Oranges+II+IRR

Oranges part II

Ianic Roy Richard

This is the second part from, what I can tell, a book that McPhee wrote about Oranges. I get that he likes to write about quirky things, he is not a regular journalist, he likes proving he can write about anything, he is a skilled writer. I get all of that. But I don't really understand the need for such a series of articles.

The story is, you guessed it, about oranges. Fun facts about them, how to eat them, their history. McPhee runs the gammut of what an orange is and how it is useful in our culture. In parts, it is at times amusing, he made me chuckle a few times. His story has a good narrative flow to it that made it feel like I was reading a story more so than an article about a regular old fruit. But there is nothing really noteworthy or astonishing about the text itself, I feel like McPhee kind of "mailed it in".

What I take from this story is moreso how I haven't read anything hard hitting by McPhee. This has led me to wonder, does he identify himself as a feature writer? Because that is how I would identify him, he writes mostly puff pieces and gets by on his reputation as a legend. How would he describe his style of writing? What attracts us to his pieces over other journalists in the business. It is rare in any type of career where someone will be identified as being superior over all others (sports being an exception). So I wonder, who crowned McPhee as the king of writers? It seems to be a general consensus as the issue is never debated by anyone, so what, in his writing, makes him the god of journalism?