E. B. WHITE: Writings From The New...

E. B. WHITE: Writings From The New Yorker 1927-1976, edited by Rebecca M. Dale (HarperPerennial: $ 11). The noted essayist, humorist, poet, grammarian and novelist E. B. White was one of the mainstays of the New Yorker for most of his career. These short, miscellaneous pieces, many of them collected for the first time, showcase his extraordinary ability to make virtually anything seem interesting. In a few concise, seemingly effortless sentences, he examines the details of life in New York City and New England, notes disapprovingly that a lavish new edition of “Walden” violates the spirit of the book, and offers a touching recollection of President Kennedy. A hilarious paragraph on the problems of being a writer begins: “On a fetid afternoon like this, when all the nobility goes out of a writer and parts of speech lie scattered around among cigarette butts and crushed paper cups . . . “ This delightful anthology confirms Garrison Keillor’s assessment of White’s talent: “It is more worthy in the eyes of God and better for us as a people if a writer makes three pages sharp and funny about the lives of geese than to make three hundred fat and flabby about God or the American people.”