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E.B. White's Prophetic 1948 Essay That Anticipated 9/11 In the first paragraph, drawn from the opening of Here Is New York, E.B. White approaches the city through a simple pattern of classification. In the next two paragraphs, taken from the end of the essay, White hauntingly anticipates the terror that would visit the city more than 50 years later. Notice Whites habit of putting keywords in the most emphatic spot in a sentence: the very end. This is an excerpt from Whites piece on New York first published in 1948.  Here Is New York also appears in Essays of E.B. White (1977). Here Is New York There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter - the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities, the greatest is the last - the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. Whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference. Each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, and each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions. All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York, the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm. Selected Works by E.B. White Every Day Is Saturday, essays (1934)Quu Vadimus? or, The Case for the Bicycle,   essays and stories (1939)One Mans Meat, essays (1944)Stuart Little, childrens fiction (1945)Charlottes Web, childrens fiction (1952)The Second Tree From the Corner,   essays and stories (1954)The Elements of Style,   by William Strunk (1959)Essays of E.B. White (1977)Writings From The New Yorker, essays (1990)