E.B White: “A book is a sneeze”
E.B White is one of my favorite authors. Who also happens to have been a writer under the notable editor Ursula Nordstom. Here’s his incredible letter to her/his publisher’s PR people explaining why he wrote Charlotte’s Web (frankly I feel that this explanation could apply to any author or artist’s work when asked why they created it). I love this so much!:
Dear Ursula:
Thanks for your dandy letter and for the book. If I ever get time I’m going to read the book. I think it looks very nice and I agree with you that the endpaper is too bright. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that anybody thinks about endpaper except publishers, and probably not more than 1800 people in the United States have ever heard the word “endpaper”, and they are all Stevenson people.
Enclosed are some remarks that I hope will satisfy your Publicity Department.
Sorry to learn that Dr. Canby is revolted by spiders. Probably doesn’t meet the right spiders. Did you know that Dr. Canby has a wife named “Lady”?
Yrs,
Andy
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I have been asked to tell how I came to write “Charlotte’s Web.” Well, I like animals, and it would be odd if I failed to write about them. Animals are a weakness with me, and when I got a place in the country I was quite sure animals would appear, and they did.
A farm is a peculiar problem for a man who likes animals, because the fate of most livestock is that they are murdered by their benefactors. The creatures may live serenely but they end violently, and the odor of doom hangs about them always. I have kept several pigs, starting them in spring as weanlings and carrying trays to them all through summer and fall. The relationship bothered me. Day by day I became better acquainted with my pig, and he with me, and the fact that the whole adventure pointed toward an eventual piece of double-dealing on my part lent an eerie quality to the thing. I do not like to betray a person or a creature, and I tend to agree with Mr. E.M. Forster that in these times the duty of a man, above all else, is to be reliable. It used to be clear to me, slopping a pig, that as far as the pig was concerned I could not be counted on, and this, as I say, troubled me. Anyway, the theme of “Charlotte’s Web” is that a pig shall be saved, and I have an idea that somewhere deep inside me there was a wish to that effect.
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