a million pebbles

New York City – 2011

I’ve been remembering what it felt like as a young man to live in the same town with giants. When I first arrived in New York my personal giants were a dozen or so columnists and critics and poets whose names appeared regularly in the papers. I burned with a low steady fever just because I was on the same island with Heywood Broun … Robert Benchley … Dorothy Parker … Ring Lardner …This excitation ( nearness of giants ) is a continuing thing.  The city is always full of young worshipful beginners – young actors, young aspiring poets, ballerinas, painters, reporters, singers – each depending on his own brand of tonic to stay alive, each with his own stable of giants. 

E.B. White – “Here Is New York“