On Writing

Encountering E.B. White

While in Maine for sailing with good friends earlier in the summer, Catherine—who is better-read and educated than I—picked up two collections of essays by author and essayist E.B. White, who lived for five decades in the town of Brooklin, across Penobscot Bay from our activities centered on Rockland. White was established as an essayist and editor at The New Yorker in the late 30’s, when he decided that a move to Maine (his family had maintained a residence there growing up) to a farm by the water was how he wanted to spend his days. Joined there by his before-her-time-book-editor wife Katharine and their son Joel, White managed to farm and write until his death in the 1980’s.

Like any literate American, I came to know of E.B. White from “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little”, books I remember enjoying unreservedly without attaching any virtuosity to the writer. This was likely due to reading them while young, before I came to understand what good writing was, an understanding reached later in life mostly by aiming at it and missing. Packing for a visit to see my elderly parents in North Carolina last week, I realized that I needed some reading material, as no matter how often a WIFI hotspot has been set up in that house, my father manages somehow to disable it. I believe this to be an overt act, as if he is closing a surveillance portal. The time between saying my goodnights and going off to sleep is prime reading time whether I am home or away, and, good reading was required. Catherine had conveniently left two volumes of E.B. White’s essays on the table behind our bed, but more importantly, she had made a point of discussing them with me. She even read me an extended passage from one while we were together in Maine.

Listening to her read his words was a double-edged sword. The passage she read was of White opining on how the new (to him in 1939) technology of “television” was going to change things. Every thing. As I listened, I was amazed at how his thoughts could easily have been applied to social media in the 21st Century. He was brilliantly insightful and accessible.

The second thing I thought as I listened was, “that is how I wish for people to hear my written voice”. Several writers have had impact on my scribbling. Kevin Williamson—formerly of National Review and now at The Dispatch—immediately comes to mind. Williamson’s writing is ridiculously intelligent while often uproariously funny. Mine is neither of those things, but I seek to be smart and witty. I would kill to write one sentence as good as novelist Tom Wolfe’s worst. Cranky P.J. O’Rourke was my favorite P.J. O’Rourke. And George Orwell can bring me to my literary knees. But hearing—and now reading—E.B. White’s essays, I realized that what I was feeling was not the gravitational pull of great writing that I could never produce, but writing SO PERFECTLY matched to what I desperately try to produce—and fail—that it was humbling. No—that’s not the word. I think the right word is “enervating”.

While reading the book in North Carolina, I stopped and sent this text to Catherine:

Reading her three-lettered answer, I felt just about as well-understood as I have been in my life. I had not discussed my thoughts on White’s style as the Platonic ideal of my own. That she saw a connection was meaningful to me, a glimmer of hope that is the fuel that propels this Substack. She was not saying “Yes, you write like White”. She was saying “Yes, I can see that writing like White is important to you.” Maybe, someday, I will write something good. Or well. When I step back and think about the conceit bound up in the assumption that others may have an interest in what is on my mind, I wonder if I write because I want you to read it or because I want to write it. Is it a cop-out to think it might be both? An average essay here is clicked on or opened in an email by around 1500 souls (the Navy ones tend to get passed around a good bit more, so they are much better read). I have no idea how many read all the words. I seem to retain my “subscribers”, but that could be chalked-up to the bargain price I charge.

One of the wonderful gifts of the “One Man’s Meat” collection of essays is the opportunity to eavesdrop on the mind of White as he develops his famous novels. Just last night, I ran into a neighbor, “Mrs. Templeton”. The menagerie he manages on his modest farm morphs into the characters we grew to love, but in this forum, they are without voice and thought. One does not come across the word “spider” in general non-fiction all that much, but half-way through the book, it has appeared at least twice. Farm spiders were clearly making an impression on him.

I live on a farm by the water, although I am even less of a farmer in comparison to White than I am a writer. I am utterly uninvolved in the management of this property, though I have my best people on it. Our beautiful fields of soy beans are tended by a local farmer ably aided by Catherine in decision-making. Every other activity on this property is either executed by or overseen by Catherine, and I occasionally join the labor pool. We have three cats and two dogs, but we have no classic farm critters, no “pullets”, no lambs, no cows, no pigs. We do have spiders, and there are plenty of rodents. I look around me and I SEE the elements of great writing and literature, and I understand how they might be wielded by someone who possessed talent and time, neither of which are abundant here. We have a cove that dances with skates and other fish occasionally breaking the waterline in pursuit of food. We have watermen tending crab pots, blissfully unaware of (or unconcerned with) how the sound of their blaring marine radios carries over water at 5AM. We have majestic bald eagles, predictable ospreys, and opportunistic vultures. We have resident deer who make my dogs lose their minds when they sashay across my back yard moving from field to woods to field. We have had a family of turkeys, but their residence has been inconsistent. I look upriver at the Miles and see basically what someone watching two hundred years ago would have seen. Were I to be more present in this place, I might capture it more skillfully. I look forward to trying this in retirement someday.

