Here Is New York Book

I've had a mad crush on E.B. White my entire life, and his books have followed me like a frisky shadow throughout my childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

And now, I've found him here again, in my middle age and his middle age (circa 1948), each of us part-optimist, part-curmudgeon. . . arms not necessarily outstretched, but lovers of humanity both (as long as we're mostly shielded from it).

His assignment here? To leave the peace of his domesticated bliss in North Brooklin, Maine and return to New York City to write a travel article for his stepson's then-magazine, Holiday. White, as described in the introduction, was an "inveterate non-traveler" and no longer a city boy, but he agreed to do the article for, most likely, the advancement of his stepson's career.

So, he's reluctant, and it's hot, and he's walking the streets of the new New York (he had lived there 20 years prior), and he's hoping to get inspired just taking in what's familiar and what's old, and he's just. . . you know. . . jotting down observations, not taking himself too seriously.

And he's observing things like:

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.

And:

The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.

And I'm outside on my porch, on a stunning fall day, almost an entire nation's distance away from New York City and nowhere near E.B. White, who passed away in 1985. . . and all I can think is. . . I just want to take this little 56 page poetry-in-prose hardbound essay and pop it in my mouth and eat it.

Delicious.