Scribbles in the Margin: E.B. White

Two of my favorite things:

- The sound the spine of a book makes when it's opened for the very first time.
- The smell of a brand new (or very old) book.

Until they can make a digital media reader that can duplicate those sensations I won't be giving up my non-P.C., environmentally unfriendly tomes. It's not that I'm a Luddite or technologically unsavvy or a throw back to an older generation (I have my share of tech, I adore MarioKart and I'm only 29) it's just that I love the entire experience of reading a book. An honest to God, made out of trees and toxic glue - book.

I like the heft of a hard cover, the feel of the edges of the pages as they transition from crisp to supple, the smell of the paper and ink and the way a paper back forms to you as you read it from beginning to end. It's easy to over look, but there is a very simple pleasure in a very good book.

One Man's Meat

It seems fitting that as I'm pondering a rather "old school" stance on the physicality of literature, I'm doing so with a copy of E.B. White's One Man's Meat on the night stand next to me. Written between 1938 and 1942, White's collection of essays (written for Harper's Magazine) follow his transition from New Yorker to ruralist and I'd be flat-out lying if I said I didn't feel envious of his ease with the written word. Whether he's describing the antics of his dachshund or the unease of his new rural environment, White's writing flows along smoothly, hitching only where he wants it to.

Of course I didn't start with One Man's Meat, and it certainly hasn't been the first stop on the road. The first book I picked up was Charlotte's Web (first 19 years ago and then again in January) and while I like the book, the idea that EB White had been professional columnist for grown-up publications was much more interesting to me than EB White: Award Winning Children's Author. And so I picked up his most popular book, Essays of EB White...

Essays of E.B. White

...a collection of essays White wrote for the New Yorker on such a wide range of topics that the table of contents reads more like a card catalog than anything else. He writes about the World's Fair, the end of the Model T, Sears and Roebuck catalogs and just about anything else that tripped his fancy. Never shocking or lurid, he always feels like gentleman story-teller. I'll share something else, my favorite essay section is the first one, observations and telling moments about his life on the farm...which is how I ended up at One Man's Meat a few weeks later. A bit convoluted, sure...but worth it. There is something entirely relaxing about the reflections of a life before cell phones, laptops, MP3 players and Kindles on the page instead of a screen.

A few more times through and the cover will curl just right.