As a fellow geologist, I am smitten with McPhee's use of the technical jargon to create prose with the feeling of poetry. I've enjoyed and learned from every piece of his work that I've read. "Annals of the Former World" would go with me to the proverbial desert island.
15
I was shoveling river sand through a sieve as part of a plaster and remodeling crew in New Mexico when I was first introduced to the work of John McPhee by one of my bosses. Anytime I would complain that I had been shoveling sand all day he'd say something about it being only "a fragment of a second in the scope of Deep Time," and then gush openly about McPhee and his masterful writings on geography. Years later I would find myself relocating from California back to New Mexico to take a job as a veterinarian at the racetrack he very lovingly and accurately portrayed in "Ruidoso," inspired to do so in part by that piece of writing.
"Human time, regarded in the perspective of geologic time, is much too thin to be discerned--the mark at the end of a ruler." One of the great lessons learned in The Annals is that the earth and her volcanoes, earthquakes, ice ages, rising sea levels, falling sea levels, rising continents--the powers of the earth are in control of us and will outlast us, not the other way around. In an era where our leaders make a daily mockery of "facts," the undeniability of history as found in the literal bedrock of our civilization as well as in the writings of John McPhee give me great consolation and maybe a little hope that mankind's brighter minds will eventually prevail.
42
Very presciently he said in one of the geology series (I forget which): 'If you remember only one thing from this book, remember that the top of Mt Everest consists of marine limestone.' As he anticipated (for some of his readers), that indeed is all I remember (after 20 or so years) ... but was worth having read it all anyway. Have enjoyed - hugely - all the books of his that I've read (many - but not all), on various themes. One that made a big impression with me was his book that portrayed the Swiss Army. Thanks for this profile.
11
Worthy of its subject.
As a former Bureau of Land Management botanist who had visited nearly all of the Bighorn Basin, Rising From the Plains was particularly resonant, and truthful.
5
John McPhee has made me laugh out loud. Who laughs out loud reading about building a canoe, surviving in Alaska, or driving a semi? He is a wonderful craftsman, and his work has filled many hours of my life. Thank you, Sam Anderson.
21
"... Alger Hiss, the former United States official who, at the height of McCarthyism, was disgraced by allegations of spying for the Russians."
Hiss wasn't disgraced by allegations or by McCarthyism, he disgraced himself by spying for one of history's most abusive and murderous regimes. Way to never give up the fight, NYT.
10
granitesentry.....it seems to me that you're the one that's never going to give up the fight. not everything is a fight to the death. it was a lovely story. lighten up.....
11
thank you. a profile to match the man.
14
Dear dear dear. 2017 and so little mention of the support team of his first and second wife who made the McPhee life possible. Great author but the article had more about the fish in his life than the women.
33
Thank you for a great article.
My own John McPhee story:
One summer mid-way through my college years,
I stumbled onto Coming into the Country,
leading me to the library and a few of his other books,
and finally the bookstore and Basin and Range.
When September rolled around,
I headed straight to the Administration office and
switched my major to Geology.
Thank you, Mr. McPhee!!
28
Outstanding and moving piece. It literally made me cry.
My appreciation of John McPhee is deeper than ever.
And I am now a fan of Sam Anderson. What a sensitive piece of work. Many thanks for this.
14
When I read the title of this article on the NYT website, I jumped to it immediately, with incredible joy. I am a devoted reader of John McPhee, my favorite work being "Coming into the Country". I've recommended this book to many a friend who enjoys a good read. For those not familiar with McPhee, I'd explain about the depth of his writing, study of subject, and diversity of topics he has written on to provide insight in the way of a delicious and memorable read. I cannot help my enthusiasm. McPhee is such a gifted writer and I was delighted to read this excellent profile of a man I consider an American hero.
11
thank you sam andersen and john mcphee for this article... it took me back to indiana in 1965 when, sitting in my high school library during my sophomore year, i opened for the first time the new yorker magazine, and read the article about a basketball player named bradley... i was confused... i wondered what this sports story was doing in this strange magazine with its fine-print paragraphs, short stories, and poems... but i was a high school boy in indiana, and basketball a passion; reading that article was the moment when literature and life came together...
14
Thank you for this wonderful article. If as Simone Weil once said "Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer", then McPhee might just be the most religious man of our time. A true artist.
21
This is one of the best newspaper profiles I've ever read. About one of my favorite writers.
28
Waiting for a Ship, Basin and Range and Control of Nature are great reads.
6
My first encounter with McPhee was in a NYer piece ("A Forager, April 6, 1968) about a week-long November canoe trip on the Susquehanna River with Euell Gibbons, whose "Stalking the Wild Asparagus," must have inspired their adventure. They traveled light - frying pan, cooking oil, matches, a few utensils, and sleeping bags, relying on Gibbons' foraging expertise for their meals. They weighed themselves in Selinsgrove, PA where they started, and at the end of the trip, having survived solely on foraged plants and nuts, McPhee had gained several ounces and Gibbons had put on two pounds. I was hooked, and began reading the books, which always blur the lines separating learning and entertainment.
