Amazon.com Review
"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy." So begins E.B. White's classic meditation on that noisiest, most public of American cities. Written during the summer of 1948, well after the author and editor had taken up permanent residence in Maine,
Here Is New York is a fond glance back at the city of his youth, when White was one of the "young worshipful beginners" who give New York its passionate character. It's also a tribute to the sheer implausibility of the place--the tangled infrastructure, the teeming humanity, the dearth of air and light. Much has changed since White wrote this essay, yet in a city "both changeless and changing" there are things here that will doubtless ring equally true 100 years from now. To wit, "New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience--if they did they would live elsewhere."
Anyone who's ever cherished his essays--or even Charlotte's Web--knows that White is the most elegant of all possible stylists. There's not a sentence here that does not make itself felt right down to the reader's very bones. What would the author make of Giuliani's New York? Or of Times Square, Disney-style? It's hard to say for sure. But not even Planet Hollywood could ruin White's abiding sense of wonder: "The city is like poetry: it compresses all life ... into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines." This lovely new edition marks the 100th anniversary of E.B. White's birth--cause for celebration indeed. --Mary Park
Review
"Just to dip into this miraculous essay—to experience the wonderful lightness and momentum of its prose, its supremely casual air and surprisingly tight knit—is to find oneself going ahead and rereading it all.White’s homage feels as fresh as fifty years ago." —John Updike
“New York was the most exciting, most civilized, most congenial city in the world when this book was written. It’s the finest portrait ever painted of the city at the height of its glory.”—Russell Baker
“The wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.”—
The New Yorker
“Part reverie, part lament and part exultation, the essay has long been recommended by Manhattanophiles as the best sketch ever drawn of the place. But since September 11, 2002, several sentences near the end—sentences 55 years old—resound with a prescience so eerie they bear repeating. 'The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible,' White writes. 'A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.'”—
The Los Angeles Times
“… a masterpiece of travel writing. This edition contains an introduction by White's stepson, Roger Angell, himself a longtime
New Yorker writer and the author of a number of best-selling books about baseball. After Sept. 11, readers will find this book touching, and prescient, in striking ways. Consider this paragraph: 'All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.' The charm isn't just the city. It is also the utterly perfect prose of E.B. White.”—Lousiville
Courier-Journal
“White epitomized the lucid and penetrating essayistic voice so treasured at the
New Yorker, an impeccable style employed to powerful effect in this exquisitely precise contemplation of the New York City of his youth, and, by extrapolation, of humankind at large. Written in 1948, this witty and perceptive praise song to New York is a classic.”
—
Booklist, February 1, 2004
