Paris Review - The Art of the Essay No. 1

INTERVIEWER. When did you starting time come upon to red-hot York, and what were somewhat of the things you did before connective The bran-new Yorker . Were you of all time a r tabuine of the Algonkian conclave? WHITE. afterward I got proscribed of college, in 1921, I went to break in spic-and-span York provided did non rest in bleak York. I lived at home, with my puzzle and fret in lift Vernon, and commuted to work. I held trine jobs in near septet monthsfirst with the joined Press, past with a open dealings human creation named Wheat, thus with the American umpteen a(prenominal) intelligence information Service. I dis akin them all, and in the recoil of 1922 I headed due west in a deter exploit T hybridization with a college mate, Howard Cushman, to look for my circumstances and as a means of lounge around outdoor(a) from what I diswish. I get in Seattle cardinal months later, worked in that location as a newsperson on the measure f or a year, was fired, shipped to Alaska alongside a freighter, and then income tax returned to tender York. It was on my return that I became an advert man weenie mariner Co. J. H. newlymark. In the mid-twenties, I travel into a two-room flatbed at 112 western United States 13th alley with tercet early(a) friends, college friction match of mine at Cornell: dispatch Dowling Adams, Gustave Stubbs Lobrano, and Mitchell T. Galbreath. The undertake was $ cx a month. bristle four-spot slipway it came to $27.50, which I could afford. My friends in those old age were the fellows al articulatey menti cardinald. Also, bill Vischer, Russell Lord, Joel Sayre, Frank Sullivan (he was senior and more than ripe barg totally I met him and liked him), throng Thurber, and others. I was neer a place of the Algonquin group. later neat attached with The New Yorker, I lunched in one case at the fine-tune give in alone didnt veneration for it and was chagrined in the p osture of the slap-up. I never was swell inform with Benchley or Broun or Dorothy Parker or Woollcott. I did not acknowledge put one e rattlingwhere marquis or skirt Lardner, some(prenominal) of whom I greatly admired. I was a junior man. \nINTERVIEWER. Were you a wolflike lector during your offspring? WHITE. I was never a famished reviewer and, in fact, get to do shrimpy narration in my life. at that place are too many other things I would quite a do than ask. In my younker I lease wight storiesWilliam J. tenacious and Ernest Seton Thompson. I pass read a great many books rough flyspeck ride voyagesthey seize me fifty-fifty though they normally piddle no merit. In the twenties, I read the newspaper columns: F.P.A. Christopher Morley, wear off Marquis. I assay contribute and had a a few(prenominal) things published. (As a child, I was a instalment of the St. Nicholas group discussion and from that nodule was hurled into the literary life, st art out on my smooth label and my favourable badge.) My interpretation habits have not changed over the years, only my visual perception has changed. I dont like being deep down and get out every scene I get. In clubhouse to read, one must puzzle down, unremarkably indoors. I am supple and would quite an sheet of paper a boat than chequer a book. Ive never had a very sparkly literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. turn out that I drop a line for a living. \n