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30 diSconTinUoUS Form of Consciousness “ nne Carol Moore of the New York Public Library”? Who is she, and why did she write him a letter about being visited by “a representative from Superman, Inc.”? And what, pray tell, does a letter about someone from Superman, Inc., whatever that is, have to do with making maple syrup, or maple syrup with tending a brooder stove for young chicks? Talk about a muddle of things—this is certainly it! It’s 1963, and I’ve just been puzzling over something called “Spring,” by E. B. White. I refer to it as “something,” because I don’t know what to call it or how to describe it. All I know is that it doesn’t look like an essay and doesn’t read like one, though it’s included in One Man’s Meat together with “Once More to the Lake” and other essays that White wrote for his monthly column in Harper’s some twenty years earlier. By contrast with those pieces, this one looks like something from another planet. It has twelve segments, typographically separated from each other byasterisks and interspacing. The segments range in length from a sixteen-word sentence fragment at the start to a four-paragraph story and meditation at the end. Some of its interior segments are just a sentence long, others contain three or four sentences, and a couple include three ample paragraphs.Casting my eye over the whole thing, I notice that most of the shorter segments come near the beginning, and a couple of the longer ones come at the end. Beyond that, I don’t see any pattern in White’s arrangement of them. Nor do I know what to make of the fact that each segment is distinctlydifferent not just in length but in content—a different point of interest in each case. One tells about a letter that White received from Anne Carol Moore of the New York Public Library, describing a visit from “a representative of Superman, Inc.”; another about maple syrup “operations,” conducted by White’s son; the next recalls a conversation with one of White’s friends who scornfully advises him “to spare the reading “ nne Carol Moore of the New York Public Library”? Who is she, and why did she write him a letter about being visited by “a representative from Superman, Inc.”? And what, pray tell, does a letter about someone from Superman, Inc., whatever that is, have to do with making maple A Discontinuous 31 public your little adventures in contentment”; and the next tells about the difficulties of “tending a brooder stove” for 254 “mothering chicks.” No wonder I’m a bit puzzled by the piece. But I’m beginning to see that it seems to focus on the joys of spring, also the horrors of war and the necessity to keep writing, no matter what. Yet I don’t know why it’s written in such disparate segments, in discontinuous form. No sense of continuity except that all the segments deal with things that White experienced or thought about during April 1941, when he was writing the piece for his monthly column. In contrast with the work as a whole, one of its three-​ paragraph segments offers such an exquisitely unified description of “the day of days when spring at last” arrives that it could well stand on its own as a self-​ contained little essay or sketch. In fact, I remember having seen it anthologized as a free-​ standing essay before I encountered it here within the twelve-​ segment piece. I remember assigning it some fiveyears before in a freshman writing course, without realizing that it was part of a larger work. Given White’s ability to produce such a well-​ wrought essay about the advent of spring, so lyrical and so artfully developed, I wonder why he’s chosen to write such a fragmented work on the subject. I wonder too what could possibly have moved him to write such a disparate set of bits and pieces about life at his saltwater farm—the sort of thing one might produce in a rambling letter to a friend or relative but certainly not in a column for Harper’s. No, I’ve not been playing dumb in my reactions to White’s piece. I’m simply trying to remember what it was like to confront such a work back in 1963, when traditionally structured forms of the essay and nonfiction were still...

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