When a Massachusetts teenager sent a letter to E.B. White 40 years ago, he likely wasn’t expecting a response. And White almost certainly had no idea that his young fan would grow up to be one of the country’s most beloved talk show hosts.
Conan O’Brien, the host of the TBS show Conan, mentioned the letter he had written to White a few weeks ago on his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.
That led employees of Cornell University’s library, which houses White’s archive, to track down O’Brien’s letter. O’Brien posted an image of the newly discovered note on Twitter.
A few weeks ago on my podcast, I mentioned a letter I wrote to E.B. White when I was in high school. The good people at E. B. White's archives in @Cornell_Library managed to track that letter down. pic.twitter.com/bLivTJrEA2
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) December 5, 2019
O’Brien wrote that he received one of White’s books as a gift at around the same time his high school class was assigned his essays for reading.
“I thought I should tell you that I enjoyed both your letters and your essays very much,” O’Brien wrote. “I’ve been thinking of becoming a writer, but I hear that even the best are criticized and I don’t take criticism well.”
“Thank you for restoring my faith in education and especially essay writing,” the letter concludes.
White responded to O’Brien in a letter that the talk show host says he has framed in his home.
“I thank you for your letter and am pleased to learn that I restored somebody’s faith in education,” White wrote. “You, on your part, restored mine—by writing a legible and well-constructed letter. You should see some of the letters I get.”
“If you don’t take criticism well, you will have a rough time as a writer, because you will surely be criticized, no matter how well you do,” White continued. “I never minded it much, except when the critic had his facts wrong.”
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas–based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
