Weber+AN

Alex Nowicki “Letting Subjects Grow” – Ronald Weber In this article, Weber reviews McPhee’s book “Coming into the Country”, which includes the articles; “The Encircled River”, “What They Were Hunting For” and “Coming into the Country.” The subject of all three articles is the State of Alaska, its nature and its people. “It is long and comfortably repetitious rather than lean and taut, loosely formed rather than narrowly focused, richly lyric in its prose rather than understated, and often personal rather than rigorously impersonal.” (p.115) I thought that this passage drew a very accurate comparisons between McPhee’s style of writing and the commonly accepted journalistic method. “McPhee gives voice to the debate by allowing others to talk…” (p.118) “He presents various positions through the committee members who argue them, the people carefully delineated and often left to speak in their own words.” (p.118) These two passages show a very important facet of McPhee’s writing, his neutrality, or better yet his apparent neutrality towards the subject. Although at the very end of the book McPhee does reveal his personal opinion, by that time a plethora of varied view points and arguments have already been revealed to the reader, letting her develop her own opinion over the course of the book. I think that the reason why these view points are expressed through the mouths of people instead of summarised and stated dryly by McPhee, is to add weight and credibility to the idea. “McPhee never becomes a subject himself nor does he insist that the material can exist for us only through him, but the personal tone and point of view of the book and McPhee’s carefully arranged appearances help bring his vast subject to concrete and haunting life.” (p.120) This excerpt struck me as important, because it reminded so vividly of what I would consider to be the ‘ideal teacher’. And now that I’ve come to that realisation, I understand that the better part of what McPhee does, is teach his readers. He teaches us about Alaska, Oranges, Canoes, Geology, Trucking, and with every article we learn something new. “McPhee moves the account along through leisurely association, a fact or incident or person suggesting another, and maintains the broad back-and-forth movement between the specific scenes and various kinds of background material that mark the earlier sections.” (p.120-121) And finally this section brings to evidence the loose, almost liquid structure of McPhee articles. They flow from one thing to another through association, always connected but never obvious. All information helps to build the context necessary to understand what McPhee is talking about.