10
What a wonderful profile, replete with the dash and detail that made me fall in love with the best writing in the New Yorker back in my college days. What an inspiring man McPhee is and exemplar of a richly well- lived life. He embodies the importance not of pursuing one's passions but rather that which sparks one's curiosity, for that can lead us to discover new passions. It was so touching to read about this boundless explorer of the frontiers that lie all about us. Thank you.
8
Appreciators of McPheevian prose, new-come and vintage, may also enjoy the elegant, informative introduction, by long-time Princeton professor Will Howarth, to The John McPhee Reader, which deftly illuminates a superb American writer's world and work.
7
newly-come
1
After rereading this wonderfully well-written profile, I realized that the author surreptitiously followed McPhee’s structural process from “The Pine Barrens”. Why begin this essay about a prolific master writer with banal questions about driving instructions? McPhee has made his reputation by being hyper-observant and curious about details most of us feel are insignificant or boring. “Our moderns minds, too, had been paved….” we are told. The article ends with questions posed about the route taken to Princeton. “…I had no idea. I had hardly been paying attention.” We blindly follow Google maps or make involuntary changes to our routes via Talk for Waze as Lyft drivers do. We really do not know where we actually physically are since we did not unfold a handheld map and discover where our path lay in reference to other landmarks or possible routes. I was reminded of Robert Frost’s famous poem about the road not taken. McPhee has consciously chosen a different route.
36
"Assembling California" was my introduction to John McPhee, an idle peruse in the New Yorker that turned serious and sent me to the bookstore, to find the geology underlying the rest of the country.
I learned about diverting lava from a harbor in Iceland, and the weir at the junction of the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya holding the river on course to New Orleans. I learned that McPhee is just so good, that anything that interests him will interest me. Even fish.
The writer talks of McPhee's focus on structure, and the structure and the words are masterful. But for me, McPhee is brilliant because he can translate his own curiosity and desire to know every layer and detail into brilliant writing that makes me *need* to know every layer and detail.
McPhee taught me that the hills in north NJ were the result of a volcanic hot spot that NJ passed over, and that the Palisades were serpentine seafloor. He made we want to know about the mountains near me - the author's own mountain and my own nearby local ridge - and made me think about the rocks I keep digging in my garden, perfectly rounded potatoes that were definitely rolled under a glacier or the predecessor to my back yard creek. I look at the next neighborhood, and see an old lakebed left from melting glaciers.
McPhee taught me to look another layer deeper. He taught a lot of us, and that is an amazing legacy.
14
By orders of magnitude and across dozens of angular unconformities, my favorite writer of all time.
19
Very well written article!Really liked it!
4
I remember his "Pine Barrons" to this day, and have always kept an anxious eye on how the area is faring.
7
John McPhee has opened fascinating new worlds to me that I would never thought to explore. His writing is addictive, and each subject, no matter how droll, grabs me and promises "You are going to love this!" I have never been disappointed.
11
In my bookcase sandwiched between my favorite books are the pages of several John McPhee articles from the New Yorker which I tore out and placed in plastic folders to keep and reread. His article on “forensic geology” from the Jan. 29, 1996 issue titled “The Gravel Page” is truly one of the most fascinating pieces of non-fiction I have ever read. John McPhee’s writing has been a great source of reading pleasure for this reader over many years.
14
I just finished listening to the audiobook of "Looking for a Ship." I'd read it years ago in print, and it's still a great piece of reporting. The ending is one only a great writer could pull off.
5
Rising from the Plains is another classic...mixing in understandable geomorphology and Wyoming geologist David Love's own family story.
8
You know that parlor game where you pick two people from history to have dinner with? For years I've said I would pick Socrates and John McPhee. I would quiz Socrates on all the questions I have, and after the dinner wait for the book by McPhee so I could understand what really happened. A true treasure.
26
Perfect.
3
John McPhee is an American treasure. Full stop.
13
Thank you for introducing me to John McPhee. I feel like I have just discovered pure gold. Great article. Congratulations
5
The lead. He a great writer. Structure schumchure. He a writer.
1
I read a McPhee article in which he re-created a trip taken by H D Thoreau. McPhee, however, did it by canoe. I wrote, introducing myself, saying I was a boat-builder and wished I had known, I would have lent him rowing boats so he could have more accurately re-created Thoreau's adventure.
McPhee wrote back, thanking me but adding, "I am a canoeist, nothing will change that. But I am well-familiar with the Adirondack Guideboat. I raised my children in Rangeley Lakes guideboats.... sort of Adirondack Guideboats if built by the Newport News Ship and Drydock Company."
