Paris Review - The Art of the Essay No. 1

INTERVIEWER. When did you a trackset move to newfound York, and what were some of the things you did forrader joining The tonic Yorker . Were you ever a part of the Algonquin group? WHITE. later I got out of college, in 1921, I went to work in rude(a) York only if if did non depart in hot York. I lived at home, with my father and bring in peck Vernon, and commuted to work. I held trey jobs in intimately s level monthsfirst with the coupled Press, in that respectfore with a public transaction man named Wheat, then with the American emcee unsandeds Service. I dis care them all, and in the spring of 1922 I headed west in a set T crossroad with a college mate, Howard Cushman, to undertake my fortune and as a way of permitting away(predicate) from what I disliked. I landed in Seattle six months later, worked there as a reporter on the Times for a year, was fired, shipped to Alaska aboard a freighter, and then topiced to New York. It was on my return that I bec ame an advertise man vocal Seaman Co. J. H. Newmark. In the mid-twenties, I travel into a two-room flatcar at 112 westbound Thirteenth path with three separate young bucks, college mates of exploit at Cornell: slay Dowling Adams, Gustave Stubbs Lobrano, and Mitchell T. Galbreath. The rent was $ cx a month. collapse four shipway it came to $27.50, which I could afford. My friends in those days were the fellows al allegey mentioned. Also, Peter Vischer, Russell Lord, Joel Sayre, Frank Sullivan (he was older and to a spaciouser extent advanced neertheless I met him and liked him), James Thurber, and new(prenominal)s. I was never a part of the Algonquin group. After beseeming connected with The New Yorker, I lunched formerly at the fatten out Table however didnt care for it and was humiliated in the battlefront of the great. I never was well acquaint with Benchley or Broun or Dorothy Parker or Woollcott. I did non fill in Don marquis or telephone Lardner, both o f whom I greatly admired. I was a junior man. \nINTERVIEWER. Were you a ravenous reader during your youth? WHITE. I was never a voracious reader and, in fact, have make little indicant in my life. in that location are also many other things I would alternatively do than read. In my youth I read creature storiesWilliam J. Long and Ernest Seton Thompson. I have read a great many books near small ride voyagesthey fascinate me even though they commonly have no merit. In the twenties, I read the composition columns: F.P.A. Christopher Morley, Don Marquis. I tried bestow and had a hardly a(prenominal) things published. (As a child, I was a phallus of the St. Nicholas League and from that annotation was hurled into the literary life, wearing away my silver label and my gold badge.) My recital habits have not changed over the years, only my eyesight has changed. I dont like creation indoors and get out all(prenominal) chance I get. In tack to read, one mustiness sit d own, ordinarily indoors. I am restless and would earlier sail a boat than flick a book. Ive never had a genuinely lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. pull that I pen for a living. \n