Word: mcphee
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...John McPhee ∙ Delmore Schwartz...
NONFICTION: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters, edited by Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames Coming into the Country, John McPhee Delmore Schwartz, James Atlas The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Michael Davie Dispatches, Michael Herr Best Sellers...
...People in the region of the upper Yukon refer to their part of Alaska as 'the country' "McPhee explains at the start of the final section, which shares the book's title. "A stranger appearing among them is said to have 'come into the country."' The fact is, almost every white person in the country has been such a stranger at one time or another. In Eagle (population 100), the town McPhee focuses on in the last half of the book, you can count on one hand the adults who are native born. The rest have arrived at some point...
...MCPHEE SPENDS TIME with many of these people. He finds them highly competent, individualistic men and women who meet the challenges of the wild in their own way, people who endlessly find fault with all ways that are not their own. McPhee takes them all at their word, leaving critical comments about a man to his neighbors. The neighbors willingly supply them...
This last section of the book is the least structured. The narrative jumps back and forth from the people of Eagle, to McPhee's solo trek one night across the grizzly-infested tundra to an Indian village adjacent to Eagle. McPhee has at times been criticized for being too organized, too refined, and the freedom he allows himself here is particularly impressive, is warm, human journalism and McPhee's style is an acknowledgement that Alaska cannot be organized into tidy, easily digested sections...