My own McPhee sentence
11
A Room Full of Hovings, The Pine Barrens, The Birch Bark Canoe, Oranges, The Survival of the Bark Canoe, Levels of the Game and Coming Into The Country. These enduring loves never grow old. I picked up a John McPhee volume to re-read just last summer. Elegant and entertaining, McPhee is the master of literary non-fiction.
10
What a terrifying assignment, to write a profile on John McFee, the perfect writer. You deserve combat pay. Nice job. I especially liked the end about the road. It is the perfect illustration of how a writer would feel dealing with his overwhelming process. I took the lazy way, I got there and yet under his examination perhaps feeling guilty and a little defiant about it — yet knowing there was no way you, good writer that you are, was going to arrive using that particular method.
9
Mr. McP, I hope you have discovered Tristan Gooley. He shows us how to read trees, moss, puddles, branches. He introduces a new world beneath our feet.
2
I avoid comment sections because they are often filled with anger and ignorance. How nice to read one that brings together such joy and appreciation for this fine writer. I have read almost all of his books and reading comments about particular favorite titles brings back back brief "ah yes" moments of pleasure. Thank you Mr. McPhee.
21
What a delight to read this piece. I can still recite the opening of McPhee's essay on the MIT Fellows in Africa program: Fifty-two People on a Continent. A master of the introduction.
3
So overjoyed to see a story about this legend, and then the first couple of paragraphs are about the difference between Mr. McPhee and those who are grew up with different technology. How mundane, how ageist, how tedious. Let us investigate and celebrate what this amazing man has to offer and not enumerate on how he is different from 30 year olds. That introduction does not inform us of John McPhee but rather on the small perspective of the writer. For centuries, those younger use newer tools; the comparison to the older is not interesting or informative but condescending and speaks only to the writers immaturity and small vision. I hope the rest is about McPhee and not about the writer.
3
Ha!! That's so funny – you fall into the exact trap that Sam Anderson (the writer of the article) fell into when reading "The Pine Barrens"! I hope that by the time you finished reading you appreciated this structural device borrowed from McPhee.
(Maybe not a good idea to comment before reading to the end.....)
Cheers!
17
You missed the author's point--and a great read--by not reading the full article. Your loss.
1
"and there were so many of them that the car thought it was a person and frantically beeped at me to buckle the seatbelt"
Sweet image. You know how to write suppressed fireworks too.
5
The writer of the article also knows how to observe, how c to use those observations in his essay and how to write them down.
Mr. McPhee sets the standard for us all.
4
Wonderful writer, wonderful profile. I re-read McPhee favorites frequently and discover craft and beauty I hadn't noticed the last time. Thanks to all for this profile, especially the reluctant subject.
9
A lovely, insightful profile of an extraordinary writer. Very moving, hand over my heart...
6
I wrote a brief "thank-you-for-all-the-great-books" note to John McPhee a few years ago, who responded quickly and kindly. His creative non-fiction covers huge swaths of topics and would be right at home in any number of addresses in the Dewey Decimal System!
8
A wonderfully written piece (with a great structure)....
4
McPhee is a writer's writer. What a wonderful gift and a rare example of humility in a world that venerates celebrities who blow their own horn. I heard him read at Keewaydin at the dedication of the clinic in memory of his parents a few years ago. In his telling, although his father came into play, it was clearly his mother (unmentioned in the article) who had a strong and memorable influence on him. His wonderful personal story about camp life "Swimming with Canoes" was collected with a number of other shorter pieces in "Silk Parachute." He can do long . . . and he can do short! You can't miss either way.
11
Beautifully written.
6
I once wrote this man about an article he wrote about Princeton football. Not only did he respond to me, he did it on a postcard of the old Palmer Stadium. Who does stuff like that these days. John McPhee does.
15
“McPhee has profiled hundreds but never been profiled.”
McPhee was profiled by Noah Adams for NPR’s All Things Considered in the late 1970’s
4
The tribe needs people like John McPhee. The tribe needs storytellers.
9
Our best nonfiction(?) writer....along with Annie Dillard and Lawrence Millman, theyre great but McPhee is unbelievable, tantamount to a god.
9
"...three unapologetic developers."
Yes, that's the cohort you expect McPhee to finger as would-be spoilers of a treasure like the Pine Barrens (replete with airport fantasies). But "city planner" isn't one. The planners get blamed when they try to PRESERVE open space, so don't hang the stench of development on them.
1
A masterful piece of writing about a master of writing who in my reading experience is second to none.
8
Well, my first McPhee book, "Coming Into the Country," was acquired, based on the recommendation of a reviewer. It more than lived up to its review, and I began a lifelong diet of McPhee -- from Oranges to Thomas Having to bark canoes to flying pumpkin seeds. I must admit I flagged a bit at the second book on geology, but the man's ability to describe things and how they work is unparalleled inn all of literature. Thank you for all the wonderful books, Mr. McPhee.
14
Excellent Structure, Mr. Anderson. Very funny and thoughtful.
