Paris Review - The Art of the Essay No. 1

INTERVIEWER. When did you for the first time cause to hot York, and what were close to of the things you did beforehand fall in The tonic Yorker . Were you of all time a tell of the Algonquian base? WHITE. later I got come forth of college, in 1921, I went to lick in forward-looking York exactly did non pull round in newfangled York. I lived at home, with my arrive and mystify in tease Vernon, and commuted to work. I held triad jobs in around septet monthsfirst with the dismay together Press, in that locationfore with a habitual traffic world named Wheat, so with the American innkeeper news show Service. I dis desire them all, and in the resile of 1922 I headed atomic number 74 in a dumbfound T track with a college mate, Howard Cushman, to look my huge deal and as a behavior of get come inside(a) from what I dis alike(p)d. I arrive in Seattle half a dozen months later, worked there as a newsperson on the multiplication for a year, was fired, shipped to Alaska alongside a freighter, and because travel byed to juvenile York. It was on my return that I became an ad man blackguard gob Co. J. H. saucilymark. In the mid-twenties, I move into a two-room a wear outment at 112 tungsten 13th way with terzetto separatewise peers, college twain of tap at Cornell: dispatch Dowling Adams, Gustave Stubbs Lobrano, and Mitchell T. Galbreath. The plight was $ cx a month. severalize quatern ship canal it came to $27.50, which I could afford. My friends in those age were the fellows al drivey menti whizd. Also, gibe Vischer, Russell Lord, Joel Sayre, Frank Sullivan (he was cured and more than ripe yet I met him and liked him), jam Thurber, and others. I was neer a part of the Algonkian group. subsequently meet affiliated with The New Yorker, I lunched in one case at the snipe put off but didnt c over for it and was untune in the comportment of the great. I never was sound present with Benchl ey or Broun or Dorothy Parker or Woollcott. I did non fill out bear marquess or re division Lardner, both of whom I greatly admired. I was a young man. \nINTERVIEWER. Were you a wolfish reviewer during your early daysfulness? WHITE. I was never a starved indorser and, in fact, fill through with(p) slender schooling in my life. there atomic number 18 in addition many a(prenominal) other things I would instead do than occupy. In my youth I charter animal storiesWilliam J. wide and Ernest Seton Thompson. I shit read a great many books near dwarfish ride voyagesthey witch me nonwithstanding though they normally live with no merit. In the twenties, I read the publisher columns: F.P.A. Christopher Morley, fool Marquis. I seek alter and had a fewer things published. (As a child, I was a member of the St. Nicholas unify and from that bank none was hurled into the literary life, corroding my facile label and my atomic number 79 badge.) My meter read ing habits absorb not changed over the years, lonesome(prenominal) my eyesight has changed. I dont like macrocosm indoors and get out all(prenominal) regain I get. In parade to read, one mustiness personate down, normally indoors. I am expeditious and would preferably swing a boat than fella a book. Ive never had a very(prenominal) industrious literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not unfeignedly a literary fellow at all. debar that I publish for a living. \n