The Elements of Style

THE FIRST writer I watched at work was my stepfather, E. B. White. Each Tuesday morning, he would close his study door and sit down to write the "Notes and Comment" page for The New Yorker. The task was familiar to him— he was required to file a few hundred words of editorial or personal commentary on some topic in or out of the news that week — but the sounds of his typewriter from his room came in hesitant bursts, with long silences in between. Hours went by. Summoned at last for lunch, he was silent and preoccupied, and soon excused himself to get back to the job. When the copy went off at last, in the afternoon RFD pouch — we were in Maine, a day's mail away from New York — he rarely seemed satisfied. "It isn't good enough," he said sometimes. "I wish it were better."