"The Death of a Pig," and a pig resurrected

It's difficult to ascertain where the success of "The Death of a Pig" would be without the success of Charlotte's Web. To answer the question: "What do they [these articles] teach us about what lasts in literary nonfiction, and about what truly connects with readers," it's possible to say that without the pervasive success of sweet Charlotte's Web, how it's become an iconic classic of the 20th century, that the essay may not have survived this long. It's possible to say that Charlotte's Web gave us a way of reading and understanding the "Death of the Pig":

The design of "Charlotte's Web" is more intricate, a fact that would surely please Charlotte. In 1948, White wrote "Death of a Pig" which appeared in Atlantic Monthly, an oddly affecting account of how he failed to save the life of a sick pig, made ironic by the fact that the pig had been bought to act its part in the "tragedy" of the spring pig fattened for winter butchering. Since literature is not life, White set out in "Charlotte's Web" to save his pig in retrospect, this time not from an unexpected illness but from its presumably fated "tragedy." The main plot, then, is that staple of adventure literature--the rescue of the innocent.

This is from a 1970's New York Times review by Gerald Weales, and it gives us an easy motive for the book that became famous--that he's seeking to save the pig that he couldn't save in real life; if this is the case, then the essay loses its nuance and becomes a mere narrative that served as a stepping stone to something greater and more lasting.

But, of course, we're talking about the EB White who was one of the "greatest essayists of this century," and we know "The Death of the Pig" has merit beyond its connection to the children's book. It's a piece I find oddly alluring, and it's irony goes further than the irony Weales suggests. Yes, it's not lost on the reader that White is trying to save a pig that in the end will just become ham and smoked bacon, killed ceremonially, a premeditated murder that is "in the first degree but is quick and skillful." But what I find peculiar about the essay is White's attention to details, details he seemingly has no need to admit here, that are irrelevant outside of the experience of the pig.

For starters, we know he's writing because he "feels driven" to account for the last nights spent with the pig because, "the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting." He can't remember the number of nights even, and we're presented with his more pressing worry: his own deteriorating health.

Only in the second paragraph do we get White's attachment to the pig: "The loss we felt was not the loss of ham but the loss of pig. He had evidently become precious to me, not that he represented a distant nourishment in a hungry time, but that he had suffered in a suffering world." Even here I don't get the sense that White has loved this pig like maybe he loves Fred, but that the story he is about to tell has more to do with the nature of suffering and how the pig's death illuminated some of those universally plaguing issues for White.

Once we get into the story of the pig's suffering, we know that White doesn't immediately attend to the pig once he learns he should give it oil: he sits and thinks about his troubles; he tinkers around for awhile. We learn he "dined well and at someone else's expense," before he checks on the pig at midnight of the first night of its illness. We have the details about the vet's pretty companion, how White notices she has an engagement ring flashing on her hand. We have the most overtly callous moment in the essay right after the pig dies: "I knelt, saw that he was dead, and left him there." He doesn't even dig the pig's own grave, and he doesn't rush out to help in the morning, instead eating breakfast slowly, because he knew "Fred [his dog] ... was supervising the work of digging."

We're constantly reminded of White's pressing, selfish needs. The essay resists sentimentality, and whereas we don't know the cause of White's deteriorating health at the time of writing (could he perhaps have contracted erysipelas after all?), I'm left with the feeling that he's confronting his moment of witnessing suffering more out of guilt, an after-the-fact homage to the pig, borne out of the grander realization that "Once in a while something slips - one of the actors goes up in his lines and the whole performance stumbles and halts."

So...is this what makes it lasting? What could we possibly learn from a story told during the outdated practice of "buying a spring pig in blossom time, feeding it through summer and fall, and butchering it when the solid cold weather arrives," a practice that we'd likely file away into pastoral cliche were it written by a contemporary? I'd say it lasts because in the end it has little to do country nostalgia, farmyard antics, anthropomorphizing (although there is some), or even love for an animal. Rather it's an exploration of suffering, our own callous attitudes, the juxtaposition of the vibrancy of living and the finality of death--and what's more lasting than that?

White's method, with essays, was about "writing a thing first and thinking about it afterward." And perhaps that what made him so appealing. He gave us a new way (or possibly refreshed a very old way) of considering the world. I could see there being something so American, so casual and idyllic, so appealingly back-to-the-land-ish about this approach; what a notion that such meditations can actually be something.

And, of course, who can't love a guy who wrote a column called "One Man's Meat"?

And the role of Byliner in all this? I see Byliner as a storage place for a compendium of quality nonfiction. By giving the site an almost social-media feel, by allowing the readers to interact by "following," having favorites, creating reading lists, it represents itself almost as a collaborative collection of readers' favorites rather than a "best of" list being handed down from on high, or from some cranky editor. 

I think it's interesting that Byliner sometimes only works as a connection between the reader and the original source. I like that they do this, because it invites all the various publications into the collection as well, rather than seeing itself as isolating single pieces in Byliner-land. It shares the love, rather than claiming ownership of. It serves as a network and illuminates the interconnectedness of contemporary nonfiction. Where would Krakauer be without EB White and Hunter S Thompson? 

I also like that they do originals, and, as one of the articles posted awhile back on the course blog said, they do a very in-depth editing process, as much as any print magazine would.