In Coming into the Country, McPhee recorded the dynamism of Alaskan nature just as the first oil passed through the Trans-Alaska pipeline. First published in 1977, it’s a boreal classic
A few years ago a friend from New York told me that in America an acolyte of John McPhee is known as a “McPhino”. It’s not a nice nickname, I admit – it sounds like a deluxe burger or a whisky cocktail. Nevertheless, I proudly state now that I am, have been for a dozen years, and am sure to remain for the rest of my life, a devoted McPhino.
The first book by McPhee I read was Oranges (1967), and it was obvious then that he was a writer who could juice the pulp of unpromising subject matter: a seven-sectioned book on, yes, oranges that brilliantly tracks the fruit’s uses and myths from sixth-century-BC China to the citrus barons of contemporary Florida. From Oranges I moved to his 1974 study of nuclear physics, The Curve of Binding Energy, and his investigations of intrinsic value and wise use in Encounters With the Archdruid (1971). It is commonplace among McPhinos to note that he is able to make gnarly subjects compelling; a refined version of this observation is that his devotion to bedizening the apparently drab is a kind of experimentalism. Oulipo-like, he sets himself escapological challenges – to write a book both expert and ardent on the shad (The Founding Fish, 2002), say, or the construction of traditional river craft (The Survival of the Bark Canoe, 1975), or truck- and train-driving (Uncommon Carriers, 2006) – and consistently pulls them off.
McPhee is a passionate fisherman, physically tough, uncomplaining, good natured and very, very scared of bears
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