I wonder if the Master will ponder Google Maps as to Kedit....Hmmm. I'm guessing he thinks one should enjoy the external world actively rather than passively. And yes, passively approach the internal world of the Mind while writing.
Mr. McPhee is an American treasure and gift. Gently guiding any reader to a deeper understandings of both the external and internal geology.
Well Done.
9
A great article written by a great writer about a great writer. This isn't quite as vivid as the pickerel in the pickerel in the pickerel, but along the same general lines.
12
Wonderful way to start the weekend, having one's eyes and mind opened by Sam Anderson and John McPhee.
9
I don't think I'll ever estimate what yet he has to teach me, and for that, I am forever grateful.
3
An an amazing read! Thank you for introducing me to this wonderful writer, will immediately select books to read from several of those mentioned in your wonderful article.
4
While leading canoe trips on the lower Colorado River in the early 1990s, I would read from Encounters from the Archdruid. The aluminum Gruman canoes were heavy and hot in 100+ temperatures. The high schoolers paddlers, wearing big, orange horse collar life vests, would be floating in the water. We tied the canoes together in a big raft. I sat in one, reading to them about Floyd Dominy and challenged them to consider his point of view, and how we were in the world this man had imagined. I went on to get a degree in environmental planning, to hopefully make better decisions about how we live on this one earth we share. Thank you so very much Mr. McPhee. Thank you Mr. Anderson for this thoughtful, loving profile.
10
A lovely portrait by Mr Shepard,worked carefully as befits its subject.
4
Thank you for a delicious portrait. Coming into the Country stirred me so I wrote my thesis in college around it, and spent a lot of time my senior year ruminating on all McPhee had written to date.
I am fascinated with his arcane use of computing to assist with the writing process as well as his generational insistence on directions, and perhaps disdain for the results of modern navigation.
These juxtapositions to me are the stuff of life, just as in one of his works he observed that women assisting with the quality control process in the Trojan factory would “make great dates.”
6
What John McPhee and I have in common: we are a couple of Jersey Guys. I saw him give a lecture at community college in NJ about 20 years ago. I realized then he was the rarest of men, a student of the history and lore of the Garden State.
4
A wonderful piece on one of my favorite writers. Thank you.
3
McPhee is among the very few authors whose books are worthy of shelf space, rather than Kindle space.
7
I read "A Sense of Where You Are" when I was young and loved to play basketball, even to go the gym and just shoot by myself in the quiet. I loved the sound of the ball bouncing on hardwood, the squeak of my sneaks. I thought McPhee's book was wonderful and never forgot the passage that described Bill Bradley going through his meticulous shooting rituals, even with his eyes closed. He could do this because of the repetition and his "sense of where you are."
7
Try "Looking for a Ship" - fascinating and entirely relevant even today. Love this writer. Now I am inspired to read these others I don't even know about! Thanks!
1
Wonderful article and a remarkable Jersey resource!
3
"Coming Into the Country" was outstanding: Where else would you learn about the D-9 Cat, aboriginal culture, bush country aviation and Denali all in the same book?
But ...
The McPhee book that anyone ought to start with is "Survival of the Bark Canoe." It is part instructional manual on how to build a canoe; part history of the St Johns River area; part psychological study of Henri Valliancourt; part reflection on the conflict between tradition and modernity; and part adventure story, which ends in a semi-comic resolution.
I fell in love with McPhee's writing with this book and have been a devoted fan since.
Nice profile.
4
Such a lovely profile. Thank you for writing.
1
The greatest living American writer, in my humble opinion. Our Plutarch.
4
Deep thanks. It's 6:33 a.m. I can't wait for the bookstore to open.
5
In all of nonfiction, John McPhee surely stands alone. He is at once studiously brilliant, wide-ranging in his breadth of curiosity, and relentlessly prolific. He has done so much in creating and sustaining an entire genre, encouraging students both in class and afar, proving year after year, that there are people hungry for thoughtful, observant books!
14
I was just thinking of John McPhee and his book, "The Control of Nature," this afternoon as I attended a presentation of the history and sudden end of what was Oregon's second largest city: Vanport. Vanport was built in a floodplain alongside the Columbia River and when the river flooded due to rapid snow melting from Canada to northern Oregon, it was swept away in a matter of hours, never to return.
When I saw John McPhee's photo and this article dedicated to him, I was afraid he, too, had been swept away forever. I am delighted to learn that he is as alive in his own body as he is in the hearts and minds of so many who have been touched by his writing. Thank you for a wonderful tribute a remarkable and fascinating human being.
22
I took McPhee's writing course at Princeton. It was the best class I have ever taken. He spent so much time thoughtfully editing every piece of writing we did. He was so warm and engaging. The most useful lesson I learned from him was how to take a mundane object (e.g. oranges) and tell a compelling story about it. I work as a writer now in Silicon Valley and use those techniques all the time to talk about seemingly inscrutable topics ranging from APIs to hardware. Thanks, Professor McPhee!
