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he is always interesting to read. several very different stories here.
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Giving Good Weight
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"You people come into the market―the Greenmarket, in the open air under the down pouring sun―and you slit the tomatoes with your fingernails. With your thumbs, you excavate the cheese. You choose your stringbeans one at a time. You pulp the nectarines and rape the sweet corn. You are something wonderful, you are―people of the city―and we, who are almost without exception strangers here, are as absorbed with you as you seem to be with the numbers on our hanging scales." So opens the title piece in this collection of John McPhee's classic essays, grouped here with four others, including "Brigade de Cuisine," a profile of an artistic and extraordinary chef; "The Keel of Lake Dickey," in which a journey down the whitewater of a wild river ends in the shadow of a huge projected dam; a report on plans for the construction of nuclear power plants that would float in the ocean; and a pinball shoot-out between two prizewinning journalists.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1972
This edition
- Format
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272 pages, Paperback
- Published
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April 1, 1994 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- ISBN
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9780374516000
- ASIN
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0374516006
- Language
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English
About the author
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John Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
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Rating(4 / 5.0, 60 votes)
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60 reviews All reviews
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‘The Keel of Lake Dickey’ about the upper St. John River (Baker Lake to the Allagash) was a real highlight.
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Best were the title and final articles, NY farmer's markets and a country restaurant chef. Canoeing article also good - typical McPhee, which is always worth reading.
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It was the first description of the open air farmers market movement that I had read and now that I spend my life in them and thinking about them, I realize now that McPhee described it so perfectly and with enough detail so that it could STILL be used as an introduction to any market across the US.
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I loved the food essay the best - at 80 pages, it's more like a novella - and includes some mystery, gorgeous detail, character study, and the intricacies of urchin roe preparation.
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A collection of essays from one of America's most talented essayists. Giving Good Weight was a gorgeous essay on te farmers markets in NYC, the Atlantic Generating Station on the brilliant plan that never came to pass to build a floating nuclear power plant off the coast of NJ (just what that state needs), the Pinball Philosophy on the competitive world of pinball players, The Keel of Lake Dickey on the joys of canoeing and Brigade de Cuisine (the reason why I bought the book) on a talented chef who wants to remain anonymous (alas!).
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It was a mixed bag.
As with many McPhee's, this was a collection of shorter writings.
We've got McPhee working on farms and at farmer's market's around NYC - entertaining; we've got New Jersey thinking about building floating nuclear power stations - quite fascinating; we've got a story about pinball -which, honestly, was what I was most looking forward to, but turned out to be utterly forgettable; we've got, yet another, story about McPhee canoeing (and I already have a thing about canoing), so I was dreading this one, but it was the most enjoyable canoe writing yet; and we end with an obscure restaurant near NYC - it sounds like a French haute cuisine version of Shopsin's - which makes you want to pack up and leave tonight, and eat there for every meal tomorrow - until you realize the book was written in 1975, and there is no restaurant to go to :(
Overall, hooray for McPhee - but it isn't one I would start people with, but I'm considering colored flagging some of the stories to loan out.
As with many McPhee's, this was a collection of shorter writings.
We've got McPhee working on farms and at farmer's market's around NYC - entertaining; we've got New Jersey thinking about building floating nuclear power stations - quite fascinating; we've got a story about pinball -which, honestly, was what I was most looking forward to, but turned out to be utterly forgettable; we've got, yet another, story about McPhee canoeing (and I already have a thing about canoing), so I was dreading this one, but it was the most enjoyable canoe writing yet; and we end with an obscure restaurant near NYC - it sounds like a French haute cuisine version of Shopsin's - which makes you want to pack up and leave tonight, and eat there for every meal tomorrow - until you realize the book was written in 1975, and there is no restaurant to go to :(
Overall, hooray for McPhee - but it isn't one I would start people with, but I'm considering colored flagging some of the stories to loan out.
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The difference in sophistication between the two later essays (Giving Good Weight and Brigade de Cuisine) and the other three is pretty dramatic. That said, in all of the essays McPhee manages to take subjects that most of us wouldn't even give second thought to and turn them into riveting stories.
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