New York City has never dazzled me all that much, so I didn't read this essay to learn more about it, per se. I read Here Is New York because E.B. White wrote it. White's Charlotte's Web and The Trumpet of the Swan delighted me when I was a child, and I've looked at The Elements of Style on more than a few occasions as a writer. I was curious to see what spin he would put on 1940s New York and how I would feel about his writing now that I am an adult.For the most part, Here Is New York is a simple essay composed of White's opinions of the city. The essay was written for Holiday, a long-since defunct travel magazine, and it reads as you would expect up until its last few pages. White is crisp and concise, and, as far as essays go, Here Is New York is enjoyable. However, it's interesting how few surprises there are throughout the essay, whether White is discussing his personal experiences of living in New York or about the tourist's, the outsider's, limited understanding of the city. At the time of White's writing, New York was slightly less extravagant and less built up (there are a million more people in the city now), but some parts of the culture obviously remain the same.Perhaps New York really is as unchanging as White sometimes says he thinks it is or perhaps his opinion of the Big Apple, that it is a sprawling, diverse, detached, noisy, busy, and lonesome place all at once, has become mainstream over the decades. This complex understanding of a multifaceted, contradictory New York is what I've grown up with in music, books, and movies. I think most of us, whether we have visited the city or not, know New York is somewhat of a double-edged sword, as most big cities are; some dreams are realized there, while others are destroyed.It's toward the end of the essay that White takes a decidedly gloomy turn as he more critically analyzes various elements of New York (e.g., its racism) and imagines the city's future, which he sees as being overshadowed by the subtle fear of its own demise. With such a change in tone, Here Is New York becomes an unusual and slightly eerie tale by its closing, which, to me, makes it a worthwhile read. White is wary of the effects of overpopulation and disturbed by the neon lights and advertising displays that are sprouting up all over the city. (Oh, if he could see it now!) Media changes before his eyes as newspapers disappear or merge with others. He senses a "greater tension, increased irritability" that is, these days, quintessentially tied to New York and the average New Yorker. "The city has never been so uncomfortable," he writes. To White, this comes down to the underlying fear of destruction, the fear that New York has grown to be so large, so important, that there are some who will want to destroy it and may even succeed in doing so. There's a reason many have said White's words seem almost prophetic.I'm not sure what you can learn about New York from White's essay that you won't already know. Still, the writing is elegant, and the powerful closing makes up for any initial slowness. I may not "heart" New York as so many do, but E.B. White simultaneously makes me thankful for the passage of time and wistful for a younger, slightly stripped-down version of the city, which just goes to show you can't get away from mixed feelings when it comes to cities that never sleep. ========================================Quotes From the Book(Apply your own positive/negative connotations.)========================================I think that although many persons are here from some excess of spirit (which caused them to break away from their small town), some, too, are here from a deficiency of spirit, who find in New York a protection, or an easy substitution.---It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible. Every time the residents brush their teeth, millions of gallons of water must be drawn from the Catskills and the hills of Westchester. When a young man in Manhattan writes a letter to his girl in Brooklyn, the love message gets blown to her through a pneumatic tube—pfft—just like that. ---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.
What an amazing love letter to a city this is. This essay has got me pining to go back to New York, to set up shop and live in those cramped quarters with those hellish humid summers and subways (oh NOT to drive!!) And though this was written in 1949, when black people were still acceptably referred to as "Negros" and Prohibition was not so long ago, E.B. White still captures the soul of New York that has remained constant. Reading this book, though it refers to now obsolete neighborhoods that have been gentrified for ages now, I feel the familiar spirit of walking the streets, feeling the pulse and poetry of the city, that amazing sense of endless possibility that only New York can provide in its way. And as much as it's been emphasized how quickly and utterly New York has changed and is always changing, it's incredible how much can really remain the same. Even post-9.11, which we thought would undo it all. On that note, the following passage was intensely unsettling. It is strange to me that it wasn't written in October, 2001. Keep in mind this was 1949, and E.B. White died in 1985. He had remarkable foresight: "The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. 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.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."Woah.This essay was beautiful, dated in a way that doesn't really matter, that is, in fact, as E.B. White foresaw, a pleasure to update in one's own mind. It was written with love, and those who have known New York will mark what has changed and what things they too love that have remained the same. Oh, I want to go hoooooome.
What do You think about Here Is New York (2000)?
New York today is the same as New York of 1948 but also SO different. I didn't fully get the geography, but that's because I don't venture past my set paths (neighborhood downtown, church uptown and some regular tourist spots in between). But that was also a point E.B. White made in this slim book - basically an essay about the city.I read this paragraph aloud to Shawn:"New York is nothing like Paris; it is nothing like London; and it is not Spokane multiplied by sixty or Detroit multiplied by four. It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression. The Empire State Building shot twelve hundred and fifty feet into the air when it was madness to put out as much as six inches of new growth."This gives me hope in this time of our new depression (in more ways than one, I'm afraid) - and how beautiful is that writing? I completely agree with the jacket's description of White's style: "a pure and plainspoken literary style: his writing was characterized by whit, sophistication, optimism and moral steadfastness." I mean, the man was responsible for "Elements of Style," so he knows what he's doing.And he's writing about my city (well actually I'm just borrowing it).I think I'll pass along this copy to my Gran, since it's written about New York around the time/just after the time she visited my Grandpa when he was stationed here.
—Mari
Lyrical, personal, and in some senses timeless meditation on the city. Revealing for its insights on both the places and habits that have passed, and for those that are as true in 2015 as they were in 1948. It is miraculous how White captures so much of the city in this concise essay, and so much of what's essential about it. The starry-eyed beginners and dreamers, the tidal rhythms of the commuters, the ability of people to remain unflappable in the face of inconvenience, chaos, and urban disfunctionality, for instance. What I found less timeless is the language of post-war civic and national pride that creeps in, the idea of New York as the new center of the world (the UN complex is being built). The last few pages that are full of references to how easily a group of planes could destroy the city, burn up its towers, is positively creepy. To think that the city's dramatic rise to world capital after WWII and the city today still share this anxiety, though the who and why and the context for these planes is worlds apart. Roger Angell's preface points to an essential feature of this essay, written in the voice of an exile. The sense of loss and nostalgia of someone who was part of the fabric and now is no longer, even by choice, gives the whole piece an elegiac mood, and creates its most revealing tension: something about New York (and I would say all great cities) forces you to live intensely in their present, but also reminds you that this can't last, and that you and the city will change and age and lose something vital.
—Asya
Every time I read White's gorgeous love letter to New York City, I'm filled with nostalgia for my own town and I tend to wake the next day with a honed sense of observational candor. As many have noted in recent years, his heavy observation of NYC's vulnerability can be read almost as a prophesy of September 11, 2001, though this was written in 1949 when thoughts about the end of World War II and atomic bombs were still abundant:The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. 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 sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions.It's worth noting that this edition, published in 1999, has an excellent introduction by White's stepson, Roger Angell. Also, this essay is published in its entirety in The Essays of E.B. White.
—Gregory
