E. B. White Tonight: Part 2 of the title story from "The Second Tree from the Corner"

Edward C. Caswell drew this illustration for the
original edition of E. B. White's Here Is New York.

"Trexler meditated, as he walked, on what he wanted. 'What do you want?' he heard again. Trexler knew what he wanted, and what, in general, all men wanted; and he was glad, in a way, that it was both inexpressible and unattainable, and that it wasn't a wing."

-- White, in "The Second Tree from the Corner"

by Ken

Last night we had the first half of the 1947 E. B. White story that gave its name to the 1954 anthology of White's writing. As the story began we were plunged into what we eventually found out was the first session this man Trexler was having with a psychiatrist. Trexler is suffering, we learn, from what he thinks of as the "dullest set of neurotic symptoms in the world": "the dizziness in the streets, the constricting pain in the back of the neck, the apprehensions, the tightness of the scalp, the inability to concentrate, the despondency and the melancholy times, the feeling of pressure and tension, the anger at not being able to work, the anxiety over work not done, the gas on the stomach"-- with an unamplified reference to "that day on the Madison Avenue bus." At the point where we left off last night, the sessions had settled into "a routine," and Trexler "felt no better" and "found it impossible to work."

NYU, I've discovered, has something called a "Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database" --

an annotated multimedia listing of prose, poetry, film, video and art that was developed to be a dynamic, accessible, comprehensive resource for teaching and research in MEDICAL HUMANITIES, and for use in health/pre-health, graduate and undergraduate liberal arts and social science settings.

Included in the section of "Literature Annotations" is none other than "The Second Tree from the Corner," with a list of keywords (Doctor-Patient Relationship, Empathy, Individuality, Mental Illness, Ordinary Life, Patient Experience, Physician Experience, Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine, Psychotherapy), a two-paragraph "summary," and the following "commentary":

This is a beautifully written story that could be used with other works (e.g. Warren William's "Doctor Talk to Me," Flannery O'Connor's The Lame Shall Enter First) to help doctors (or other helpers) understand that just as they are "sizing up" their clients, their clients also are assessing them, their skills, values, and motives.

Okay, I suppose. There's much for medical humanists to ponder in this story.

Tonight, as I mentioned last night, the psychiatrist asks Trexler a question that changes the course of their thereapy, and perhaps of Trexler's life.


FOR PART 2 OF "THE SECOND TREE FROM THE
CORNER," AND A MUSICAL SURPRISE, CLICK HERE


SUNDAY NIGHT: Not sure yet, but maybe it's time to dip into the wonderful world of shaggy-dog-story-telling of Jean Shepherd?


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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