A literary legend's engaging review of his career stressing the work he never completed and
why.Over seven decades John McPhee has set a standard for literary nonfiction. Assaying
mountain ranges bark canoes experimental aircraft the Swiss Army geophysical hot spots
ocean shipping shad fishing dissident art in the Soviet Union and an even wider variety of
other subjects he has consistently written narrative pieces of immaculate design.In Tabula
Rasa Volume 1 McPhee looks back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer
reflecting wryly upon projects he once planned to do but never got around to-people to profile
regions he meant to portray. There are so many examples that he plans to go on writing these
vignettes an ideal project for an old man he says and a reminiscent montage from a writing
life. This first volume includes among other things glimpses of a frosty encounter with
Thornton Wilder interrogative dinners with Henry Luce the allure of western Spain criteria
in writing about science fireworks over the East River as seen from Malcolm Forbes's yacht
the evolving inclinations of the Tower of Pisa the islands among the river deltas of central
California teaching in a pandemic and persuading The New Yorker to publish an entire book on
oranges. The result is a fresh survey of McPhee's singular planet.
