Once More to the Lake

Last updated

"Once More to the Lake" is an essay first published in Harper's Magazine in 1941 by author E. B. White. It chronicles his pilgrimage back to a lakefront resort, Belgrade Lakes, Maine, that he visited as a child. [1]

Contents

In "Once More to the Lake," White revisits his ideal boyhood vacation spot. While he initially finds great joy in his visit, the nostalgia causes him to struggle to remember that he is now a man, as he grapples with his own mortality.

Background

White wrote a short pamphlet about the lake in 1914, at the age of 15. A second draft of the essay was a letter White wrote to his brother Stanley in the summer of 1936, when he had returned to the lake alone. In 1941, he brought his son Joel, the experience of which is recorded in "Once More to the Lake". [1]

Interpretations

The essay shows White engaging in an internal struggle between acting and viewing the lake as he did when he was a boy and acting and viewing it as an adult, or as his father would have. Although White sees the lake as having remained nearly identical to the lake of his boyhood, technology bars his experience and the new, noisier boats disturb the serene atmosphere at the lake. This could suggest that technology is impure or damaging, except that the same paragraph contains a lengthy reminiscence in which White rhapsodizes about his boyhood affection for an old one-cylinder engine. The memory balances the theme of technology, suggesting that certain kinds of technology, if a person can "get close to it spiritually," are able to become almost a natural part of one's self. [2]

The author compares the time he went fishing with his dad and how he's fishing now with his son:

I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn't know which rod I was at the end of.

He suddenly realizes how death is so close, because he is now the father and not the son. White references this in the final lines:

I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.

White realizes that although human lives are by themselves transient and insignificant, experiences are immortal. In spite of the increasing amounts of technology, his son still has the same experiences that he had when he was a boy – sneaking out in the morning, being amused by the dragonflies. White releases his ego by realizing that he himself is inconsequential.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. B. White</span> American writer (1899–1985)

Elwyn Brooks White was an American writer. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte's Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). In a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, Charlotte's Web came in first in their poll of the top one hundred children's novels. In addition, he was a writer and contributing editor to The New Yorker magazine, and also a co-author of the English language style guide The Elements of Style.

<i>Stuart Little</i> 1945 childrens novel by E.B. White

Stuart Little is a 1945 American children's novel by E. B. White. It was White's first children's book, and it is now widely recognized as a classic in children's literature. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">T. H. White</span> English author (1906–1964)

Terence Hanbury "Tim" White was an English writer. He is best known for his Arthurian novels, which were published together in 1958 as The Once and Future King. One of his most memorable is the first of the series, The Sword in the Stone, which was published as a stand-alone book in 1938.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shel Silverstein</span> American poet, cartoonist, and writer (1930–1999)

Sheldon Allan Silverstein was an American writer, poet, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, musician, and playwright. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Silverstein briefly attended university before being drafted into the United States Army. During his rise to prominence in the 1950s, his illustrations were published in various newspapers and magazines, including the adult-oriented Playboy. He also wrote a satirical, adult-oriented alphabet book, Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book, under the stylized name "Uncle Shelby", which he used as an occasional pen name.

"Walking Distance" is episode five of the American television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on October 30, 1959. The episode was listed as the ninth best episode in the history of The Twilight Zone by Time magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Twain</span> American author and humorist (1835–1910)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel". Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Baldwin</span> American writer (1924–1987)

James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer. He garnered acclaim for his work across several mediums, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, was published in 1953; decades later, Time magazine included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels released from 1923 to 2005. His first essay collection, Notes of a Native Son, was published in 1955.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Fenimore Cooper</span> American writer (1789–1851)

James Fenimore Cooper was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonial and indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought him fame and fortune. He lived much of his boyhood and the last fifteen years of life in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William Cooper on property that he owned. Cooper became a member of the Episcopal Church shortly before his death and contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society.

<i>Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather</i>

Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, also rendered from Chinese as A Fishing Rod for My Grandpa, is a 2004 collection of six short stories by the Chinese writer Gao Xingjian. All of the stories were originally written between 1983 and 1990. The stories were translated to English by Mabel Lee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Burroughs</span> American naturalist and essayist

John Burroughs was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the conservation movement in the United States. The first of his essay collections was Wake-Robin in 1871.

