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Click cover for larger view
In the summer of 1948, E.B. White sat in a New York City hotel
room and, sweltering in the heat, wrote a remarkable pristine
essay, Here is New York. Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, the
author’s
stroll around Manhattan—with the reader arm-in-arm—remains
the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America’s
foremost literary figures. Here is New York has been chosen
by
The New York Times as one of the ten best books ever written
about the city. The New Yorker calls it “the wittiest
essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.”
From the introduction
In 1947, I was a young editor and writer with Holiday, a new and lively monthly
that invited top-level authors and artists and photographers to participate
in the emerging postwar travel boom …E. B. White was an inveterate non-traveler,
however, and when Ted Patrick, the editor, invited him to leave his home in
North Brooklin, Maie, and revisit his old haunts in New York for the magazine,
he went along with the idea mostly because of me, I suspect, and because of
the season. I was his stepson, and his byline in Holiday would be a thrill
for me and perhaps even a little career boost. And besides, the assignment
would take him out of New England in mid-July, which was hay fever time Down
East. He called me up and said OK, he’d give it a try. He told me that
Patrick’s letter, offering the assignment, had begun with the thought
that he might “have fun” writing about New York, and he wanted
me to tell him that the project had almos foundered right there. “Writing
is never ‘fun,’” he said ominously. Just the same, he came
down (by train) in hot weather, put up at the Algonquin, across the street
form his old New Yorker office, and then went home and wrote. The rest, including
the heat wave, is in the book.
E. B. White
“Thoroughly American and utterly beautiful” is how William Shawn,
his editor at the New Yorker, described E. B. White’s prose. At the magazine,
White developed a pure and plain-spoken literary style; his writing was characterized
by wit, sophistication, optimism, and moral steadfastness. In 1978 he was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize for the body of his work. E. B. White died in 1985.
5.25” x 7.25”
ISBN 10: 1-892145-02-2
ISBN 13: 9781892145024
Retail price: $16.95
Price: $13.56 (20% off)
Just to dip into this miraculous essay—to experience the wonderful lightness and momentum of its prose, its supremely casual air and surprisingly tight knit—is to find oneself going ahead and rereading it all.White’s homage feels as fresh as fifty years ago.—John Updike
“New York was the most exciting, most civilized, most congenial city in the world when this book was written. It’s the finest portrait ever painted of the city at the height of its glory.”—Russell Baker
“The wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.”—The New Yorker
“Part reverie, part lament and part exultation, the essay has long been recommended by Manhattanophiles as the best sketch ever drawn of the place. But since September 11, 2002, several sentences near the end—sentences 55 years old—resound with a prescience so eerie they bear repeating. 'The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible,' White writes. 'A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.'”—The Los Angeles Times
“… a masterpiece of travel writing. This edition contains an introduction by White's stepson, Roger Angell, himself a longtime New Yorker writer and the author of a number of best-selling books about baseball. After Sept. 11, readers will find this book touching, and prescient, in striking ways. Consider this paragraph: 'All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.' The charm isn't just the city. It is also the utterly perfect prose of E.B. White.”—Lousiville Courier-Journal
“White epitomized the lucid and penetrating
essayistic voice so treasured at the New Yorker, an
impeccable style employed to powerful effect in this exquisitely
precise contemplation of the New York City of his youth, and,
by extrapolation, of humankind at large. Written in 1948, this
witty and perceptive praise song to New York is a classic.”
—Booklist, February 1, 2004
