by John McPhee
Alaska seems to twang some atavistic American chord, offering remembrance of the earlier frontiers and, heaven knows, engendering in people of the Lower Forty-eight some admiring envy of the people up there. To become absorbed in an almost total way with a people and a place and then suddenly to be cut off from those people, except through the mail, is something that could be listed among the liabilities of the writing life. One February evening, I took a long walk on the frozen Yukon, knowing it was the last night that I would be there. The sun was disappearing, and there were pink bolts across a blue sky above the white river. The big stars came out quickly. And I said to myself, “So long. This is it. The mail plane comes tomorrow and you’ve had it now.”
Also by John McPhee
Draft No. 4
Silk Parachute
Uncommon Carriers
The Founding Fish
Annals of the Former World
Irons in the Fire
The Ransom of Russian Art
Assembling California
Looking for a Ship
The Control of Nature
Rising from the Plains
Heirs of General Practice
Table of Contents
La Place de la Concorde Suisse
In Suspect Terrain
Basin and Range
Giving Good Weight
Coming into the Country
The Survival of the Bark Canoe
Pieces of the Frame
The Curve of Binding Energy
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
Encounters with the Archdruid
The Crofter and the Laird
Levels of the Game
A Roomful of Hovings
The Pine Barrens
Oranges
The Headmaster
A Sense of Where You Are
The John McPhee Reader
The Second John McPhee Reader
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John McPhee is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of thirty-three books, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part I. The Sporting Scene
The Patch
Phi Beta Football
The Orange Trapper
Linksland and Bottle
Pioneer
Direct Eye Contact
Part II. An Album Quilt
An Album Quilt
Also by John McPhee
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by John McPhee
All rights reserved
First edition, 2018
Earlier versions of most of these essays first appeared in The New Yorker, Time, and Vogue.
Photographs by Yolanda Whitman
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71719-3
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