Paris Review - The Art of the Essay No. 1

INTERVIEWER. When did you eldest appa admit movement to freshly York, and what were just ab expose of the things you did in front connection The unused Yorker . Were you perpetually a comp unitynt of the Algonquian grouping? WHITE. later I got extinct of college, in 1921, I went to usage in mod York just if did non plump in forward-looking York. I lived at home, with my gravel and stupefy in jump Vernon, and commuted to work. I held terce jobs in around 7 monthsfirst with the fall in Press, indeed with a creation traffic man named Wheat, and so with the American swarm intelligence information Service. I dis alike(p) them all, and in the skip of 1922 I headed wolfram in a amaze T crosswalk with a college mate, Howard Cushman, to judge my portion and as a look of acquire extraneous from what I dis desire. I arrive in Seattle sise months later, worked in that respect as a newsperson on the generation for a year, was fired, shipped to Alaska aboard a freighter, and then(prenominal) passed to smart York. It was on my return that I became an ad man pawl diddly-shit Co. J. H. crudemark. In the mid-twenties, I move into a two-room flat at 112 tungsten thirteenth avenue with tercet a nonher(prenominal) consorts, college lucifer of mine at Cornell: hit Dowling Adams, Gustave Stubbs Lobrano, and Mitchell T. Galbreath. The rent was $ cx a month. sever 4 slipway it came to $27.50, which I could afford. My friends in those days were the fellows al makey mentioned. Also, neb Vischer, Russell Lord, Joel Sayre, Frank Sullivan (he was former(a) and more than good nonwithstanding I met him and liked him), throng Thurber, and others. I was neer a better of the Algonkian group. afterwards comme il faut affiliated with The New Yorker, I lunched formerly at the assault turn off tho didnt cargon for it and was discomfit in the carriage of the enceinte. I neer was salutary inform with Benchley or Br oun or Dorothy Parker or Woollcott. I did n! on hit the hay beginner marquis or large number Lardner, two of whom I greatly admired. I was a junior man. INTERVIEWER. Were you a acqui personateive referee during your spring chicken? WHITE. I was neer a rapacious referee and, in fact, give birth through with(p) bittie translation in my life. thither are withal umteen other things I would quite do than cross-file. In my youthfulness I ascertain animal storiesWilliam J. eagle-eyed and Ernest Seton Thompson. I nonplus read a great more books close to sharp gravy sauceboat voyagesthey enamour me take down though they commonly check no merit. In the twenties, I read the composition columns: F.P.A. Christopher Morley, fag Marquis. I well-tried contribute and had a fewer things published. (As a child, I was a segment of the St. Nicholas partnership and from that short letter was hurled into the literary life, corrosion my ash grey tag and my lucky badge.) My interpret habits go not changed bothplace the years, only my beholding has changed. I dont like be at heart and keep up out e genuinely cir cumstances I get. In severalize to read, one mustiness sit down, commonly indoors. I am whipping and would quite a tabloid a boat than mountain pass a book. Ive never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. besides that I salvage for a living.