New York Then and Now, with a Little Help from E.B. White

"The normal frustrations of modern life are here multiplied and amplified -- a single run of a crosstown bus contains, for the driver, enough frustrations and annoyance to carry him over the edge of sanity: the light changes always an instant too soon, the passenger that bangs on the shut door, the truck that blocks the only opening, the coin that slips to the floor, the question asked at the wrong moment."

That quote is from E.B. White's essay "Here is New York," written in the summer of 1948 and first published in a 1949 issue of Holiday magazine. White, long a writer for The New Yorker, was then living in Maine and had been asked to re-visit New York and record his impressions.

Well, things are little better now -- for the passengers as well as the drivers.  Getting just a few blocks crosstown on a bus in Manhattan can feel like an eternity.  So, to help riders pass the time, the newest crosstown buses, one of which is depicted below, offer not just wireless, but USB ports where one can charge a phone or a laptop. 

This, when I'm living in NYC, is my crosstown bus -- the M66 -- pulled up at a stop on Broadway and W66th on a rainy afternoon. It's a new model since the last time I stayed in Manhattan, in the autumn of 2018.

How about other aspects of White's essay, now available as a small book at, among other places, the Center for Fiction in its very attractive new location in Brooklyn, beside the Mark Morris Dance Group home base and across the street from the opera house of the Brooklyn Academy of Music?

Much, has changed, of course, but that, White himself said, is what New York is all about.

But much, too has remained the same.

For instance, "the residents of Manhattan," White said, "are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere else and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail."  Whether they will succeed or fail depends in large part on luck, he said, "No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky," he said.

There are, of course, long-time residents, who White said take the city for granted. And then there are commuters that simply get devoured by the city each morning and spit out at night.

But the most important category of denizens is that mentioned first above: those who come from elsewhere in quest of something, for whom he city is a goal, White said. That group "accounts for New York's high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements."

While the long-time residents give the city stability and while commuters endow it with a tidal restlessness, the goal seekers from elsewhere give it passion, White said.

That is no less true in 2019 than was the case in 1948.  But the center of gravity as far as where such people now eat and sleep, even if they still work in Manhattan, is Brooklyn -- sometimes called "the new Paris," not because it looks much like the almost mythical French capital, but because of cultural ferment.

When I eat in Manhattan restaurants, if the occasion presents, I often ask my server the following question: "do you consider yourself a hospitality industry professional, or are you just doing this while you get your degree in aeronautical engineering?"

That always gets a laugh -- and then some fascinating stories.  There was, for instance, the young restaurant receptionist, born in Somalia, brought up in Nebraska and in Manhattan to try to make it as a writer of film scripts.  Or the waiter who was a dancer.  He had no recent successes to report but proudly said one of his colleagues at the restaurant had just made an eight-minute appearance on "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," an award-winning television series about a New York housewife who discovers she has a knack for stand-up comedy.

Of course plenty of people don't make it and eventually depart, often very quietly. In fact, they melt away as newcomers continue to arrive.

As White said: such New Yorkers have to be willing to be lucky.