New York Sketches

E. B. White's greatest stories, asides, essays, jokes, and tall tales about the city he arguably saw clearest, loved best, and skewered most mercilessly.

Over more than fifty years at the New Yorker, E. B. White came to define a kind of ideal American prose: clear, casual, democratic, and urbane. He also did more than any writer to define his favorite city. His classic Here Is New York captured a moment in the life of Manhattan with precision and love-but his was no fleeting infatuation. In New York Sketches, the first collection of his casual pieces about the city, White ranges at whim from the nesting habits of pigeons to the aisles of a calculator trade-show on Eighth Avenue, from the behavior of snails in aquariums to the ghosts of old romance that haunt a flower shop or a fire escape or an old hotel. These sketches, some less than a page long, many written for a laugh, or in response to the news of the day, show us White at his most playful and inventive.

New York Sketches is a welcome diversion for every New Yorker-native, adoptive, or far from home-and a perfect introduction, not only to what White called "the inscrutable and lovely town," but to the everyday enchantments of one of her fondest reporters.

Autorentext

Elwyn Brooks White (1899–1985) was born in Mount Vernon, New York, the youngest of six children. He is best known today for his classic children’s books Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little; he was also among the best and funniest American prose stylists of the twentieth century.

Zusammenfassung
"The variety of subject matter to be found in these graceful pages is enormous. But no matter what his subject, Mr. White always writes about it in a prose that is a joy to read." The New York Times

Inhalt

Foreword by Martha White

MANNERS Notes & Comment: July 16, 1932

Defense of the Bronx River

Notes & Comment: February 18, 1928

Notes & Comment: November 29, 1952

Definitions

Notes & Comment: July 3, 1954

Notes & Comment: March 24, 1945

Window Box

Notes & Comment: December 4, 1948

Notes & Comment: July 17, 1954

Notes & Comment: November 5, 1949

Notes & Comment: November 29, 1952

Notes & Comment: July 3, 1937

Notes & Comment: February 19, 1943

The Rock Dove

Notes & Comment: May 11, 1935

Lines in Anguish

Daisy at One Fifth Ave

Daisy at Schrafft's

Interview with Daisy

Notes & Comment: October 6, 1923

The Gastropods

The Wings of Orville

Reading Room

Notes & Comment: January 16, 1937

Notes & Comment: January 6, 1951

The Lady Is Cold

MEMORIES & INVENTIONS Obituary

Business Show

The Hour of Letdown

The Street of the Dead

The Retort Transcendental

Child's Play

Journeys

The Hotel of the Total Stranger

Goodbye to 48th Street

Gramercy Park

Getting Away

Notes & Comment: June 11, 1955