Humphrey+Lifetime+JM

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Humphrey, Theodore C. "'In a Lifetime of Descending Rivers': The Art and Argument of John McPhee's 'River Essays'." 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. 185-208 =====

Summary of Article:

For over 30 years John McPhee has written about his experiences and adventures with a variety of rivers in North America. It is known that his urbanized readers can’t quite imagine their office chairs as kayaks or canoes, but John McPhee engages all types of people into his readings, that no matter what type of person is reading McPhee’s article, they find it interesting and can sometimes relate to his literature. The Cemocheckobee, the Ochlockonee, The Chattahoochee and the Atchafalaya are just a handful of the rivers that he has written about.

In his writing on rivers and the wilderness, his objective in doing so, is to purposely tell his readers a story, about his encounter in the wilderness. Although within the story telling he also brings in the ideas of politics, culture, environment, and so on…. to incorporate them and relate these subjects to his article some how.

“The state of the “natural” world in which McPhee has placed himself is nowhere, not even in Alaska a “pristine” wilderness”. (186)

In his collection of articles McPhee attempts to capture society’s attempt to “control” nature, he does this in //Irons in the Fire// (1997), //The Control of Nature// (1989) and in //Annals of the Former World// (1998), these are just a few of his articles in which he attempts to “control” nature. But this is his style, he likes to engage people with the wilderness.

McPhee’s most popular “river essays”, “A River”, “Travels in Georgia” and “ Atchafalaya”, just to name a few, all reveal McPhee’s contribution to rivers and the debate of making the topic of rivers an engaging and thought provoking topic to read about, as some might think otherwise.

One interesting and important characteristic about McPhee is, writing about wilderness and nature, is his ability to engage the reader, put them inside the story, as if they were on the trip with him or in the wilderness. ( I found the same thing, when reading some of McPhee’s articles, I felt like I was inside the story.)

His success as a nature writer also results from how he structures his personal experiences of the wilderness and relates it to society’s arguments about the rivers and the wilderness.

In his articles titled “A River”, he describes the beautiful scenery of the Colarado River and relates it to the popular “debate between David Brower, the “archdruid” of wilderness and the conservation movement in his capacity as the first executive director of the Sierra Club, and Floyd Dominy the United States Commissioner of reclamation from 1959 to 1969” (187). In his piece “A River”, he is also precisely accurate about description.

“Here is precisely accurate,sinous poetic description, driven with powerful active energy. Such a passage celebrates the “natural” river.” (188)

According to Theodore Humphrey, he thinks that there are two distinct images that sum up quite nicely, the “big dam debate”. I agree with him on that, as he explained in a summary what McPhee had wrote it is clearly seen that there was a lot of vivid detail description. McPhee makes the reader respect the men involved in the debate, about the Grand Canyon.

In his article, Theodore Humphrey is basically summarizing a few of McPhee’s, “river essays”, - “ A River”, “ The Encircled River”, “Travels in Georgia”, “Atchafalaya”, “Shad”, “A Selective Advantage” and “They’re in the River”, are all the ones that he is noting important comments about and summarizing.

Theodore Humphrey, sums the rest of the story up nicely, adding a few of his own thoughts to it.

McPhee’s most popular book, //Coming Into the Country// (1977), is about the use of land and the issues surrounding it in Alaska. There has been some efforts to set-aside land of Alaska, to preserve it for wildlife, due to almost a hundred years of destructive exploration on the land there. The beginning paragraph to the article is an explanation of John McPhee’s adventure on the rivers in the area, describing everything, from the temperature of the water, to his head aching, to the detail of water running down the back of his shirt…. every vivid explicit detail you could imagine, McPhee elaborated on in the beginning of that piece.

“The river is clearly part of a much larger context, which he celebrates by recording his close and unexpected encounter (while on a long walk near the Salmon) with a large, barren-ground grizzly grazing on blueberries, with his hump vibrating slowly as he engulfs whole plants.” (191)

Theodore Humphrey, explains the detail included in McPhee’s article, regarding the grizzly bear. Basically the idea is that, the land that McPhee is in “belongs to the grizzly bear” and therefore McPhee has to essentially trust the bear, and ask before entering.

