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.

Messages of Arthur Miller's Play "The Crucible"

When Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill) was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, he sometimes recited the following apothegm as illustrative of the political difficulties of finding new sources of federal revenue.

"Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."

In that instance of wishful thinking, outsiders could somehow be the solution to our problems. But it is usually the reverse: outsiders, or external forces, are somehow to blame.

At the moment, for instance, some see immigrants as main reason the American Dream seems increasingly out of reach. That's despite considerable evidence that immigrants have been responsible for far more of America's accomplishments than for the country's failures.

I mention this because I just saw a revival of Arthur Miller's most-performed pay, "The Crucible" on Broadway staring, among others, Saoise Ronan of "Brooklyn" fame.

Miller wrote the play, about the 1692-93 Salem witch trials, in 1953 as an allegory of McCarthyism, an anti-communist witch hunt then in full flood. Intellectuals, particularly in the performing arts, were a prominent target and, indeed, Miller himself was eventually called up before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). While he told the panel about his own former leftist activities, he refused to name others who had been involved and was convicted of contempt of Congress, a conviction that was overturned a couple of years later.

Broadway and ballet choreographer Jerome Robbins ("West Side Story"), called before HUAC in 1950, had likewise initially refused to name names -- for three years in fact -- but when his homosexuality appeared at risk of public disclosure, he reversed course and named several persons -- a playwright, a filmmaker, a dance critic and others. As a result, he wasn't blacklisted and his career continued unfettered.

(The New York City Ballet is currently performing an "All Robbins" program that includes the shorter ballet version of "West Side Story").

I mention these incidents for a couple of reasons.

First, one of the themes of "The Crucible" is that in witch-hunt ridden Massachusetts, it was often necessary to publically condemn the alleged wrongdoings of others to protect one's own standing in society. Even when one believes such demands are wrong, they can be difficult to resist when one is personally compromised.

Thus Robbins felt forced to cave in because his behavior was at odds with prevailing attitudes toward homosexuality. And in Miller's play, the chief protagonist, a farmer named John Proctor, faces problems resisting demands he believes to be wrong because he has had an affair with his family's young female servant, Abigail Williams (played by Ms. Ronan in the current Broadway production).

Second, demands that people name names in order to save themselves are still very much with us: to wit, the CIA's waterboarding of war-against-terrorism prisoners.

In both cases, there are strong incentives to say things that are untrue.

While convoluted to the point of being somewhat confusing at times, Miller's play still has a relevant message to deliver.

(By the way, if you haven't seem the film "Brooklyn," or better yet, read the book, I highly recommend both of them.)