I will leave you with an extended excerpt of an E.B. White essay, “Once More to the Lake”, which—if you take the time to read—will demonstrate for you the poverty of my writing, but it is also an example of what I set out to accomplish most times I sit down to write for you (us).

Up to the farmhouse to dinner through the teeming, dusty field, the road under our sneakers was only a two-track road. The middle track was missing, the one with the marks of the hooves and the splotches of dried, flaky manure. There had always been three tracks to choose from in choosing which track to walk in; now the choice was narrowed down to two. For a moment I missed terribly the middle alternative. But the way led past the tennis court, and something about the way it lay there in the sun reassured me; the tape had loosened along the backline, the alleys were green with
plantains and other weeds, and the net (installed in June and removed in September) sagged in the dry noon, and the whole place steamed with midday heat and hunger and emptiness. There was a choice of pie for dessert, and one was blueberry and one
was apple, and the waitresses were the same country girls, there having been no passage of time, only the illusion of it as in a dropped curtain--the waitresses were still fifteen; their hair had been washed, that was the only difference--they had been to the movies and seen the pretty girls with the clean hair.

With My Parents

At 91 and 88, my father and mother—nearing their 67th anniversary—are hanging on for dear life to their independence in the face of incontrovertible evidence of its departure. They live in a house they bought new in the late 90’s, near where my oldest brother and his family lives. They were joined a few years later by the baby of the family and her husband, who also raised a family there.

I am one of six children, #4 in your scorecards but #1 in your hearts. My “middle child” status seems to those in the know to explain a lot about my 58 year old self. I am metaphysically certain that I was raised by the best parents in the world and that the parenting skills they passed to me are the gold standard. As the junior partner in the family I joined sixteen years ago, I am often disabused of these notions.

I have no unfinished business with my parents, no unresolved conflict, no secrets to share. I love them without reservation and I know that same love. As a matter of fact, they love me more than they do my siblings.

Mom and Dad have declined. I almost typed “sadly” to modify that last sentence, but at 91 and 88, their physical conditions (small, frail, bony, stooped) seem to be consistent with their longevity. Do I have a right to think they should be more hail? Both also show cognitive decline. Their house—not huge, not small—is far too large for them, and their dedication to keeping it up has waned. My siblings and I have tried to get them to accept housekeeping help and in home nursing, but they will not hear of it. They bristle at any suggestion that they move into “supervised” living, but I think the momentum is moving in this direction. I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, my brother and sister (and their spouses) are performing miracles of accommodation.

My consumption of traditional television is next to nothing. Outside of sporting events, and the occasional Bloomberg drop-in, I do not regularly watch any TV shows that appear at set times (I like streaming). I do not watch local news. I would rather poke knitting needles in my eyes than watch local morning shows. The network morning shows that follow are no better. When I visit my parents, I am treated to all of these forms of torture, reinforced by Geneva Convention violating volume levels. I, my mother, and my father are all hard of hearing. We all wear hearing aids, although they are often found unamplified. When I sit with my mother, she will attempt to engage me in conversation from across the room with whatever has replaced “Regis and Cathy Lee” blaring, and I will politely tell her I cannot hear a word she is saying. I achieved a small victory while there in showing her where the “mute” button was on the remote, but I fear it will not be a long-term memory.

These days, whenever I am in front of a television, I have “Closed Captioning” enabled, something I picked up during the late COVID confinement. I found myself missing a good bit of dialogue, especially in froofy British serials that make up a good bit of my viewing. I tried to sell my Dad on this feature while there this time, but I was unsuccessful. Naturally.

Dad is quite bothered by what he calls “micro-commercials”, which seem (to me) to last about 15 seconds, but which he believes last only 3 to 5. He says he can’t keep up. Modern golf really bothers him. He is offended by the fact that the tournament we were watching featured twosomes. “Golf was invented for foursomes, and all twosomes do is encourage them to take more time with their shots”. I am unaware of the historicity of his understanding. He is additionally not a fan of the back-pocket course guides that both players and caddies have with them. And the little line marks on the balls? SACRILEGE. He is also obsessed with the Little League World Series, and has been since he retired. I cannot understand this.

I have a feeling that they just want to run out the clock—don’t make any changes, because it will all be over soon enough. I think they’ve thought this way for 15 years. I talked with my Mom about moving into an assisted living facility and all she could say was “we never should have moved to North Carolina”, as if her isolation from friends and acquaintances caused by their deaths would somehow have been different if they’d stayed in New Jersey. When I suggest that moving into a facility would provide her with the opportunity to make new friends, she is unimpressed.

These are hard years, and I wonder if they are harder because we didn’t have hard talks twenty years ago. It seems those hard talks are upon us.