Small Change (1997)
“I write to you and feel myself being reshaped, not saying certain things, saying other things, always with you in mind. If I were writing to Susan, how different this letter would be. You never met her, but the two of you knew people in common.
I’ve been reading Thurber. At the moment I like him more than E. B. White. He has more animosity. White is sweetly wise: the decent, honest, understated American writing at thirty as if he were sixty. With Thurber you can see the wounds, the rumpled clothes, the short-sighted blinking stare. I’ve been reading his description of Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda: “… rarely relaxed enough for true comedy or comfortable enough for genuine humour, they seemed to move dramatically, from the beginning, in settings designed for tragedy.”
Thurber is much more bitter than White (at least in these posthumous essays) and I like his bitterness – his anger – for itself, and for the tenderness and generosity that shoot through it. He appears to have been a wonderfu...l friend, though writers tend to be better friends on paper than in person.MoreLess
I’ve been reading Thurber. At the moment I like him more than E. B. White. He has more animosity. White is sweetly wise: the decent, honest, understated American writing at thirty as if he were sixty. With Thurber you can see the wounds, the rumpled clothes, the short-sighted blinking stare. I’ve been reading his description of Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda: “… rarely relaxed enough for true comedy or comfortable enough for genuine humour, they seemed to move dramatically, from the beginning, in settings designed for tragedy.”
Thurber is much more bitter than White (at least in these posthumous essays) and I like his bitterness – his anger – for itself, and for the tenderness and generosity that shoot through it. He appears to have been a wonderfu...l friend, though writers tend to be better friends on paper than in person.MoreLess
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