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  • The American Scholar

    The Portrait Master

    Dec 03, 2018 4 minutes
    Review by Stephen Goodwin

    THE PATCH

    BY JOHN MCPHEE

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 242 pp., $26

    FOR DEVOTEES OF John McPhee, reading The Patch, his latest collection of essays and reportage, is like revisiting a favorite fishing hole that has remained beautifully unspoiled. The sunlight still sparkles on the water, the breeze still sifts through the pines, and beneath a familiar opening in the lily pads, an ancient pickerel holds its position, lord and master of its small domain. Here is McPhee’s description of the fish:

    With those minutely oscillating fins, a pickerel treads water in much the same way that

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