It is difficult to find a reader who likes only some of John McPhee’s work. Oh, one may have a favorite or two of the New Yorker writer’s 31 books, but his talent at turning any subject that interests him into writing that is fresh and compelling is unmatched. He is always a deep pleasure to read, whether it is about a headmaster at Deerfield, tennis, fission, shad, Alaska, Bill Bradley as college-basketball player, oranges, the Swiss Army, bark canoes, tectonic plates, merchant ships … the list is so long and catholic that the newcomer to his work might wonder what he hasn’t written about.
His new and 32nd book, Tabula Rasa, ostensibly deals with that very question: the topics that first caught his interest but for numerous reasons he never pursued. Some leads led to others: his interest in the beginnings of Outward Bound got steered by New Yorker editor William Shawn into a profile of the forager Euell Gibbons. He never got around to a piece in the 1960s about the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but his notes are so extensive and fascinating that, well, here you are in 2023 reading a piece about the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
John McPhee is always a deep pleasure to read, whether it is about a headmaster at Deerfield, tennis, fission, shad, Alaska, Bill Bradley as college-basketball player, oranges, the Swiss Army, bark canoes, tectonic plates, merchant ships … the list is long and catholic.
What Tabula Rasa really is about is John McPhee, now 92, and, along with his last couple of books, it is as close to an autobiography as we will get. The book is called Volume 1, but as McPhee sees it, that reassures him that if more writing awaits him, he stays alive.
Glimpses of growing up in Princeton explain so much about his interest in basketball and nature (and who knew kids were trained to spot Nazi warplanes in central New Jersey during World War II?), and his early career as a TV playwright is the stuff of My Not-So-Favorite Year. For decades he has taught a writing course at his alma mater, Princeton University (full and happy disclosure: I was a student of his in the early days of the Anthropocene Epoch, i.e., the mid-1970s), and he devotes a section to teaching during the coronavirus pandemic.
It always was a highly desired course, from which have emerged doctors, lawyers, scientists, investors, and not a few journalists (the most notable being David Remnick, who, as the editor of The New Yorker for the last quarter-century, has been McPhee’s boss, as sweet an outcome as any employee could hope for). Students learn the importance of an outline, of course, and what makes a good story. But what you most take away from the course comes from watching John himself: the need to be a good listener, empathy for your subject, the virtues of being meticulous and patient and observant and always caring for the person who is telling you their story.
Of course, you do not need to be a Princeton student to learn these life lessons. All you have to do is read his work.
Jim Kelly, who served as the managing editor of Time from 2001 to 2006, is the Books Editor at Air Mail