Selective+-+JH

"A Selective Advantage." by John McPhee

Response by: Jessica Holt

In this article McPhee seemed to use humour yet again to attract the reader into the story. When I read the title I was unsure of the contents and no one had done a summary of the first page so I was going in blind, which turned out to not be a waste of time. McPhee seemed to switch the focus of his writing throughout the article as he often does. He doesn't stick to the main theme of the article but usually adds in little stories throughout that do not seem to have a lot of relevance but keep the reader engaged. In this article he is discussing a type of fish named shad have their usual spawning run, which was interrupted the creation of a hydroelectricity dam that had been placed in the course. Then he goes on to talk about how shad fishing had become an American traditional past time.

He goes on to introduce the main character of this article named Boyd Kynard, and also a second man who is a local entrepreneur. Then McPhee proceeds to tell the reader about his interactions with these two other people. He mostly tells that he buys his fishing supplies from the local salesman and goes fishing with Kynard. After the explanation of the fishing McPhee starts to tap into the real reason this article is called Selective Advantage.