Humphrey, makes a special emphasize on the narrative that McPhee used within his article. His narrative of each aspect of his travels, provides a sense of structure and stability that is frequently used in McPhee’s writings.

“As usual, the narrative structure provides the context for other structures, argumentative and affective-an account of his emotional and intellectual responses to the physical river itself and to the country and its wild inhabitants on either side of the stream, all in the service of his overall argument” (191)

His argument he is presenting he described at both the beginning and the end of “Encircled River”. More of his experience in the wilderness is presented with a story of what is going on with him and what he is doing in the river along with regards to his argument. His argument was to preserve the rivers and land of Alaska. Preservation was done to incorporate national parks, monuments, preserves and wild life land.

“ It means, I suggest the nature of wilderness, the river as metonym for wilderness, encircled, surrounded by civilzation and thus without a safe retreat, under siege and requiring help to understand it and to preserve it” (192)

McPhee uses a number of strategies for building up his argument. Humphrey, notes that one of the most interesting strategies McPhee uses, involves the idea of blending images together of him exploring the wilderness.

“He establishes in the responses of his witness a set of tensions that structure that argument of //Coming Into the Country// at every turn along the narrative that provides the sturdy backbone of the book”. (192)

Some of the troubles he faces while travelling is the flooding of the river. Humphrey draws explicit detail to the exploration of McPhee’s adventures, describing many examples from his articles and quotes from his writing. McPhee also supports his argument for preservation throughout his article and writing.

The third book of //Coming Into the Country,// elaborates on the people in the countryside which is along the upper Yukon, also known as the “eastern interior”. It illustrates how different the Yukon river is from the Salmon river. He explains that the river is functional, calling it a “liquid road”.

“ During the winter and the summer it functions as an east-west highway through the middle of the state-solid enough during the long winter and useful as a swiftly moving liquid road in the summer, but treacherous during the “transition periods” (193)

McPhee describes the Yukon River with vivid imagery and also talks about his experience exploring it as well. Humphrey notes that McPhee it “a big river in a big wilderness”. In his article he desribes the sound the water makes while flowing down stream, how calm it is, the scenery and so on and so forth.

Humphrey notes that in all of McPhee’s river essays McPhee is very much a part of them not only the author but in some cases an intelligent participant observer, like in this article. He is recording and evaluating the cultural construction of the rivers, which we as a society, become conscious of. Rivers are very important, to us, they work hard every day just like us.

“Rivers provide water supplies for household use, manufacturing, and agriculture and yet serve as well as receptacles for the country’s sewage. Rivers transport the productions of farms, mines and manufacturing industries and provides sites for enormous hydroelectric plants. Yet they also serve the people’s aesthetic and psychological needs by providing venues for recreation and restoration for contact with the wild and wilderness” (195).

Although these claims about the river are very controversial as it brings upon the idea of people and the “control” of nature.

In McPhee’s article titled “Travels in Georgia”, he adds in more social issues, including issues about urban pollution and wildlife preservation. McPhee depicts the happenings of his exploration of the river and streams of Georgia with two members of the Georgia Natural Area Biologists Council. “the essay contains brief sketches of the Tallulah River in the north of Georgia (the river of James Dickey’s novel //Deliverance// and the movie) and of the Chattahoochee, on which they travel in the company of then-governor Jimmy Carter, who pilots one of two canoes. (195/196)

The essay also makes an argument of the preservation of land that was settled by Europeans and Africans over 400 years ago.

A few years later, McPhee is on the “Mighty Mississippi” also known as the “Father of Waters”, but instead of being on a kayak or a canoe, he finds himself as a guest aboard the “Mississippi”, a certain red-trimmed cream-hulled vessel”.

“In this way, McPhee “immerses” himself in the history of the Mississippi River, human struggles to live along it and the consequences of that struggle”. (196)

Humphrey, goes on to explain the depiction of the history that is implied in McPhee’s article. There is geology also involved in this, as he explains about the rock formations, and how the mountains, rivers and streams built up most of Louisiana.

