Word: mcphee
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...small town that has housed such notable transients as Albert Einstein and Svetlana Alliluyeva, McPhee is an oddity: a celebrated Princeton native. "I wouldn't stay here if my work didn't take me away for such extended periods," he says. "This place is my fixed foot." A staff writer at The New Yorker ("The job translates as 'unsalaried freelance'") since 1965, McPhee enjoys a freedom from deadlines that would tempt most journalists into sloth and several other deadly sins. Not McPhee. Reporting completed and notes arranged, he marches into a routine now familiar to members...
...McPhee brushes off suggestions that such dedication is exemplary. "I've got discipline because I've got nowhere else to go," he says. "I elected to be a writer, and now that I'm 46 it is simply what I do." In his work habits and careful craftsmanship, though, McPhee resembles the outdoor loners, the cerebral athletes, the prickly eccentrics who regularly pop up in his books. "I don't consciously seek out subjects for their expertise," he says. "But people who are experts at something put a lot of effort into becoming experts...