A WONDROUS NEW BOOK OF MCPHEE'S PROSE PIECES--IN MANY ASPECTS HIS MOST
PERSONAL IN FOUR DECADES
The brief, brilliant essay "Silk Parachute," which first appeared in
The New Yorker a decade ago, has become John McPhee's most
anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces here-- highly
varied in length and theme--McPhee ranges with his characteristic humor
and intensity through lacrosse, long-exposure view-camera photography,
the weird foods he has sometimes been served in the course of his
reportorial travels, a U.S. Open golf championship, and a season in
Europe "on the chalk" from the downs and sea cliffs of England to the
Maas valley in the Netherlands and the champagne country of northern
France. Some of the pieces are wholly personal. In luminous
recollections of his early years, for example, he goes on outings with
his mother, deliberately overturns canoes in a learning process at a
summer camp, and germinates a future book while riding on a jump seat to
away games as a basketball player. But each piece--on whatever
theme--contains somewhere a personal aspect in which McPhee suggests why
he was attracted to write about the subject, and each opens like a silk
parachute, lofted skyward and suddenly blossoming with color and form.
