Celebrated essayist E.B. White wouldn’t understand this assignment. For him, style was innate: he admits in a 1942 interview in The New York Times, that he did not understand why he wrote the way he did. He received a textbook used in high schools that included several of his pieces, and he flunked the questions about his style. “I’ll admit,” he says, “that there was repetition [in one of my sentences], but I hadn’t realized it. Anyway, I couldn’t think of a good sound reason why I’d use it.” Regardless of his own view, White has long been considered the preeminent stylist in essay writing. White’s colloquial language and seemingly prosaic subject matter intimately connects him with his readers; through his descriptions of everyday life, he reveals something profound, often linking his writings with events of the wider world.
White’s colloquial language and seemingly prosaic subject matter intimately connects him with his readers; through his descriptions of everyday life, he reveals something profound, often linking his writings with events of the wider world.