The Story of Charlotte's Web...Redux

"Where's Papa going with that axe?"

That has got to be the greatest opening line ever! In case you don't recognize it, it is the first sentence in Charlotte's Web by 
E. B. White. It brings a tear to my eye to this day as I know what is coming.

In honor of today being the thirty-year anniversary of Mr. White's death, I am re-running a post below from a couple of years ago in which I encourage you to read Michael Sims's fond look at the early life of Mr. White and his writing of CW. 

I was thrilled to met Michael Sims, the author of The Story of Charlotte's Web, and hear his tale of doing research for the book. He visited the farm in Maine where Mr. White wrote about Charlotte and her word-filled web. My autographed copy holds a treasured place on the bookshelf.

Also, these two links (here and here) will take you to other posts I have written about Mr. White who is one of my favorite authors and whose writing has taught me so much.

*************

March 11, 2012

Read this book...

Read This Book...if you know nothing of writer E.B. White and the place he holds in literary history.

Read This Book...if you have ever read Charlotte's Web and fallen in love with the tale of the spider and the pig.

Read This Book...if you want to be a writer, or a better writer, for the examples of clarity and conciseness found in White's words and to experience his agony and angst in order to produce such fine writing.

Read This Book...if you hate spiders and want to find out how fascinating they can be and how White himself relished researching their habits in order to give Charlotte as many true characteristics as possible - down to writing words with her web.

Read This Book...if you want to be drawn into the world of E.B.White - his childhood at the turn of the 20th century, his work at The New Yorker, his loving relationship with his wife Katherine White, his love of the natural world and the barnyard animals that inhabited his farm, and his dedication to his life of words.

In short: Read This Book.

In Which Michael Sims takes a look at Henry David Thoreau

 Henry David Thoreau

(1854)

by Samuel Worcester Rowse

My book of the year for 2012 was The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims. I wrote about it here. 

I have a signed copy of the book as Mr. Sims made a stop on his book tour that year at an independent bookstore here. He was delightful to listen to as he told his tale of visiting White's farm in Maine and actually seeing the barn where Charlotte was first imagined. 

So imagine my glee to find that Mr. Sims now has written a book about Henry David Thoreau. The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond.

Just as he took a look at White's life growing up and events that inspired Charlotte's Web, Mr. Sims focuses on Thoreau's life before he became famous for his journals of life at Walden Pond. 

I have checked Mr. Sims's website in hopes that he will be traveling through my city for this book but so far no events have been planned. I will keep my fingers crossed. 

Celebrate E.B. White's Birthday!

E.B. White
1899-1985

Happy Birthday to E.B. White who was born this day in 1899. Mr. White was a contributing editor to The New Yorker magazine for 60 years. He also revised and edited William Strunk Jr.'s handy book on English grammar, The Elements of Style. 

Mr. White is most beloved for his story of the friendship between a pig and a spider - Charlotte's Web. He wrote Stuart Little, the story of a mouse born to human parents, and The Trumpet of the Swan.

I love Mr. White for his essays collected in One Man's Meat, The Second Tree From the Corner, The Points of My Compass, all of which sit on my bookshelves along with a piece he wrote for Holiday magazine, Here is New York. It was published as a book in 1949. 

If you haven't already read The Story of Charlotte's Web (2011) by Michael Sims, I urge you to do so. The title is misleading. The book is really an affectionate biography of Mr. White's life up until Charlotte's Web was published and how his life influenced his writings. It is superb. 

So here's to you Elwyn Brooks White and thank you for providing me and many others with so many hours of reading pleasure.

A Day for the Birds?

Here is a Valentine's Day myth I was not familiar with but which I find amusing. Michael Sims writes about today in Darwin's Orchestra:

The natural history of Valentine's Day can be found fossilized in literature. For centuries, it was an accepted fact of nature that birds chose their mates on February 14. Chaucer assumed it in The Parlement of Foules: 

"For this was Seynt Valentyne's day, 

When every foul cometh ther to chose his mate."

Shakespeare and poets Robert Herrick and John Donne also wrote about the romance of birds on Valentine's Day. I don't think their spelling was any better.

(At first, I misread mates as names and thought it was so sweet that birds chose their names on this day. I was a bit confused as to what that had to do with romance and then I discovered my error.) 

No matter if you are choosing a name or a mate, enjoy your day and be sure to eat plenty of chocolate. 

Also, today marks the half-way point of my Month in Letters and I am sending off in the mail my fourteenth handwritten note. I find that part of the fun of mailing letters to friends and family is the anticipation of their surprise and one would hope, joy, upon receipt of my missive. 

A Book of Days

I have already pulled off my shelves three books that I bought in 2012 and that I have been saving to read this year. 

It has been a few years since I have read daily from a 'book of days'. One year I read the daily diary entries in the anthology The Assassin's Cloak compiled by Irene and Alan Taylor. Another year it was Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. And then there was the year I started each day with a meditation from 365 Tao by Deng Ming-Dao.

This year's book is Darwin's Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts (1997) by Michael Sims (author of The Story of Charlotte's Web that I so loved). It offers a daily reading of essays by Mr. Sims on such varied subjects as: January 1 - Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons; May 22 - Singing insects; September 4 - Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit; and December 19 - Doctor Doolittle. 

It looks to be an entertaining and informative way to begin each day.

The second is really a 'book of months': The Shape of a Year (1967) by Jean Hersey. I bought this fine hardcover book at a used book sale last summer and instead of reading it in one big gulp, I thought I would follow month-by-month Ms. Hersey's chronicle of events in her life on her farm in Connecticut. I love reading this type of book and look forward to spending the year with Ms. Hersey, her family, her neighbors, and her gardens.

The third book is a whopper: The Art of the Personal Essay - An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present (1994) selected and with an introduction by Philip Lopate. I already owned a paperback copy of this 770-page collection. It was so unwieldy to read that I never quite got around to finishing all the wisdom it had to offer. When I found a hardcover edition at the same summer used book sale as above, I snapped it up. 

I will keep this one - it is heavy - on my new desk and dip into it again and again. I can't wait to read the likes of Seneca (On Noise); Robert Louis Stevenson (An Apology for Idlers); Virginia Woolf (Street Haunting); and, M.F.K. Fisher (Once a Tramp, Always).

It is going to be a great year.

Victorian Detectives of the Female Persuasion

Last night I started reading a book I have had for a while: The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime edited by Michael Sims. Sims is the author of The Story of Charlotte's Web and he was here last year at a book signing event that I attended as I am a great fan of E.B. White.

As I was browsing on the internet for other books Sims might have written, I came across Victorian Women in Crime and decided it was right up my alley. I do love a mystery. And here we have short stories and parts of novellas that feature women detectives and maybe a female crook or two from the days when Sherlock Holmes roamed the streets of London.

In the first story, private detective Mrs. Paschal dons a disguise as a lady's maid to gain entry into the Belgravia household of the Countess of Vervaine to find out how she is really supporting her lavish lifestyle.

I admit I am not a fan of short stories, but will sometimes make an exception for a compilation of who-done-its. And don't you just love the cover? Imagine tracking down miscreants in those long skirts and a feathered hat!