Whiff+DC

“Whiff” Darcy Cameron “Whiff” is one of the shortest pieces by McPhee that I have read this semester, but all of the techniques that I have come to expect from him are present here, minus the excruciating detail he can sometimes get into. He talks about the disadvantages a writer faces while trying to write about (and predict) the future, and how his New Yorker editor Mr. Shawn tries to discourage venturing into the future, while not wanting to impede on a writer’s freedom or creativity. As it happened, McPhee had actually written three articles for the New Yorker that were accepted and published, which specifically dealt with predictions of future events. All three times he turned out to be completely wrong. Knowing this track record, he makes a pledge to write one more article about the future: a detailed description of the second term of George W. Bush. This article contains a lot of humour and McPhee touches that could be easily missed the first time through. I must admit, I missed a lot of the point of this, and a lot of the humour, the first time I read it. First of all, as I’ve come to expect from McPhee, he assumes his readers know certain things, and if they don’t, he’s not going to explain them – you’ll either have to pick it up from the context of the article, or go the extra step and find out for yourself. The title, for example. I wonder how many people know what a “whiff” is without having to be told or look it up for themselves. I must admit, I’m a baseball fan, but I had never heard the term whiff before, and looking it up *after* reading the article helped me make more sense of it the second time through. I was also somehow unaware the first time I read this that it was written in 2003 – hence George W. Bush was still in his first term. This all seems very obvious now, but reading through it for the first time, not knowing what “whiff” meant or what this article was going to be about made it easy to miss the point, and catching these things the next time through gave me a much greater appreciation for this article and for McPhee’s style. I actually laughed out loud when I read it the second time. The entire article is one big build-up to a single punch line: George W. Bush is a moron and he should be voted out. Instead of just coming out and saying it like that, McPhee takes us in what seems to be a completely different direction, until we get to that last sentence and realize what the point actually is. The only question is, why the hell didn’t he actually write that article?