Weber+AH

Weber, Ronald. "Letting Subjects Grow." In //The Literature of Fact: Literary Nonfiction in American Writing//. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980. 111-122
This article investigated the genre of "Literary Journalism" by comparing McPhee's "Coming into the Country" with Jane Kramer's "The Last Cowboy"

Unfortunately, I didn't find the article to be particularly great. It did spike my interest in "The Last Cowboy" but I wasn't left with any insights into John McPhee or how to approach his work or the importance of this genre. It was a nice summary of the works though.

The thing I did take away from this, was the importance of the New Yorker and other magazines of the time and their willingness to publish literary journalism. The context to which you're able to actually be reading something, especially in a pre-internet time, is pretty important. Someone thinks you would be interested and willing to spend the money to purchase the actual magazine. I guess it says something about the tastes that were developing around that time. Hunter S. Thompson was writing then, and probably getting known. Same for Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote. Seems to me like they sort of appeal to the same tastes that made reality television such a big hit. We like first hand stories, and the only way to get one out of someone who doesn't write is to have a journalist do it for them, while not ignoring that they're there. I've liked how McPhee is never just some ghostly detached observer.

What I've been curious about is McPhee's method. How he chooses what to write about, how he gathers his information, what sort of role he plays in his subjects lives. The only place where that curiosity was satisfied for me was during a section on Kramer. It was a quick quote about how the couple she was writing about didn't mind the continuously growing stacks of notebooks appearing at the door way, and continued to stay open and share. I imagine the main characters in McPhee's stories must be similar. Depending on how easy they are to get to open up and share probably determines how much gets written about them. But, this article doesn't focus on this much.

I would recommend this article if you haven't read all of "Coming into the Country" or were hoping to get an idea of what it's about. I would say that it focuses much more on McPhee in context to that article instead of just McPhee in general.

-Adam