Here Is New York

White, E. B. Here Is New York. New York: Little Bookroom. 1949. Print.

First Sentences:

 

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy....for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York.


Description:

Unless you live in New York City or very much enjoy visiting this delightful, challenging city, you might think you would have little interest in reading E.B. White's Here Is New York from his 1949 summer living in the city.  But you would be so very wrong. 

White is a magnificent writer, a quiet observer relating to us lucky readers his thoughts about the sights, sounds, people, and even the air of New York. And rather than me try to convince you of value of this short book/essay (only 56 pages), I'll just present some quotes from White and let you judge for yourself.

• New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.

•  I heard the Queen Mary blow one midnight, though, and the sound carried the whole history of departure and longing and loss.

•  Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city's tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale.

•  Not many [commuters] have ever spent a drowsy afternoon in the great rustling oaken silence of the reading room of the Public Library, with the book elevator (like an old water wheel) spewing out books onto trays.

•  The city makes up for its hazards and its deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin -- the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled.

•  On a summer night the [Bowery] drunks sleep in the open. The sidewalk is a free bed, and there are not lice. Pedestrians step along and over and around the still forms as though walking on a battlefield among the dead.

• New York is not a capital city -- it is not a national capital or a state capital. But it is by way of becoming the capital of the world. 

Well, there it is for you. By now, you'll either love these wonderful descriptions of a uniquely complicated city (as I do) and want to visit it or at least read more about it. Or you will have had enough and are ready to move on to some other diversion. Your choice. But with E.B. White as your guide, how can you go wrong at least reading his brief essay, This Is New York? 

The city is uncomfortable and inconvenient, but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience -- if they did they would live elsewhere

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Hayes, Bill. Insomniac City.   

The thoughts of the author as he wanders the streets of New York City in the late night hours, including the people he meets, the restaurants he visits, and the quiet, dark sights he enjoys.

  

Happy reading.

Fred

Find More Book Recommendations - along with an Introduction to The First Sentence Reader.