Roger Angell is familiar to many of us as the writer of some great books about baseball. He writes with insight and grace, and for those of us who love the game, he had always increased our pleasure. His day job is that he is a writer for the New Yorker magazine. He is also the stepson of E.B. White, and in this week’s New Yorker – the magazine's 80 th anniversary edition – Angell has written a gentle remembrance of the man he knew as “Andy.”

E. B. White is known to literate parents as the author of Charlotte’s Web and other children’s stories. His words and stories have charmed children – and adults – for three generations. They will continue to do so for many more.

White is known to those of us who have studied and taught writing, and tried to improve our own, as the co-author along with William Strunk of The Elements of Style, surely the best book of advice on writing, pound for pound, that the 20th century produced.

Angell writes:

Clarity is the message of “The Elements of Style,” the handbook he based on an early model written by Will Strunk, a professor of his at Cornell, which has helped more than ten million writers—the senior honors candidate, the rewriting lover, the overburdened historian—through the whichy thicket. “Write in a way that comes naturally,” it pleads. “Do not explain too much.” Write like White, in short, and his readers, finding him again and perhaps absorbing in the process something of that steely modesty, may sense as well the uses of patience in waiting to discover what kind of writer will turn up on their page, and finding contentment with that writer’s life.

The phrase “steely modesty” grabbed my brain as I read Angell’s article. I have been preaching modesty to my students for years. “Put yourself in the background,” I tell them. “Let the content come forward.” But to do that takes confidence and, yes, a certain amount of “steel.”

Angell’s article, which should be read in full, demonstrates that White lived as he wrote – modestly, patiently and honestly.

Good writers come in various shapes and personalities, and not all are like the patient and modest E. B. White. That’s ok. Still, a little patience and a measure of modesty would not hurt any of us.

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The citation is:

Angell, Roger. “Andy.” The New Yorker. February 14-21, 2005, pp. 132-150.

Jim Stovall (Posted Feb. 18, 2005)

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