Here is New York

Just now put down E.B. White's essay "Here is New York," from 1948. Brilliant--the image of White sitting in a 90-degree hotel room in his skivvies happy to be alone among the millions, or walking the Lower East Side "with the smell of warm flesh and squashed fruit and fly-bitten filth in the gutter, and cooking." I just wish I'd read it when I first moved to New York. It puts a name on the city's paradoxes, pitfalls, and allures so brilliantly, it would have saved me mental energy over these years trying to figure out how and why I love and hate this place all at the same time.

Just one of the gems:

Manhattan has been compelled to expand skyward because of the absence of any other direction in which to grow. This more than any other thing, is responsible for its physical majesty. It is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village--the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying that the way is up. The summer traveler swings in over Hell Gate Bridge and from the window of his sleeping car as it glides above the pigeon lofts and back yards of Queens looks southwest to where the morning light first strikes the steel peaks of midtown, and he sees its upward thrust unmistakable: the great walls and towers rising, the smoke rising, the heat not yet rising, the hopes and ferments of so many awakening millions rising--this vigorous spear that presses heaven hard.

Image: A view from Hell Gate bridge aboard Amtrak, above, courtesy of Flickr.