Lazarus of the Picnic Table: On John McPhee’s ‘Draft No. 4’

The brute facts of John McPhee’s career connote a serene productivity: for more than half a century a fixture in The New Yorker; 30-plus books—many expanded from New Yorker articles, all still in-print—to his name; a Pulitzer in 1999 for an omnibus of his work on geology; and an appointment since 1975 at Princeton, where he’s instructed generations of students in the craft of nonfiction, including current New Yorker editor David Remnick.

Then there’s his composure on the page: a finely-milled crystalline prose that never announces itself yet pins its subjects with felicitous precision; the apotheosis of the  patrician style. And an expression of its sensibility: urbane intelligence at large in the world. Thus, McPhee’s range: , , … The list of his subjects is long. Expansive, yes, but he’s also the consummate miniaturist, unhurriedly unwinding his monographs across tens of thousands of words and sometimes multiple issues. from the cab of a semi. At 86, he’s his own franchise, the McPhee at your local bookseller immediately recognizable for its serried ranks of spines in ivory. Heft any of these tomes in your hands and you’ll find them as stolidly wrought as the writing they contain—robustly bound with sturdy paper stock in seeming anticipation of their consumption in some contemplative sylvan setting or other.