14
One image from one of his books has always stayed with me. Can't remember the book's title, I'm afraid, but I was researching Colorado geology at the time: he's talking about erosion, and says to look up, and a mile overhead, up in the sky, that's where a river once flowed.
Beautiful.
28
I think you are thinking of Rising From The Plains, a personal favorite.
Annals of the Former World.
Another: the dust layer left from Mnt. St. Helens eruption was three inches; and from the eruption 600,000 yrs ago that formed the Yellowstone-Grand Tetons caldera was 60 feet deep.
3
I first became acquainted with Mr. McPhee in 1978, when I took my first teaching job on the edges of the NJ Pine Barrens. I colleague recommended his book The Pine Barrens to better understand the students who populated my classes. I was stunned by his writing style, which was unlike others I had previously studied in college. Spare, his writing seemed a series of reflections rather than a linear tale. However, upon its completion, I recognized in fact it was indeed linear, but not in a traditional sense. I instantly became a fan, and have remained one to this day. Thank you for this profile of a brilliant, quiet, and unassuming writer.
28
So interesting to me how a writer can change lives. These comments! Vacation and explorations sites decided, career paths shaped, because of what and how he has written.
For me, it was that I had to go to Iceland after reading Control of Nature. I took my 11 yr old son. We walked all the way around Vestmannaeyjar, felt the heat from the 70s eruption.
You have an experience like this and then the landscape of the mind is changed and so your life altered.
And it all started with his high school English teacher.
37
While living in Northern Greece, I happened to read 'Annals of the Former World' - and was delighted to discover that the book takes a detour to Northern Greece. Of course the first excursion I took was to the Vourinos mountain. That book made me realize you don't really know a country until you know something about its geology. A great writer.
8
I have lived in Princeton a scant 26 years. I don't believe that I have ever seen the man but I have enjoyed reading many of Mr. McPhee's books. There is something in John McPhee's writing that makes me think that I know who he is. And he is a person that I would definitely like to meet. Somehow your portrait of him seemed familiar to me. You captured the John McPhee that I would like to meet so beautifully.
Thank you!
14
One of the best books I've ever read in my life was John McPhee's book about the levees of the Mississippi. He brought to life the feats of engineering, along with human hubris, that predicted the levees were going to fail. I was therefore not surprised by what happened to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina (but was horribly saddened.) Thank you, Mr. McPhee, for igniting my environmentalist passions.
5
Gorgeous story, powered by love. Thank you.
20
Great piece and McPhee's a great writer. It's funny watching the ending when Anderson pretty much confesses that he, unlike Bill Bradley, has no sense of where he is. And with the phone in charge, it doesn't matter. Life is changing so quickly.
6
Thank you for this article about a wonderful man and writer. His writing is inspirational, diverse, and highly original, and has provided the varied hues of American life that many of us have never considered. My first McPhee book was Encounters with the Archdruid in the 1970s, and it was life-changing.
5
This was a beautifully written article about a fascinating subject and a true delight to read.
13
From one writer to another, thank you, Sam Anderson. A wonderful story on John McPhee, possibly (probably) the finest writer in America today. McPhee stands out as a brilliant communicator in a town filled with some of the finest minds in the country. I first discovered his wonderful writing with The Pine Barrens in the middle 1970s. My most surreal situation, though, may be the time my wife and I spent part of a week driving around the Poconos, listening to audiobooks at times. While returning to New Jersey, we were approaching and driving through the Delaware Water Gap from west to east while (with no planning) listening to an abridged version of Annals of the Former World. As we drove, and eventually pulled over and parked to concentrate on McPhee's words as he described a trip through the same exact spot, going east to west. We were actually looking at what he was describing.
I've never met John McPhee, although based on where I live, I may certainly have passed him on campus or in town without realizing I was that close to greatness. Thanks for a wonderful profile.
15
Like many here, I began reading McPhee in the New Yorker sound forty years ago. I wasn't really aware who he was through the first pieces until I read the Georgia story that contained a woman biologist, road kill, and a little known politician, Jimmy Carter. Reading it, I told my husband " oh, here's a good one by that Guy we like. His name is McPhee." From then on, we checked every issue to see if he was there, and bought all the books. When I go on road trips, I often take a copy of Assembling California as a guide. A powerful force in my reading life. Thank you.
11
I am 70 and I have read John McPhee all my life, swooning all the while. He recently came to my rescue when I was under the influence of the results of the '16 presidential election. Like most of the country I was in a panic, hyperventilating every day. It was only while rereading Basin and Range that I was able to calm down, enter that world, and leave the land of Trump. Thank you, John McPhee.
74
I am going to take this cure, too, for the despair and other forms of gloom brought on by a creepy election season and its aftermath. Thanks for sharing.
