Word: mcphee
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Alaska runs off the edge of the imagination," McPhee writes, and he relies on attentive reportorial methods to keep himself and his story firmly planted on the icy ground. He carefully provides the dimensions of the Yukon River cabins he visits, often numbering and describing the items of furniture in them. He lists some 30 uses that Alaskans have found for 55-gal. drums, describes how contemporary miners pan for gold and tells how to operate a dog sled up a hill. The dozens of Alaskans he sought out and listened to come trailing clouds of particulars. McPhee can capture...
...from grounding McPhee's book, all this luggage helps it soar. Those who think they know quite enough, thank you, about Alaska are wrong. Not only is the area one of the last and largest stretches of true wilderness left on earth (and hence of atavistic concern); it is also the arena where the last act in a long American drama is being played out. McPhee characterizes the struggle as "the Dallas scenario versus the Sierra Club syndrome"-developers versus conservationists, with many conflicting interests between them. McPhee is no reflexive ecologist; he compares the Trans-Alaska Pipeline...
...encourage some people to travel or settle in the state. That would not necessarily be a good thing for Alaska. But the book's more likely effect will be to satisfy those who have dreamed of striking out afresh but who never will. Like travel writers of old, McPhee has acted as the antenna in a far-off place that few will see. He has brought back a wholly satisfying voyage of spirit and mind. - Paul Gray...
...from the Alaskan wilderness he sings of in Coming into the Country, John McPhee paces about his small, comfortable office just above a bank on the main drag of his home town, Princeton, N.J. He is on the verge of another project-and apprehensive. Directly across the street sits Princeton University's Firestone Library, the object of McPhee's window gazing. With 13 books to his credit in the past twelve years, the author seems determined to keep the neighboring library cataloguers working nights. "A great stream of ideas goes by," McPhee says, turning from the window...
Some readers have found McPhee's past choice of subjects eclectic to the point of anarchy: basketball, breeder reactors, canoes, conservation, oranges, Scottish lairds. McPhee points out the skein that links all this apparent disparity: "Just about everything I've written touches on subjects that interested me as a kid." The third child of a doctor who worked regularly with Princeton athletes, McPhee heard about sports as far back as he can remember. His passion for games grew, but his physique failed to keep pace; the aspiring basketball star topped out at 5 ft. 7 in. Summers were...