Fact Mason

John McPhee

Posted December 19, 2007 by Eric Levin

In 1967, before “ecotourism” and “green living” became buzzwords and before legislation protected the state’s undeveloped tracts, this son of a Princeton doctor wrote The Pine Barrens, a slim, understated, magically detailed portrait of an unspoiled realm and its reclusive denizens. Educated at Princeton University, where he teaches nonfiction writing, McPhee has always exhibited pride in his home state. McPhee’s unique prose breathes easy despite its air-tight syntax and minute accretions of fact. An astonishingly observant and patient reporter, he fits his findings together like a mason so in tune with his material he needs very little mortar. McPhee is famous for organizing every detail on index cards before he starts writing. His narrative path—often wayward and freely associative, even willfully coy—ultimately displays an unassailable, overarching logic that reflects the nature of the subject itself. Which is why his quadralogy on the geology of North America, Annals of The Former World, is his densest work, a meditation on deep time, a concept more impenetrable than any rock.

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