6
I started collecting John McPhee's writing from the New Yorker. I saved "Annals of the Former World" to read again, and reread again. When it came out as a book, I bought copies for all my friends, one for me, and one to lend out. I cannot think of a more satisfying writer, perhaps because of his apparent interest in everything, obsession with structure, and clarity. He is the literary equivalent of J.S. Bach.
31
My college English professor once mentioned to me to pick up a book from the library, but he couldn't exactly remembered the name of the book, but it was about Arthur Ashe. I combed through the stacks and picked up McPhee's "Levels of the Game". It completely transformed how I viewed writing and sport. Needless to say, I give my graduating students a copy of this book every year.
9
Thank you for this portrait of John McPhee. I especially love The Pine Barrens. I first read it when the pine barrens was just the stretch of road with the stunted trees on the way to the beach. I began to turn onto the sandy roads to explore, Now I live in Burlington County near the edge of this unique ecosystem where we have Oaks and Pines and the Indian Pipes show up once in a while.So much of what is in the book is still accessible.
8
Excellent article. John McPhee wonders if his work will last. His books on geology, by themselves, will inspire generations of young scientists, just as Shakespeare still resonates. That is not quite immortality, but it's close. I hope he knows how much he is valued.
19
La Place de la Concorde Suisse.
I felt as though a miracle had occurred when reading it. Beyond beautiful. Fighter jets hidden in Alps, ready to use the local highways to take off, and an army that makes room for the eccentrics among the draftees.
And as a Jersey boy, I always loved re-reading the opening chapter of Basin and Range, where the nightmare of Ft. Lee, NJ, is transformed into fascinating geology, past the toll plaza. Doesn't get better than that.
8
Interesting that you should mention that one of his many great books. It’s my favorite too,not surprising as I’m Swiss and consider it the most fascinating writing about the country’s military and some of its many characters.
John McPhee is the finest writer about tennis in America. His book "Levels of the Game" - Ashe / Graebner - early U.S. Open is a classic and should be read by every player that loves the game.
Only David Foster Wallace and perhaps Frank Deford can match McPhee in an understanding and perception of the tennis.
Thanks for this essay.
5
When I was 23 I devoured "Coming Into the Country," in part because I'd been to Alaska the year before when McPhee was roaming around, taking notes, and no doubt thinking about structure. That story cemented many things in my mind, not the least of which was that McPhee was a genius. I've reread it several times and still learn from his masterly writing.
10
Thank you for a remarkable portrait of the "behind the scenes" making of a John McPhee book. I have read and loved many of them. It is very thought provoking his style and overwhelming "structured" approach.
"And yet McPhee’s work is not melancholy, macabre, sad or defeatist. It is full of life. Learning, for him, is a way of loving the world, savoring it, before it’s gone. In the grand cosmology of John McPhee, all the earth’s facts touch one another — all its regions, creatures and eras. Its absences and presences. Fish, trucks, atoms, bears, whiskey, grass, rocks, lacrosse, weird prehistoric oysters, grandchildren and Pangea. Every part of time touches every other part of time. You just have to find the right structure".
Love that paragraph, which sums it up for me.
9
It's hard to pick out favorites from McPhee, but I particularly enjoy "Giving Good Weight", because I grew up on a farm and worked at my family's stand at the Trenton farm market, and "The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed", because my father learned to fly at Mercer County Airport, and once he took me in to see Monroe Drew's three-hulled airship. (The gas station "Neshaminy Esso" comes up in that book, and I graduated from the nearby Neshaminy High School.)
But I guess I should add that I like "Fifty-two People on a Continent" because the people in that story have such an obvious love of Africa. I like "Oranges" because I like farming, and I was particularly surprised to find a connection between the people of that book and Florida's famous year 2000 Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
And gee, "Pine Barrens". Inspired by McPhee, I've been to visit Sims Place. But "The Encircled River" is so great ... a circular essay with "circle" in the title. And ... I'd better stop here before I use up my word limit.
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For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to compose a tribute to McPhee, my favourite writer. The occasion is the publication of his new book "Draft No. 4," which I enjoyed immensely. I posted a few short notes on my blog "The New Yorker & Me." But they're totally inadequate. This piece by Sam Anderson is excellent.
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I join others below in commending this wonderful profile.
I was at CALTECH in early 70's when a then older PHD student introduced me to the New Yorker. And he would let me have his copy once he was done with it.
I was hooked and had a subsription for a long time - even delivered overseas.
Those were the New Yorker days and I remember reading mr. McPhee pieces though I forget details.
Over the years, this once great magazine was destroyed to make it popular.
And I quit reading it, perhaps I shpuld return to it.
I write short travel pieces for my friends which are popular. I have even turned it into my own app.
And without knowing his methodology, I discovered that I use a much condensed version - though with decidedly inferior results compared to mr. McPhee's.
Thanks for a great profile -
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That was so enjoyable. An excellent visit with a wise man.