William Weaks Morris was an American writer and editor born in Jackson, Mississippi, though his family later moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, which he immortalized in his works of prose. Morris' trademark was his lyrical prose style and reflections on the American South, particularly the Mississippi Delta. In 1967 he became the youngest editor of Harper's Magazine. He wrote several works of fiction and nonfiction, including his seminal book North Toward Home, as well as My Dog Skip.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Dove</span> American abstract painter (1880–1846)

Arthur Garfield Dove was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter. Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinations, to produce his abstractions and his abstract landscapes. Me and the Moon from 1937 is a good example of an Arthur Dove abstract landscape and has been referred to as one of the culminating works of his career. Dove made a series of experimental collages in the 1920s. He also experimented with techniques, combining paints like hand mixed oil or tempera over a wax emulsion as exemplified in Dove's 1938 painting Tanks, in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Joel McCoun White was an American naval architect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coarse fishing</span> Type of freshwater angling in the United Kingdom and Ireland

In Britain and Ireland, coarse fishing refers to angling for rough fish, which are fish species traditionally considered undesirable as a food or game fish. Freshwater game fish are all salmonids — most particularly salmon, trout and char — so generally coarse fish are freshwater fish that are not salmonids. There is disagreement over whether grayling should be classified as a game fish or a coarse fish.

<i>Boyhood</i> (2014 film) 2014 film directed by Richard Linklater

Boyhood is a 2014 American epic coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Richard Linklater, and starring Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, and Ethan Hawke. Filmed from 2002 to 2013, Boyhood depicts the childhood and adolescence of Mason Evans Jr. (Coltrane) from ages six to eighteen as he grows up in Texas with divorced parents. Richard Linklater's daughter Lorelei plays Mason's sister, Samantha.

Ernest George Schwiebert (1931–2005) was born in Chicago on June 5, 1931. An architect by profession, Ernest "Ernie" Schwiebert was a renowned angler and angling author. Schwiebert spent his childhood in the Midwest, attended high school at New Trier, north of Chicago, earned his bachelor's degree in architecture from Ohio State University, and earned two doctorates at Princeton in architecture and the history and philosophy of architecture.

<i>Blackers Art of Fly Making</i>

Blacker's Art of Fly Making - comprising angling and dyeing of colours with engravings of Salmon and Trout flies shewing the process of the gentle craft as taught in the pages with descriptions of flies for the season of the year as they come out on the water is a work of fly tying literature with significant fly fishing content written by William Blacker, a London tackle dealer and first published in London in 1842 by George Nichols. The 1842 and 1843 editions were only 48 pages while, the 1855 edition was considerably expanded by Blacker with hand-painted, colored illustrations and 252 pages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography of fly fishing (fly tying, stories, fiction)</span>

This annotated bibliography is intended to list both notable and not so notable works of English language, non-fiction and fiction related to the sport of fly fishing listed by year published. Although 100% of any book listed is not necessarily devoted to fly fishing, all these titles have significant fly fishing content. Included in this bibliography is a list of fly tying, fly tackle, regional guides, memoirs, stories and fly fishing fiction related literature.

Bernard Iddings Bell was an American Christian author, Episcopal priest, and conservative cultural commentator. His religious writings, social critiques, and homilies on post-war society were acclaimed in the United States, England, and in Canada, receiving praise from intellectuals such as Albert Jay Nock, T. S. Eliot, Richard M. Weaver, and Russell Kirk. Featured on the cover of Time magazine as America's "brilliant maverick," he authored over 20 books and numerous articles appearing in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Criterion, Scribner's, and Commonweal. For the majority of his career, he toured and lectured at universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, and Princeton as well as "almost every cathedral in England."

Joel Agee is an American writer and translator. He lives in New York.

References

Notes
  1. 1 2 Nordquist, Richard (April 29, 2017). "E.B. White's Drafts of 'Once More to the Lake'". ThoughtCo. Retrieved November 3, 2017.
  2. Phillips, Charles. "On "Once More to the Lake" By E. B. White". Archived from the original on October 7, 2007. Retrieved October 13, 2007.
Sources