Stull+JG

Joline Gaudet “Self and the Performance of Others: The Pastoral Vision of John McPhee” By James Stull

I chose to read this article, which first appeared in the //North Dakota Quarterly// in 1991. It begins with a brief introduction to what kind of writer, and person, McPhee was in his earlier years. McPhee graduated from Princeton in 1953, and for some time after that he wrote plays for live television. He went on to write articles, the kinds of articles he wanted to write as a freelance journalist, and submitted them to //The New Yorker// in from 1954 to 1957, but his stories were rejected several times by the magazine. Eventually, he was hired by //The New York Times// as a celebrity profile writer; he wrote profiles on everyone from Joan Baez to Sofia Loren. McPhee didn’t find this work satisfying at all, he compared the experience to moving a lawn, saying “Once a week, you had to do it.”(182) Finally, in 1963, McPhee’s first piece, //Basketball and Beefeaters//, was published in //The New Yorke//r,9 years after he was first rejected by the magazine. As we know, he’s been writing for it ever since.

At this point in the article, the focus shifts from McPhee’s background to his writing style. Stull first focuses on how little McPhee reveals about himself in his writing, focusing on “facts rather than about the journalist.” Although McPhee rarely talks about himself, Stull argues, “his work reveals as much about him as it does the nominal.”(183) One of the examples given is about McPhee’s article //The Headmaster//, in which McPhee paints a somewhat idyllic image of Frank Boyden, the headmaster at Deerfield Academy. One important fact that McPhee never reveals, however, is that he himself was once a pupil at that very school.

One interesting quote in this part of the article is a quote from McPhee himself: “if you make a list of all the work I’ve ever done, and put a little mark beside things that relate to activities and interests I had before I was twenty, you’d have a little mark beside well over 90 percent of the pieces of writing. That is no accident.”(183) I found this quote particularly striking because it relates to discussions we’ve had in class about how exactly McPhee chooses to write about what he writes about.

Most of the rest of the article focuses on the types of people McPhee writes about, and the ways in which he chooses to present them. The author argues that McPhee writes about people and constructs them in a way that matches his own ideals, values and beliefs. He says “The people who populate McPhee’s world, moreover, are representative of a particular cultural model—the “authentic” or “ideal” American—and they are identified by a number of American character traits—among them, self-reliance, individualism, and “innocence.”(184) The article goes on to list several examples of “these kinds of people” in McPhee’s writing, and notices that all of them have something in common; they are all “people who in a private way thrive.”(185)

Later, Stull focuses on the attention(perhaps over attention) McPhee places on detail. He cites a piece by McPhee in which he lists over 40 different types of birds in one paragraph, and then defends McPhee’s choice, saying that “Part of his strategy is to include sufficient detail so that readers feel they have a comprehensive picture of the subject. In response to reading a selection from //Oranges//, some reader might feel, as did one of my students, that McPhee tells you everything there is to know about oranges. This is not quite accurate, of course, for McPhee only creates the impression of being omniscient, but this illusion of “completeness” helps to establish McPhee’s journalistic authority.”(191)

While this article does take some jabs at McPhee’s idealism, and makes some (maybe) overgeneralized guesses as to what McPhee’s motives are for writing the way he does, I think it’s still a worthwhile read. It addresses some of the questions that have been reoccurring in class discussions, and at the very least offers some insights into an academic conversation that is clearly taking place about McPhee, his writing, and his motives.