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John McPhee, The John McPhee Reader (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1976) One can describe the work of John McPhee in numerous ways—inheritor of New Yorker-style New Journalism from the likes of A.J. Liebling, Joseph Mitchell, and others; master of nonfiction prose; inventor of the modern "profile", etc—but perhaps he is best understood in his own words. "All writing is a process of selection," he says in a New York Times interview. "My work is a question of winnowing...Because I'm interested in structure, I must sound mechanistic. But it's just the opposite. I want to get the structural problems out of the way first, so I can get to what matters more. After they're solved, the only thing left for me to do is tell the story as well as possible. At that point, there is no escape. I'm just dealing with words on paper." (New York Times Book Review, November 27, 1977) "I do get a kick out of writing," he goes on to say, "about two minutes a day." McPhee is a master stylist, but deceivingly so, with ever-present humility, with a language free of affectation. He is a mirror-man, concerned with juxtapositions and composites. McPhee's sentences themselves seem no great feat until the reader recognizes that he or she has just traveled between two distant points on a compass without even knowing it. Just arrived, as if accidentally, in some foreign land. And not only arrived, but drawn in, held captive. The John McPhee Reader is a compendium of his early work. It samples from 12 of his New Yorker pieces, all of which were later released in book-form. From his profiles (of a college-age Bill Bradley, of a free-spirited zoologist who eats road kill) to his variegated meditations (on oranges, on the atomic bomb), The Reader offers an accessible introduction to this distinctly American voice. New York Times interview with Stephen Singular: New York Times Book Review, November 27, 1977 MORE: McPhee’s home page, offering a bibliography, a brief bio and an audio link Link to Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross |
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