Cornell and the Open Road: 1917-1925 Summary and Analysis

This chapter contains letters beginning after White graduates from Mount Vernon High School to his employment at The New Yorker in that magazine's early start-up days. It includes the period of time when he and college chum Howard Cushman took off on a cross-country journey in a Model T roadster after their junior year in college as well as his time as a freelancer in New York while trying unsuccessfully to find a newspaper job. White had some confidence in himself as a writer because of his campus job as a reporter for the Cornell Daily Sun, which along with his fraternity membership had made him a BMOC (big man on campus). During his time at Cornell, White became good friends with Howard Cushman, editor of The Widow, and with fraternity...