BLACK HOUND: The Back Story

Remembering E.B. White

by Richard Conniff

Because “Black Hound” was my first magazine piece, I sent off a copy to the writer E.B. White, to thank him for his influence, mostly felt through his books The Elements of Style, a manual for writers, and Stuart Little, a children’s book. White was about almost 80 then, and happily ensconced on his farm on the coast Maine.

White wrote back, to say that at first he thought this was one of those letters that did not need a response. “But then …