Farewell to Model T From Sea to Shining Sea

by WHITE, E. B.

• ISBN13: 9781892145215
• ISBN10: 1892145219
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-05-31
• Publisher: Little Bookroom

Summary

In 1922, just out of college and at loose ends, E. B. White set off across America in his Model T. He left his map at home, but packed his typewriter and dictionaryhis true destination, he tells us, was the world of letters. Along the way, he also discovered America: "My own vision of the landmy own discovery of itwas shaped, more than by any other instrument, by a Model T Ford...a slow-motion roadster of miraculous designstrong, tremulous, and tireless, from sea to shining sea." White first wrote about the flivver in "Farewell to Model T," which appeared in theNew Yorkerin 1936. Rich in comic descriptions of the T's many eccentricities and the absurd demands it put on its devoted owners, this was the first of White's essays to bring him fame. It is here published for the first time with "From Sea to Shining Sea," in which he conjures the backroads and main streets of an unspoiled America. Together, these essays are an affectionate tribute to the car that holds a mythic place in the American imagination.

Author Biography

E.B. White (1899–1985) was the youngest of six children, born in Mount Vernon, New York. He attended Cornell University, where he earned his lifelong nickname, Andy. He worked as a reporter and a copywriter before being recommended for a job at the newly founded New Yorker by the fiction editor Katharine Angell, who had read his submissions to the magazine. White became a regular contributor to The New Yorker in 1927, writing essays known for their humor and honesty. He was the author of three beloved children’s books, Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970), and the co-author of Elements of Style (1959) with his former professor William Strunk Jr. In 1971 he received the National Medal for Literature. His masterful Here Is New York, considered one of the ten best books ever written about New York City, is available from The Little Bookroom.