Bradley+DG


 * Deanna Gamble - "A Sense of Where You Are." The New Yorker 40 (23 January 1965) 42ff.**

“A Sense of Where you Are” by John McPhee is a descriptive profile of a basketball player by the name of William Warren Bradley. The way McPhee profiles Bradley's character allows the reader to feel like they are there experiencing everything first hand.

The pattern that McPhee uses throughout this article is taking the reader step by step through Bradley's life. The article begins by setting up the atmosphere of Bradley's home gym, McPhee describes what it looks like as if he were looking around and writing everything as he sees it. The article goes on to describe the way Bradley plays and what he does in his everyday life.

Towards the beginning of the article McPhee describes the struggle that Bradley goes through when attempting to select a college to attend. This is where the title pulls in tightly with the content of the article. McPhee describes Bradley's comfort with his “home gym” as the only thing that he has ever known. It is, his sense of where, he is. Along with describing his comfort with what he used to, McPhee also provides background information on Bradley. He explains where he is from and where he began to play basketball, this allows the reader to develop a character profile from the very beginning of Bradley's basketball “life”.

The first real sense that the reader is able to collect about Bradley's character outside of his passion for basketball is when he is deciding between colleges. A majority of these colleges offered him full scholarships and he chose one that did not offer a scholarship. This allows the reader to put another piece of puzzle together with Bradley's profile.

McPhee takes the reader step by step through Bradley's hook shot from the crouching, the way he turns his head to the end shot. The way in which McPhee explains this play allows the audience to almost feel the confidence that exudes from Bradley when he is on the court. This way of descriptive writing also allows the reader to feel as though they are there seeing everything McPhee describes.

The dialogue that McPhee puts in this article flows so well that it simply adds to the effectiveness of the article. I think that this seems to be a pattern that everyone is finding in the majority of McPhee's articles.

McPhee's way of writing is what I classify as literary journalism. McPhee has writing skills that would be considered to be a news reporter's - being concise in a tight message; however his style is also so descriptive, resembling that of a novelist. I am learning more about styles of writing and literary journalism itself by reading various articles from McPhee.

I am enjoying reading McPhee, I am attempting to take every piece as something that I have chosen to read instead of something that I was assigned to.

McPhee organizes these particular article beginning with the pre-game hype through to the process of moving on to playing for a college in a completely different environment. However McPhee does go back and forth throughout the article describing a current scene in which Bradley is playing basketball but in the same paragraph he will go back and explain what got him to this point.

This article overall I feel is a worthwhile read. It explores a different way of writing from McPhee and it also invites the reader to explore their own definition of literary journalism and hopefully broaden it.