Elwyn Brooks White joined The New Yorker in 1925 and quickly contributed cartoon captions, editorials, reporting, essays, fiction, verse, criticism, and advertisement copy. Harold Ross relied heavily on White's prose and positioned his Notes and Comment paragraphs to open the magazine for decades. White feared leaving only magazine clippings, yet published Stuart Little at forty-six and became prized as a 'paragrapher,' a maker of short, precise paragraphs that could lead a reader anywhere. The Apollo 11 launch and Neil Armstrong's moonwalk prompted White, at seventy, to attempt a single perfect paragraph as a lead, after drafts that addressed nationalism and his support for world government.
White published his first major work, "Stuart Little," no less significant for being a children's novel, when he was forty-six. By that time, he had come to be prized at The New Yorker as a "paragrapher," a writer of short commentary. With perfect paragraphs set one after another like flagstones in the high grass, White knew, you could lead a reader anywhere. Ross knew it, too, and for decades White's paragraphs, unsigned as Notes and Comment, opened the magazine.
At around 11 P.M. Eastern Time that Sunday, Neil Armstrong took his small step. The New Yorker had dispatched Talk reporters to various quarters to watch people watch the landing on TV, but writing a lead piece fell to White. What could measure up to the occasion? His idea was both simple and audacious: a single perfect paragraph. White, who had turned seventy that month, sat down at his typewriter.
Collection
[
|
...
]