Companionable ...

... In the Words of E. B. White - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... unlike Ernest Hemingway, whom White famously parodied in "Across the Street and into the Grill," there is nothing austere about White's plainness. It is, rather, a vehicle for straight-faced, self-deprecating humor. "Writers...who take their literary selves with great seriousness are at considerable pains never to associate their name with anything funny or flippant or nonsensical or 'light,' " he writes.