E. B. White’s Here is New York

It has been sixty-five summers since the essayist E.B. While walked the streets of New York, and holed up in a hotel room, in preparation for his ode to the city, Here is New York. The book was reissued in paperback in 1999, for the fiftieth anniversary of its original release, and new copies are readily available around bookstores in the city; however, my copy is from the original publication year (1949) and it the “Book of the Month Club” edition. Somehow, in my affectations, this makes it more authentic.

White’s general theme, in what is essentially a long essay, is that the city is both ever-changing and never-changing. The streets and familiar landmarks give one a sense of stability and permanence. Yet, at the same time, old buildings are torn down and replaced with amazing frequency. What I find interesting in the book is how prescient White’s observations are. He notes that people have an edge and arguments occur far more frequently, prefiguring the stereotype of rude New Yorkers. He is concerned about the over-commercialization of society, noting that to him Grand Central Station was the most inspiring interior until ruined by advertising. He laments the intrusion of television into public spaces, arguing that men go to bars to gaze at television rather than having “long thoughts.”

It is the final observation of the book that is the most interesting and far-sighted. White is very much a man of his era; writing in 1948 he is concerned about the specter of nuclear warfare. But his prose eerily foreshadows the September 11 attacks, even though the airplanes he fears are carrying atomic weapons instead of being themselves the weapons of terror. He notes, as well, what makes the city stronger in the aftermath: “The city at last perfectly illustrates both the universal dilemma, and the general solution, this riddle in steel and stone is at one the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of nonviolence…” (53). White returns to the argument that the city’s diversity makes it stronger, specifically that the number of different nationalities and groups meant that people had to be tolerant of one another (43). It is this allure of the city, which White argues bestows the gifts of loneliness and privacy, that allows people to be who they want. Because people migrate to the city to find freedom and anonymity, and they recognize fellow travelers, it creates the essence of urban tolerance. It is also the source of disdain for many outside urban areas, for they fear those who are different. Reading White sixty-five years after his observations, I was struck by his foreshadowing of current trends. Cities are big, often illogical, collections of neighborhoods and people that look like utter chaos; however, as Katz and Bradley have more recently argued, perhaps it is cities that will lead the future.