“McPhee writes that erosion of the coastal marshes has cost Louisiana a million acres in a hundred years, a very fast ( in contrast to geological time) alteration of the environment” (197)

Humphrey, then goes on a little history lesson, further in depth than McPhee to further I guess explain what McPhee is trying to say in his article.

“McPhee’s historical survey in “Atchafalaya” of the efforts since the eighteenth century to control the Mississippi’s flows and floods suggests that humankinds hubris is alive and well.” (197)

According to Humphrey and McPhee, the Mississippi and Atchafalaya were in one sense or another rivals in the industry.

Now, engineers are in the mix. The Corps of Engineers are in place to build control structures on the Mississippi River.

“In 1973 the control structure failed under the relentless battering of the Mississippi, which hammered the structure with barely imaginable forces.” (199)

The verbs and nouns that McPhee uses to describe the control structure (which wasn’t very good to begin with, as it failed) were written powerfully to make his point understood.

Humphrey, suggests that McPhee’s essays about shad fishing in Delaware and Connecticut, that were published in 2000, in the //New Yorker,// are good examples of his narrative techniques. In his essay titled “ A Selective Advantage” he explicitly describes the traits about shad fish and Boyd Kynard who he had gone on a fishing trip with.

Humphrey explains more about McPhee’s encounter with fish, with regards to his trip and exploration.

“In pursuit of the shad, McPhee is chest deep in the river, casting his darts shoulder to shoulder with other anglers who just happen to be experts on the behaviour of this species, and neck deep in facts and stories about the fish”. (200)

Humphrey suggests, McPhee compares himself to a shad fish, metaphorically speaking though. How he thinks and acts like a shad, and works like one too. “His implied metaphor is that he is driven to write just as the shad is driven to get up strem to spawn and motivated by “light” moves in fits and furious starts”. (201)

Humphrey makes note of McPhee’s talented writing abilities and techniques and goes on to explain them quite nicely. Humphrey suggests it is the quality of his writing that makes the words he use so powerful, no matter the subject he is writing about.

“his poet’s ability to create the apt image with a pleasing economy of words-enables him to describe his rivers’ appearances and behaviours, their contexts and contents their history as well as their effects on humanity and wildlife.” (201)

McPhee, doesn’t just get his information by looking in encyclopaedias he actually goes into the unknown to find what he is looking for. He gets his information, by going on trips, observations, experiences, notes, facts, conversations, basically using anything he can find to come up with his storyline.

“McPhee second gift is his capacity for doggedly thinking and rethinking his voluminous materials, organizing and reorganizing them into a form that suggests an organic and inevitable enactment of his central idea. Once his argument presents itself, demands admission, and throws out red herrings and false scents, McPhee is ready to write.” (201)

Without all the facts, notes and experience there would be no story. By narrating his own experience on the rivers he is essentially giving his readers a better understanding of the subject and an inside look of what these rivers are all about.

“The phrase “immersion journalism” accurately describes much of McPhee’s research strategy: intense research over time, visiting and revisting his informants in their nature habitats.” (202)

Humphrey, explains more of McPhee’s writing techniques, and how he does this successfully with provided evidence of it. “The very title of //Coming Into the Country// reveals how he practices “immersion journalism” he enters the country (and the water) immerse himself in it, taking “psychological” possession of it by the fact of his physical experience of it” (203/204)

McPhee is not the only one who uses this technique, others are known to use it too Thoreau famously also uses it. In the way McPhee words his writing, we as readers trust him and believe every word he is saying.

“Over the course of his career his perspective has always been multiple, complex: at once, appreciative and analytical, sensory and scientific.” (206). Humphrey notes on the necessary quality of McPhee’s work and supplies examples where this is evident.

Near the end of this article, Humphrey describes McPhee and gives some characteristics of him regarding his writing.

“McPhee as a physical explorer our proxy, encounters the wilderness directly as a traveller who pursues understanding and enlightenment through the pleasures and the pains of experience. He has to make crucial decisions in the middle of rapids. McPhee is all of us in the unfamiliar environment. He is humbled as he acquires new knowledge” (207).

Humphrey concludes with brief notations with regards to McPhee’s writing and reasoning for writing in this way and also noting the importance of how effective his writing techniques are. -Jessica Marr-