Maher+KL

//@Maher, Susan Naramore. "'Pentimento in the Hide': Cracking Code with John McPhee." In //Coming Into McPhee Country: John McPhee and the Art of Literary Nonfiction//. Ed. O. Alan Weltzien and Susan N. Maher. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2003. 301-19

“Pentimento in the Hide; Cracking Code with John McPhee: by Susan Naramore Maher begins with the Maher discussing the first time she read Oranges, being the first piece of writing she has ever read by John McPhee. She discusses how she was hooked to McPhees work for she was interested in his precise way with language, his narrative experiments, his vivid, carefully limned portraits and his keen interest in so many factors of work. Maher examines how McPhee uses the ability to decode for his readers an unfamiliar way of life. She discusses an interview that took place between Michael Pearson and John McPhee. McPhee explains the creative exchange that defines nonfiction, quote “the reader is the most creative thing in a piece of work. The writer is literally in the eye of the beholder....Creative writing is the issue”, Maher tells readers that McPhee believes readers “create” the author. Another thing she discusses the bliss of creativity and collaborating with McPhee is “the process of decoding”. Maher is amused by the variety of topics McPhee writes about such as; geology, nuclear physics, building canoes, branding cattle, collecting art, playing basketball or tennis as well fishing and rivers. Maher goes on to saying that in each subject, McPhee eases his readers into a world 50that engenders its own cultural code. Maher examines McPhees text and how it involves both expresses such as “involving encoding” which is to “convey” information through the code or “decoding” which is to “interpret” information from the code. Reading this article about John McPhee gave me a better understanding of him and a deeper level of his writings and the process he goes about to establishes a brilliant piece of work.

Kayla Lawrence //