Word: paden
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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THERE is a place in John McPhee's new collection of magazine articles, Pieces of the Frame, where two photographers from New York City go up in the country to cut some firewood. They stop on the way to rent a chainsaw at a place called Paden Rental and, they being artists from New York City, it takes the store's owner a while to get his bearings. "Paden, if that was his name," McPhee writes, "looked from one customer to another with an expression that seemed to suggest that this energy crisis had started some extremely novel trends...
Pieces of the Frame is a book that is somehow out of synch with the body of American magazine journalism, and the phrase about Paden is typical of its differentness. McPhee could easily enough have asked the man renting chain saws what his name was, and avoided having to say "Paden, if that was his name." It's certainly one of the prevailing canons of all levels of journalism that writers shouldn't leave out facts, or that if for some reason they are forced to they should at least make a better effort to cover their tracks...