One Man's Meat

E. B. White's essays are sweet and courageous. It's a rare and wonderful combination. They are also, to use that severely abused word, poignant, which means, painfully affecting the feelings. Consider the opening line to the essay, World War I: "I keep forgetting that soldiers are so young." He wrote that line in 1939. I think of that every day in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan. One Man's Meat, first published in 1942, is the companion volume to the Essays of E. B. White. Both books include his classic, Once More to the Lake, an essay about taking his own son to the lake that made such an impression on him when he was taken there by his own father. There is minimal overlap between the two books. In 1940 he lamented the effects of the automobile on community life: "Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car." This book also includes the best thing I have ever read about poetry. Poems must be short, he said, because, "Poetry is intensity, and nothing is intense for long." One of the things that struck me most in this group of essays was his statement about writers, since I am one. He wrote: "In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty." I love this man. I could rant on for hours about the joy of reading this book, but it's better that you spend your time reading his work instead of mine.

E. B. White's One Man's Meat is an ode to life in the country, a reflection of the author's unease with various aspects associated with modern life, and a prelude to the years of "the second war for democracy." The book contains the essays written during White's five years with Harper's Magazine (1938 - 1943), a time White referred to as "one of the most productive periods of my life." Despite his move to Maine, White was not, in the strict sense, a farmer: instead, he owned what he often called "a private zoo," an indulgence he maintained because he liked to "play with animals." As White points out in "The Practical Farmer," farming is "about twenty percent agriculture and eighty percent mending something...a glorified repair job," and the would-be farmer is merely "a handyman with a sense of humus." Some essays - "Walden" and "Once More to the Lake" - are well known. Others not so well known - "Report," "Town Meeting," "Compost," and "My Day" - give a wonderfully individualistic view of the country and of country life. "The Wave of the Future" and "The World of Tomorrow," on the other hand, show White at his critical and intellectual best. In addition, some of the remaining essays reflect White's unease with the coming war, but always in ways that are arresting, intensely human, sometimes humorous, and always accessible. In short, One Man's Meat, along with Essays of E. B. White, is White's tour de force. No one reading these essays is ever quite the same afterwards.

For the grown ups who enjoyed reading Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little to their kids. This is the best clearist writing by the master of the short essay. He gives us pride in the values he holds and lives. A national treasure.

Understanding E.B. White is not an easy task. He was a reserved man, very straightforward in his writing and simple in nature. However, White found that he was able to express himself with his writing, and none of his books is a more direct window into his soul than "One Man's Meat." Written over the course of White's later years of living on a Maine farm, this book contains witty accounts of geographic novelty, reminiscences on the promise of youth, and powerful insights into the little things in life that can make all the difference. No reader of E.B. White can gain a full knowledge of what the man was all about without having thoroughly digested this book.

For one who aspires to write well--the most delicious book I've ever read. The words "witty" and "sharp" come to mind, but poorly describe White and his work. Maybe, no words do with any degree of accuracy and right praise.