I brought my E. B. White books home today, a tidy little stack that is now nestled on the shelf next to my in-home desk. Writings from The New Yorker, One Man’s Meat, his Collected Letters, a biography and, of course, The Elements of Style. The books had been at my downtown business office, where they were a comfort as I built a respectable little consulting business based on words and ideas.
Though my corporate and government clients never knew it, White’s style and pithy advice served me well in writing ad copy, corporate mantras, client newsletters and annual reports. While editing the gawdawful constructs of committees, one does well to remember White’s advice to “choose a suitable design and hold to it” or, simply, “omit needless words.”
In a recent conversation with a friend, I mentioned White’s influence and my friend was surprised to learn that White had written anything other than Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. So it is with authors, with people, with life. We become known by one characteristic. In a busy and complex world, we all turn the flesh and blood realities of those we know into cardboard characters.
Over a decade ago, I was a freelance columnist in the local paper and to this day many around town still think of me as “a newspaper man.” My neighbour two doors down probably sees me walking down the street in the morning and thinks, “There goes Daniel, off to his job at the paper.” I watch others’ comings and goings with the same simple ignorance.
E.B. White was the kind of person – the kind of writer – who watched life with a quiet, attentive and steady eye. He then selected from those observations with care and crafted them into coherent and charming articles and essays.
I am thinking of White as I observe the fevered anticipation for Apple’s iPad. The new electronic slate will no doubt change the way we read. And that will compel writers to change the way they write.
Techie blogs
are salivating over the anticipated ability to read a book where everything is hyperlinked – your account of a flight to see Aunt Mabel pops up with Mabel’s childhood photos, a DaVinci drawing “Design for a Flying Machine,” leading off to the Sistine Chapel and video showing how Renaissance painters added bees wax to oil paints.
You see where I am going – it is a long way away from Aunt Mabel.
This is the technological imperative at work. White wrote regular pieces for The New Yorker, benefitting from an era when the contemplative style of a literary magazine was meaningful and enjoyed broad appeal. His penchant for keenly crafted tales (non-fiction tales, mostly, but tales nonetheless) fit the linear text of the medium. People read his pieces, savoured them, came back (I have to believe) to read them again – on the weekend, perhaps puffing on a pipe and sipping some brandy.
The new iPad writing will be stimulating, liberating, exciting and complex. Writers will have to think and work in multiple medias simultaneously. It will in many ways be an intellectual step beyond more linear literature. Deconstructed composition, beyond the tyranny of authorial authority.
And (again) you know what I am going to say next. It will also be a bit unfortunate because as with all changes it will leave some very, very good things neglected at the side of the road.
The writer will, absolutely, lose influence and control over the work. Not all influence and not all control. But a great deal of the beauty in White’s essays “Once More to the Lake” or “A Week in November” is in walking along with a master guide. Like a walk down a path with a birder, perhaps at his or her shoulder or half a step behind, looking where she looks, hearing what he hears. Learning to hear the delightful descending trill of the Canyon Wren, which you had never before noticed. And at the end of walk realizing how gently, how firmly, how lovingly that guide brought you through the bush.
That’s what E.B. White did in his essays. I like to have them on my shelf. I like to reach over and touch them, to crack a book and let it lead me.
This is, of course, a form of nostalgia. White himself wrote great nostalgia but it was nostalgia with a hard and real edge. He saw that we go soft around the edges when we look back, that doing so warms us, but that we always return to a colder reality. When we pause to look back we experience momentary comfort but also, to quote the last words of “Once More to the Lake”, his best known essay, “…the chill of death.”
Photo Credits
Books by E.B. White, Scholastic Books
“Apple iPad” courtesy of www.techchee.com
E.B. White, Photographer Unknown
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Enjoyed reading your article. I too feel like you do about books! I could not see myself reading anything other than a book. Talking to my sixteen year old daughter about this topic recently she told me she couldn’t read anything else other than a book. I think if you are an avid reader books are cherished. And from what my daughter tells me the avid readers of the world are becoming fewer and fewer. My twentyone year old son would thrive using ipad. Links to the world in spits and spurts; are you kidding that would be great for him. I’m not trying to sound like an intellectual snob here I just think some people are more wired for the tech world than others!
Thanks for the article, it got me thinking about the written word and what it means to us today!
I can’t say for certain, as I wasn’t around when this happened, but I’m sure some people worried about the impact the written word would have on their oral story traditions. And the invention of the printing press caused nostalgia galore. “Remember when only the privileged elite could afford books hand copied by blind monks? Now EVERYONE can get one!”
I’ve heard a lot of people be-moan the Ipad as the beginning of the death of the printed page. I think we’re planning the wake before the patient has died. Humans love stories. We seek them out, and if a new, easier way to share them comes around we embrace it. The Ipad is a reflection of how humans crave access to information. It’s not the cause – it’s the effect.
And as a lover of books (real books, printed on paper, with that inky wonderful smell) I really don’t see them being replaced by anything. But if a new toy can help cut back on our use of paper for disposable media (newspapers, magazines, etc) then the environmentalist in me says “Hurray!”.
Good points Sarah. Changing technologies do change our communications patterns; as you point out, person-to-person storytelling has no doubt diminished with the advent of printed stories, but the appetite for stories themselves has not.
As with any change, this one will open some doors and close others.
While I was preparing this piece for publication, I was noting a few web links and tempted to put in more. The irony didn’t escape me: writing about the joys of traditional linear text while thinking “gee, wouldn’t it be cool to insert a wren song sound clip here?”
Thanks for your comments.
I love falling into the words and ideas of a good book and savour those moments with nostalgia. I remember reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy pretty well non-stop as a teenage. Today – almost thirty years later – I still smile at the pure joy of that long ago weekend where there was nothing more important than devouring that story. There have been other stories and other weekends, but that first experience is a fond recollection!
Lorne, you are correct when you talk about the “linear-ness” of literature: while I enjoy the immediacy of a blog, it is hard to get lost in the words when I am busy connecting the words with the pictures or following the link that zings me off into a topic that I barely knew was connected.
Don’t get me wrong though. I love technology and spend hours of time at my computer at work and at home. Whether it saves me paper or not I can’t say because I am of a generation that still enjoys the tactile nature of reading from the thing in my hand…whether that becomes an IPad down the road remains to be seen!