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John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World

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I first encountered the writer John McPhee about ten years ago on a re-mote stretch of the Salmon River in the wilds of northern Alaska just in-side the Arctic Circle. That’s where he was, at least. I was sitting in the sun outside a small restaurant near my office in midtown Manhattan. But such was McPhee’s evocation of the Kobuk Valley landscape that it was easy to look at the flow of traffic up Third Avenue and overlay the taxis, buses, and buildings with darting graylings, marauding grizzlies, and stands of virgin willow trees.I was a latecomer to the tribe of McPhee readers. For some reason, despite avidly consuming the work of other in-house masters at The New Yorker such as Joseph Mitchell and A.  J. Liebling, I’d managed to avoid McPhee. I’d nod sagely when his name came up in conversation, but I never actually sat down to read his stuff. I vaguely associated him with the New Journalism of the 1960s, but where I’d been drawn to gawp at the stylistic pyrotechnics of Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Truman Capote, I viewed McPhee, with his forensic dissections of flora and fauna as, well, a trifle dull. Twenty thousand words on the virtues of Florida oranges or Bill Bradley’s jump shot? No thanks.That changed right about the time I decided to leave my legal career and become a writer, or at least a journalist. My first job was editing a JohN mcPhEE’sannals of thE formEr worldDouglas McCollam

I first encountered the writer John McPhee about ten years ago on a re-mote stretch of the Salmon River in the wilds of northern Alaska just in-side the Arctic Circle. That’s where he was, at least. I was sitting in the sun outside a small restaurant near my office in midtown Manhattan. But such was McPhee’s evocation of the Kobuk Valley landscape that it was easy to look at the flow of traffic up Third Avenue and overlay the taxis, buses, and buildings with darting graylings, marauding grizzlies, and stands of virgin willow trees.I was a latecomer to the tribe of McPhee readers. For some reason, despite avidly consuming the work of other in-house masters at The New Yorker such as Joseph Mitchell and A.  J. Liebling, I’d managed to avoid McPhee. I’d nod sagely when his name came up in conversation, but I never actually sat down to read his stuff. I vaguely associated him with the New Journalism of the 1960s, but where I’d been drawn to gawp at the stylistic pyrotechnics of Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Truman Capote, I viewed McPhee, with his forensic dissections of flora and fauna as, well, a trifle dull. Twenty thousand words on the virtues of Florida oranges or Bill Bradley’s jump shot? No thanks.That changed right about the time I decided to leave my legal career and become a writer, or at least a journalist. My first job was editing a JohN mcPhEE’sannals of thE formEr worldDouglas McCollam

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Introduction vii
  4. Paul Cowan’s The Tribes of America 1
  5. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year 9
  6. James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 16
  7. Paul Gallico’s Farewell to Sport 24
  8. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring 32
  9. Walter Bernstein’s Keep Your Head Down 39
  10. A. J. Liebling’s The Earl of Louisiana 46
  11. Stanley Booth’s The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones 52
  12. Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test 60
  13. Palagummi Sainath’s Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts 67
  14. Charles Raw, Bruce Page, & Godfrey Hodgson’s DO YOu Sincerely Want to Be Rich? 76
  15. Michael Herr’s Dispatches 84
  16. Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day 93
  17. John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World 102
  18. Marshall Frady’s Wallace 109
  19. Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart 117
  20. Vincent Sheean’s Personal History 124
  21. Norman Mailer’s THE Armies of the Night 132
  22. William Manchester’s The Death of a President 139
  23. Gabriel García Márquez’s The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor 147
  24. Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem 155
  25. Peter Fleming’s Brazilian Adventure 164
  26. Betty MacDonald’s Anybody Can Do Anything 173
  27. Contributors 183
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https://doi.org/10.7312/marc15930-015

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Introduction vii
  4. Paul Cowan’s The Tribes of America 1
  5. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year 9
  6. James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 16
  7. Paul Gallico’s Farewell to Sport 24
  8. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring 32
  9. Walter Bernstein’s Keep Your Head Down 39
  10. A. J. Liebling’s The Earl of Louisiana 46
  11. Stanley Booth’s The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones 52
  12. Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test 60
  13. Palagummi Sainath’s Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts 67
  14. Charles Raw, Bruce Page, & Godfrey Hodgson’s DO YOu Sincerely Want to Be Rich? 76
  15. Michael Herr’s Dispatches 84
  16. Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day 93
  17. John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World 102
  18. Marshall Frady’s Wallace 109
  19. Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart 117
  20. Vincent Sheean’s Personal History 124
  21. Norman Mailer’s THE Armies of the Night 132
  22. William Manchester’s The Death of a President 139
  23. Gabriel García Márquez’s The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor 147
  24. Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem 155
  25. Peter Fleming’s Brazilian Adventure 164
  26. Betty MacDonald’s Anybody Can Do Anything 173
  27. Contributors 183
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