Morphology

Two of the greatest American authors among us today are Tom Wolfe and John McPhee, both of whom are often pigeonholed as part of the New Journalism school that arose in the 1960′s, but are in fact just plain good writers alive by chance at the same time, and both, by the nature of the academic mind, in need of tags so that their work can be more readily handled or dismissed. I am in awe of both men, and have re-read portions of their work to see if an examination of the bones might reveal the source of their magic–on a par with dissecting the golden goose.

My younger brother re-introduced me to McPhee in the early 1990′s. My brother is a geologist and was taken with several of those works which border on that territory, as well as the one on Alaska if I remember correctly. I had only read one of McPhee’s books at the time, the Deltoid Pumpkin Seed–brought to it by my own interest in lighter than air vehicles–and was not yet enamored with the man’s work. McPhee was a bit too cool on a subject that was hot to me.

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