how he feels about the acceleration of culture before he can know whether he wants a Bureau of Fine Arts. It is as common to believe that culture should be accelerated as to believe that whooping cough should be retarded, yet we have never heard any devotee of the bureaucratic ideal make out a solid case for this proposed quickening. A Bureau of Fine Arts would indeed accelerate culture, in that it would provide public money for creative enterprise, and by so doing would make it easier for artists and writers to go on being artists and writers, as well as for persons who are not artists and writers to continue the happy pretence. Such a Bureau would presumably have other effects symptomatic of acceleration. The radio, for example, has immensely accelerated culture in that it has brought to millions of people, in torrential measure, the distant and often adulterated sounds of art and life. But it is still an open question whether this mysterious electrical diffusion has been a blessing to man, who appears at the moment to be most unhappy about nearly everything.

  Santayana, although he won’t be at the meeting Sunday, is a writer whose views on the diffusion of culture we find instructive. “Great thoughts,” he says, “require a great mind and pure beauties a profound sensibility. To attempt to give such things a wide currency is to be willing to denaturalize them in order to boast that they have been propagated. Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean. These alternatives can never be eluded until some purified and high-bred race succeeds the promiscuous bipeds that now blacken the planet.”

  Advocates of a bureaucratic culture, in wishing to establish artists more firmly in the national economy, argue that it is to a nation’s advantage to make its creative souls more comfortable financially; but here we feel they are confusing an aesthetic ideal with a social one. When two persons are in need of food, there is always the embarrassing question whether to feed the talented one first, on the somewhat questionable grounds that he may live to provide beauty for the other one (who in the meanwhile may die of starvation, or laughter). Th
is is essentially what the Bureau proposes, and it is a proposal which naturally meets with very little opposition among writers and artists, who feel both hunger and beauty, and who can always use a little dough.

  Sponsorship of the creative ideal by the government has many delightful delinquencies. It assumes, among other things, that art is recognizable in embryo—or at least recognizable enough to make it worth the public’s while to pay for raising the baby. And it assumes that artists, like chickens, are responsive to proper diet. We sometimes wonder if they are. Housman, when they asked him what caused him to produce poems, said that as far as he could determine it was usually some rather inappropriate physical disability, such as a relaxed sore throat. This catarrhal theory of the creative life has always fascinated us, and it should give the government pause before setting aside too great a share of the public funds for improving the vigor of poets.

  OUR CONTENTIOUS READERS

  4/6/40

  TO THE EDITOR OF The New Yorker,

  Dear Sir:

  Students of City College are almost certain to be misled by Bishop Manning’s attack on Bertrand Russell.* They will conclude that the issue is a moral one, and that Earl Russell’s sex ideas must be accepted or rejected on the score of morality. This is most unfortunate. The trouble with Russell on sex is not that he is immoral but that he is unrealistic. He is just a dreamer, putting into logical expression the immoderate hopes of men for a more elastic, carefree, and generally agreeable solution of their urgencies and their problems. College students are quick to explore any ethical concept which has the double bloom of intellectuality and sin; I think the Bishop was most unwise to invest the Russell ethics with the glamour of wickedness and to advertise the Russell code as “immoral,” thereby giving it a distinction it hardly deserves. Students will certainly infer that if Russell’s sex ideas are as bad as all that, there must be something to them; whereas the depressing thing about Earl Russell’s code is that it doesn’t work. However distinguished he may be in the world of logical thought, on the subject of sex he has always been something of an old fraud.