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Levels of the Game: By a mile the best tennis book ever written.
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I recently discovered John McPhee's writing when I found Coming Into The Country on a list of recommended Alaska reading. Prior to our trip, I read it, loved it and googled the author. We then spent a week on an incredible flyfishing trip in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. I mentioned the book to a friend on the same trip who had just been on an Alaskan cruise with his wife. Another author of works on Alaska had given a talk on the cruise and apparently sneeringly referred to McPhee as 'just a journalist'. I beg to differ.
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Thank you for this portrait of one of my favorite writers. I would like more! Nice structure in this profile, by the way. I wouldn't have noticed it, but I am reading draft number 4!
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“John McPhee” remains to this day a pervasive chant as integral to my life as my own NJ upbringing. His book on the Pine Barrens transformed the way I thought of my back yard, turning ugly scrub pines into natural wonderland. His subsequent books were my j-school, teaching me more about reporting than any actual class could. Two weeks ago, I cited "A Sense of Where You Are" in a conversation about basketball. Last week, I mentioned his writing to my boss – a long-time Princeton resident who, incredibly, was unaware of his neighbor’s legacy. This morning, before seeing this story, I started my day reading a passage from “Giving Good Weight.” Tonight, I'm going to my local book store to buy “Draft No. 4.” Thank you for providing a loving glimpse of a master storyteller who has informed my life and improved my writing for nearly 50 years. And thank you for not dissuading me of any prior illusions of his brilliance or making him out to be a quirky “character.” I'm delighted to learn he is as unassuming as I expected – a happy grandfather who loves to fish.
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Thanks for your portrait of one of my favorite writers. I can never get enough of reading John McPhee.
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Thank you for this lovely portrait of, with Nabokov, and for vastly divergent reasons, my favorite author. As a wide-eyed transplant from the midwest to the vastness of the West, I first encountered McPhee in the New Yorker in the excerpt from Basin and Range, the first part of his monumental Annals of the Former World. Now that I knew the name of the physiographic province I inhabited I wanted to know everything about it. Other books were much harder to enjoy. McPhee writes nonfiction like the most alluring fiction: one is captivated, not wanting the book to end, but devouring each page to see what comes next. I have read all but a few of his books, and now want to start anew, reading every single one in order. A brilliant writer. A national treasure.
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Very nice profile of a somewhat reclusive writer.
For me, McPhee is most readable when describing the people he meets. In that respect, my favorite is Coming into the Country. But I was disappointed with parts of Uncommon Carriers because McPhee seemed aloof from the lower-class workers on, say, the barge he rode down the river. This distance alienated some workers and prevented McPhee from getting their perspective.
From the profile, he doesn't seem like an arrogant person, but I wonder if there is some aversion to male, hard-hat types.
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I assigned McPhee’s book Oranges to a feature writing class after students complained there is nothing interesting to write about in Laramie, Wyoming. In that book, McPhee shows eloquently that treatment of a subject is important but the subject itself is not.
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John McPhee -- a great American treasure. If you read only one of his books, read one of them. You will never view the world the same again.
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At the Strand one evening, I opened a book and found a letter to John McPhee written and signed by Jacqueline Onassis. I bought the book, copied the letter and sent it to Mr. McPhee, offering it to him. He graciously sent me a postcard to tell me that I could keep it. Thanks, John
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Make a copy of the letter and just send the original.
I'm drawn to McPhee's descriptions and explanations of our surroundings especially Coming into the Country. I've also enjoyed his compilations like Giving Good Weight although having just reread Table of Contents I found myself disappointed (for the first time) with some of his writing.
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He is a national treasure whose stories are sublime and so mentally nourishing that one has to take them a paragraph at a time and ruminate slowly and deliciously.
Thank you for the lovely portrait of one of my favorite authors.
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This is a lovely portrait of writer for whom I have much admiration, and affection.
I grabbed McPhee's 'Oranges" rather randomly at John King Used Books in Detroit about 25 years ago, never having heard of the author, and wondering how someone might fill a book about oranges. And I was delighted, and hooked on McPhee ever since.
I have often felt sharp, if good-natured, envy of Mr McPhee, He has, in my opinion, had, for many decades running, the best job a human being can have: pursue whatever piques his curiosity, and share his travels and researches and interviews and insights with the world. A job made possible only by virtue of the possession of magnificent craft.
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I remember my brother, who had worked as a timber cruiser in the PNW for many years, telling me about the opening paragraphs of "The Pine Barrens". He said it reminded him distinctly of what he did when first when he did a timber appraisal--get back far enough and look at the entire stand objectively from one POV. He said those opening paragraphs formed an image in his mind that was better than a photograph.
He was also taken with "The Survival of the Bark Canoe". All great stuff. My brother eventually got out of the timber business, to some degree, from reading McPhee (and others).
