It's a lot like reading Beebe: the style is overdone, almost as though a subject like railroads can't be in The New Yorker unless there is some highbrow literary style in the mix.
Those familiar with what usually passed for prose in the magazine in those years will recognize it.
Perhaps a better 'feel' for his style is in the Decade of the Trains book. You may still not like it then ... but you will have a fairer assessment.
Over the years, several non-railfan friends, upon learning I like trains, have recommended the Rogers EM Whittaker essays that appeared in the New Yorker.
So recently I finally bought a book of the entire collection.
I'm disappointed. To be honest, I find a lot of it boring and pretentious. Whittaker amassed a truly staggering number of rail miles, and I'd love to have heard about his journeys in a straightforward down-to-earth telling. But using the alter-ego Frimbo character, and employing an odd point of view whereby some unnamed "we" relays Frimbo's tales as accounts told to this "we," well, it's tiresome. I put it down halfway through, and I'm not sure I'll ever go back.
There is definitely a lot of interesting railroad info contained in the pieces, but I just didn't find it a good read overall.
Have any of you folks read the essays? What was your opinion?
I'd heard so much about the essays, I was totally predisposed to like them. It's been a letdown.
Still in training.
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