The Literary City

In “Walking in the City,” Michel de Certeau asserts that “[t]he walking of passers by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to ‘turns of phrase’ or ‘stylistic figures’…The art of ‘turning’ phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path”(131). This is well applied to E.B. White’s “Writings from the New Yorker,” especially in “Walking to Work.”
As White walks the nine blocks to work, he finds himself taking, on average, forty-five minutes to complete the route. The events that delay him are those “stylistic figures” in “the art of composing a path” described by de Certeau. In taking detours to observe the happenings around him, White is undercutting the function of the streets as a mode of transportation, but in doing so creates another purpose for them as a stage for experience. By translating these events into a literary text, White presents the reader with what de Certeau describes as “a way of being in the city”(131).
In this way, White’s description of his journey leads the reader through what exists outside of the city’s function, the ‘style’ involved in being a city dweller. The text allows the reader to see the city in a fashion that draws attention to the way in which the larger structure of the city shapes the experience of those who reside there.