Tabula rasa

In this solid collection, McPhee (The Patch), a New Yorker staff writer since 1965, describes "in capsule form the many writing projects that I have conceived and seriously planned across the years but have never written." The 51 brief pieces stick to the Pulitzer winner's signature mix of personal reflection and observational journalism, touching on his recollections of visiting Extremadura (an "autonomous community" in Spain that was the birthplace of many conquistadors, including Hernando de Soto and Hernán Cortés), stumbling into a professorship at Princeton's fledgling journalism program in 1975, and road-tripping from Maryland to Ohio with his daughters. Several dispatches meditate on the 92-year-old author's mortality, as when he discusses abandoning his plan to write "about a 25,000-cow dairy farm in Indiana" to instead compile this volume, which he suggests is an "old-man project" intended to keep him active. Standout selections consider the "neologymnasts" in the pharmaceutical industry who rebrand generic medications, the construction of the leaning tower of Pisa, and the creative pieces of nonfiction writing his students came up with during Covid-19 lockdown. McPhee's gift for language is on full display (he calls Vermont and New Hampshire "two goat legs reversed for packaging"), but the unfinished snippets will likely hold the greatest appeal for the author's most ardent admirers, who will enjoy the intimate look inside his process. It's a revealing compendium of curios from a first-rate writer. (July)

A collection of articles published, in slightly different form, in the New Yorker over the past few years. "I decided to describe many…saved-up, bypassed, intended pieces of writing as an old-man project," writes McPhee, longtime New Yorker contributor and author of more than 30 books. "Doing such a project as this one," he continues, "begets a desire to publish what you write, and publication defeats the ongoing project, the purpose of which is to keep the old writer alive by never coming to an end." Among the many subjects the author covers in this first volume are the impression left on him by an exchange with Thornton Wilder almost 60 years ago, which served as the impetus for this project; assorted experiences as both student and professor at Princeton, including his plan to write "about workouts with varied coaches in various sports over the years, but I never got around to it"; the life and times of Woodrow Wilson, who briefly coached football at Wesleyan and "appointed the first Jew to the faculty" at Princeton and "literally turned [it] into a university"; and his thoughts on titles. "I can wax polemical on titles," he writes. "Editors...seem to think titles are like chicken heads. They can cut them off without additional effect on the C.V. of the chicken. They can replace each one with their own idea of the head of an improved chicken." Throughout, McPhee reflects on his writing career, explaining why he did or did not follow through on projects about a wide variety of concepts. Now in his early 90s, he occasionally quotes himself. The cogency, potency, and temperance of his voice never waver, no matter where he meanders. One of the strengths of this collection is that McPhee maintains both momentum and interest--including, not least of all, his own. A gem from an exemplar of narrative nonfiction. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.