Faint Praise

“Here is the seventh collection of essays by John McPhee, his 33rd book and perhaps his eleventy-billionth word of published prose. This far into a prolific career, it may be a good time to finally unmask the 87-year-old as a one-trick pony.

“In ‘The Patch,’ he again shamelessly employs his go-to strategy: crafting sentences so energetic and structurally sound that he can introduce apparently unappealing subjects, even ones that look to be encased in a cruddy veneer of boringness, and persuade us to care about them. 

“He’s been working this angle since the 1950s; it’s a good thing we’re finally onto him now.”

—Craig Taylor, book reviewer, “In These New Essays, John McPhee Finds Poetry in the Material at Hand,” New York Times Book Review, Dec. 17, 2018.

• Editorial Comment: Someday, when I write a book, that’s how I want the NYT to start my review.

PeezPix

Hecklers

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“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard