John McPhee is a master at his craft, which is what people
call creative non-fiction. McPhee was creative about his non-fiction writing
much before the phrase came into vogue.
McPhee’s body of work is respected as well as enjoyed, a
pretty rare feat for non-fiction writers, as the nature of non-fiction is
imbued with the ethos of “Just the facts”. What makes McPhee stand out is the
depth of his exploration as well as the breadth of his curiosity on his topic
at hand.
This book is a compendium of eight essays that he had
written for The New Yorker magazine. They are all essays on writing, along with
a good bit of storytelling, McPhee storytelling. They can be read as standalone
essays or they can be read sequentially. I read it sequentially.
The structure of each essay is peculiarly McPhees, and as he
explains how he comes to his structures I was suitably blown away by the amount
of planning and the depth of preparation he does with his writing. It is akin
to the plotting of a complex novel, each move is plotted and planned to give
maximum effect to the reader. Of course, as he is describing the pains that he
resorts to in order to create this structure and order, he gives us a glimpse
into the his mind and how it is capable of such excellence.
This is not to say that this book is devoid of humor and
fascination. McPhee has been at this for a long time and he tells his New
Yorker stories with great relish. He talks about his interactions with gigantic
New Yorker characters, like William Shawn, Robert Bingham, and Robert Gottlieb.
He speaks of people he’d interviewed: Richard Burton, Elizabeth taylor, Jackie Gleason,
and others. But those stories, while exciting and beguiling since they were
about people we had known about, pales in comparison with his stories about McPhee’s
people, geologists, ichthyologists, naturalists, people who are quietly good at
what they do and they do so with a strong sense of purpose, people who are not
ostentatious but are exceptional in their execution. The fact that he uses them
as examples of how he writes speaks volumes about the people and subjects that
are the most interesting to him, and in turn to us.
This is by no means a how to book for writing acolytes. This
is a memoir of sorts, of a great writer as he speaks of his craft, and of his
passion. He does lay out some well-worn paths that he had taken towards building
his work habits but it is so uniquely his that it just serves as a point of
discussion and inspiration for the rest of us. The most salient part is that he
does so in his own inimitable style.
The bonus that came with this reading experience is the
discovery of the meaning of the word sprezzatura. In many ways, McPhee showed
thrown the book that even though it may seem like he undertakes his life’s work
with great sprezzatura, the actual work is never done that way.
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