Happy Attainment Day, Dr. McPhee!

When I began this post last week, I had just learned that one of my favorite writers is about to turn 95. I learned this because I was answering a question in one of the many book groups I follow online, which was asking users to name a famous author -- living or dead -- we would like to meet. For National Authors Day last autumn, I wrote about some of the authors I had been fortunate enough to meet already, and for some reason John McPhee came to mind as one I would like to meet. And I don't think he would mind that this led me to check on the key question: living or dead. Not only is he very much alive: he is listed as a professor at Princeton. Not an emeritus professor, as i hope to become in 2028, but an actual professor -- though presumably with a light teaching load at this point. 

Since our family recognizes attainment days with as much enthusiasm as birthdays, I spent the week working toward posting this on the day before his birthday. John McPhee will know he is 95 on March 8, but we will know he has completed his 95th year on the day before: March 7. 

All of McPhee's more than thirty books were first serialized in The New Yorker. According to his Wikipedia biography, that relationship began the year before I was born -- a little sleuthing reveals that the article "Basketball and Beefeaters" was published two months before I was born. In it, he explains how he ended up playing basketball in England. 

He had first avoided it, thinking it not a very British game, but a lacrosse injury (inflicted by him, not on him) set him to what he ultimately decided was a suitable sport for "the world's foremost indoor nation. He goes on to describe the importance of place -- home-court advantage was never described with such careful attention. 

I have spent a lot of time in a wide range of school gyms, but never encountered oddities and absurdities as severe as the ones he describes. One of the oddest things he describes is a game that he personally instigated in a most unusual outdoor space.

He has been writing for that one periodical for my entire life. Just last year, he wrote about his first appearance in the magazine -- he was shown as the team mascot on the sidelines of a Princeton football game two years before my father was born. In other words, he has been at this for a long time. 

At my own university, I can think of two colleagues as permanent features -- people who came here as undergraduates, went away to grad school but briefly, and returned as educators for the rest of their careers -- about a half century each. The attachment of John McPhee to Princeton is even deeper -- closing in on an entire century. He was born there because his father worked there and although he is well traveled, he lived elsewhere for school only during brief educational forays at two prestigious schools. His older brother Henry McPhee, Jr. had been born in Iowa -- apparently before their father became the athletic department physician at Princeton -- and went on to a legal career that included service with President Eisenhower.

Goodreads Links

To see all of his books, go to the John McPhee author page on Goodreads. I have not delved deeply enough to understand the discrepancy between the 31 books mentioned on his own site and the 121 distinct works mentioned here. In any case, there is PLENTY from which to choose! 

Below are all of his books that I have read, in the order of their publication. I have posted reviews of about half of the ones I have read. Each of these "reviews" is fairly brief, just giving some idea of my interest in the work. 

Oranges (1967) my review

The Pine Barrens (1967)

Encounters with the Archdruid (1971) my review

The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975) my review

Coming Into the Country (1977) my review

Basin and Range (1981)

Rising from the Plains (1986)

The Control of Nature (1989) my review -- probably my favorite McPhee book

Looking for a Ship (1991)

McPhee is not, of course, the only author I enjoy. Readers are invited to look at all of my Goodreads reviews and all of the books I have read and thought to add to my profile. 

Lagniappe 

Even if you have not read anything by McPhee, you are very likely to have read something written or edited by one of his students or one of his daughters. The John McPhee Wikipedia entry provides links to some of those he has influenced.