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Thank you Mr. Anderson. John McPhee has been my favorite author for many years. I first read his works in the New Yorker, then discovered they were books. His "The Control of Nature" is partly written about where I live. I've given that book to many neighbors and friends. It was the start of my studies in geology, which I passed on to my students in my science classes. I've looked every year in the schedule of the Los Angeles Festival of books to see (hopefully) if he would be appearing. No such luck. I hope he reads the comments to your article so I can at least indirectly thank him. And I just knew he was a Fly Fisherman.
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John McPhee's treasured books are the very heart of my library. I lent my first edition of the Curve of Binding Energy to a friend and it was never returned to me. I still mourn the loss of that book. I've preordered Draft #4. Thank you so much for this interview. This man himself is a national treasure.
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A lovely piece --- and in McPhee style! How did you do that?
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Having been a teen when Encounters With the Archdruid was published, I was unaware of its background. My parents did not subscribe to the New Yorker (my father purchased the cartoon compendia, as do I, including the Rejection Collections). As an adult, I taught a graduate class in conservation policy and had the students read Encounters. I always wondered if these conversations had actually taken place or if they were McPhee's supposition of what Park, Fraser, and Dominy (especially Dominy) would have said. So I wrote to ask him and to my amazement and delight, he called and told me the background. And as a Jersey Girl who spent many nights speeding through the Pine Barrens to avoid the Jersey Devil, I always think of McPhee when I think of those nights. A national treasure.
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I was one of the fortunate few in John's Literature of Fact class 32 years ago. His approach to writing has informed mine, ever since. I am so heartened to see his work celebrated in recent weeks with the publication of what will surely prove to be an invaluable manual on the writing process.
Thank you, John.
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I finished Annals of the Former World on a cold night in early spring in Chicago. I was in college, in an old dorm built out of Devonian limestone from Indiana. Stepping stones made of other strata ran from the doorway to the dining hall, and some of those stones had wave marks on them from vanished oceans. I remember walking outside, fresh from the experience of touring the continent's basement with John McPhee, and standing on that fragment of beach to look up at the sky. Thanks to Sam Anderson for showing us how John McPhee looks at the world with us.
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I remember in McPhee's Survival of the Birch Canoe where he said that sometimes there is something intrinsically off in the structure of a canoe that is there from the very beginning.
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I've read and own many of his books and I think the one I found the most affecting was The Curve of Binding Energy, his book about nuclear power.
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I wasn't bored by giving good weight, back when I was a kid I read it. simple beautiful story of being giving and enjoying
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Many years ago, when I was a twelve year old girl, I read the Pine Barrens article in my folk's New Yorker. I became obsessed with canoeing the Batsto river and a friend and I finally did, when we got our driver's licenses and borrowed a canoe. That was only the beginning... one of the best loved books in my family is Eric Sevareid's Canoeing With the Cree. I'm thankful to John McPhee for many, many things.
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The cover is very creased and the pages have turned a brittle yellow but when I want to think about my grandfather I remove my copy of "The Pine Barrens" from my desk and read a few paragraphs. He was born in Lakehurst, N.J. in 1890, one of 12 boys and one girl. As a youngster he took me through the bogs, sugar-sand trails and hidden cedar ponds within the pine forests where i learned to swim and fish. That book is a bridge to my past and why so many decades later I never tire of reading it.
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"The Pine Barrens" was given to me in the 1960s by my beloved (and now deceased) aunt. The pages in my copy, like yours, are yellow, but the writing is still fresh and invigorating:
"The picture of New Jersey that most people hold in their minds is so different from this one that, considered beside it, the Pine Barrens ... become as incongruous as they are beautiful."
Thank goodness the pine barrens jetport was never built.
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Unfortunately, the NJ Pinelands Commission (leave comment of those political appointees for another day) has approved a natural gas pipeline that will cross through the heart of the Pine Barrens.
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Facts and a reverence for what they can reveal, separately, and when stacked together: this is the essence of McPhee. You can trust what he says. You may be tempted to fall asleep, but you are in good hands, just the same.
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I have never been tempted by sleep while reading McPhee. Try reading Ruidoso, if you need a stirring tale. I was about to quote the final line, until I realized that it gives away the denouement and some might find that soporific.
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After reading Encounters with the Archdruid in 1978 I drove from Minnesota and hiked up to Image Lake in the Cascades. It was everything McPhee said it was.
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And I can't help but notice: you live in Seattle!
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Thank you Sam Anderson for describing John McPhee in the most beautiful way.
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The second boringest writer alive after Ved Mehta. Both New Yorker writers who have defined the cliche about the preciousness of the magazine through the decades.
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Boredom is invariably the fate of the ignorant and incurious.
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If you find McPhee boring, you haven't read Coming into the Country!!!
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I guess then it says something about me that I read everything by McPhee
I could get my hands on, immediately, when I first discovered his work--couldn't stop. Same for Karl Ove Knausgaard, who some also consider a boring writer. Boring writers have kept my attention for many years.
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