Purchase
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
March 2010
On Sale: March 2, 2010
240 pages
ISBN: 0374263736
EAN: 9780374263737
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Fiction Family Life
A WONDROUS NEW BOOK OF MCPHEEβS PROSE PIECESβIN MANY ASPECTS HIS MOST PERSONAL IN FOUR DECADES The brief, brilliant essay βSilk Parachute,β which first appeared in The New Yorker a decade ago, has become John McPheeβs most anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces hereβ highly varied in length and themeβMcPhee 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 βon the chalkβ 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 pieceβon whatever themeβcontains 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.
 Media BuzzOn Point - December 27, 2010
On Point - April 16, 2010
| 
© 2003-2026