Howarth+Introducing+AB

Journalism 2773 Howarth, William, L. “Introducing John McPhee” In Coming Into McPhee Country: John McPhee and the Art of Literary Nonfiction. Andrew Bartlett In “Introducing John McPhee” from In Coming into McPhee Country: John McPhee and the Art of Literary Nonfiction you are shown how John McPhee works and comes up with his ideas. This piece has articles taken from works of McPhee that had not been previously published and has his own friends and colleagues talk about how they see the real John McPhee. The book starts off with a quick history of McPhee’s carrier and talks about the different prizes and books he has written over the years. To date McPhee has written twenty seven nonfiction books and still has all of them in print today. Showing that his writing style and tendencies can captivate its audience making you want to read more to find out what he is talking about. The article also has essays that look at different aspects of McPhee’s writing and try to work through their own ideas what his writing means and why it is presented the way that it is. The article is separated into three separate parts which are The Evolving World, McPhee and the Natural World, and The Writerly Challenges of McPhee. In the first section we are told by William Howarth how he thinks John McPhee works as a writer. As a friend and colleague for many years Howarth believes that McPhee writes from his life history and works on only things that interest him personally. He chooses to be very independent and will not let other people choose for him what to write about because writing comes from within and others don’t know how you feel about different topics and your interest in them. In the first section you get to find out from a quote from McPhee himself were he comes up with his topics and ideas. McPhee states “that well above ninety percent of the projects I’ve gotten into over the years relate to things that I was interested in was when I was young, before I was twenty-one, many of them before I was sixteen” showing that his stories that seem to come out of the blue really have been floating up in McPhee’s head more many years. This part really showed me how McPhee really works because I had always wondered how he came up with his stories and to know that they mostly came from his life experiences as a young man is very interesting. This shows he is always trying to work things out he didn’t understand earlier in life, but gets to explore by doing different types of stories in his articles.  The second part about the natural world we get to look at how McPhee has a love for nature and how it is created and survives. It looks at how McPhee has been able to understand the environmental problems that would and did arise because of the pollution and destruction we have been causing to nature before most people believed it would happen. There are also articles people have written about how they feel McPhee really is not an environmental activist because he has never come out and said in any of his articles how he really feels about the destruction that has taken place. That he writes on both sides of the environmental issues to equally to show the damage people are doing, so some people fell he is not helping get the right message across.   The third part talks about how hard it is to write and always understand McPhee’s writing. The articles in this part look at how his different writing style has evolved over time and what it means for McPhee. They explore why this different style can draw the attention of their reader because he uses different techniques to catch your attention and hold you in while he explores his different topics.