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A review by jmiae
One Man's Meat by E.B. White
5.0
I never used to be a fan of essays. Maybe because in school I found the writing of them to be such a cumbersome and straining activity, I assumed reading them would have a similar effect. But after reading Ex Libris, The Library at Night, A History of Reading, Essays of Elia, and a few others that I can't remember off the top of my head, I've been thoroughly convinced that, so long as the topic is romantic enough for me, essays can be just as, if not even more enjoyable than reading fiction.
I loved this collection. Some of it was hard for me to keep track of, such as when he goes in-depth into the logistics of farming. But the sentiment behind it, and his arguments regarding the benefits of travel by horse rather than automobile, consolidated schoolhouses rather than one-room schoolhouses, the necessity of people being directly involved in food production and farming... so much of what E.B. White writes about the late 1930s and early 1940s resonates with my own way of thinking.
It'd be easy enough to write a paragraph expounding the virtues of every single essay, so I'll stop myself here except to say that this is one of those books that I want to take with me on holiday to some northeast American lake in midsummer and read without interruptions from the outside, modern world. Or perhaps Vermont in the autumn? Or better yet, White's saltwater farm.
I loved this collection. Some of it was hard for me to keep track of, such as when he goes in-depth into the logistics of farming. But the sentiment behind it, and his arguments regarding the benefits of travel by horse rather than automobile, consolidated schoolhouses rather than one-room schoolhouses, the necessity of people being directly involved in food production and farming... so much of what E.B. White writes about the late 1930s and early 1940s resonates with my own way of thinking.
It'd be easy enough to write a paragraph expounding the virtues of every single essay, so I'll stop myself here except to say that this is one of those books that I want to take with me on holiday to some northeast American lake in midsummer and read without interruptions from the outside, modern world. Or perhaps Vermont in the autumn? Or better yet, White's saltwater farm.