Giving Good Weight [Hardcover]

John McPhee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 26, 1979

"You people come into the market—the Greenmarket, in the open air under the down pouring sun—and you slit the tomatoes with your fingernails. With your thumbs, you excavate the cheese. You choose your stringbeans one at a time. You pulp the nectarines and rape the sweet corn. You are something wonderful, you are—people of the city—and we, who are almost without exception strangers here, are as absorbed with you as you seem to be with the numbers on our hanging scales." So opens the title piece in this collection of John McPhee's classic essays, grouped here with four others, including "Brigade de Cuisine," a profile of an artistic and extraordinary chef; "The Keel of Lake Dickey," in which a journey down the whitewater of a wild river ends in the shadow of a huge projected dam; a report on plans for the construction of nuclear power plants that would float in the ocean; and a pinball shoot-out between two prizewinning journalists.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Replete with the reportorial virtues for which John McPhee is so much respected."—Larry McMurtry, The New York Times Book Review

"McPhee . . . is a diamond-hard, diamond-clear reporter with exquisite taste."—Barry Siegel, Los Angles Times

"An excellent sampler of McPhee's writing."—Robert R. Harris, The Washington Post

About the Author

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written nearly 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977.  In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World.  He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 261 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (November 26, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374163065
• ISBN-13: 978-0374163068
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,390,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1969), The Crofter and the Laird (1969), Levels of the Game (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1972), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), The Curve of Binding Energy (1974), Pieces of the Frame (collection, 1975), and The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975). Both Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If only life was like a box full of McPhee essays, January 12, 2002

By 

Sven Allenbach-Schmidt (Greenbelt, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giving Good Weight (Hardcover)

All sorts of tasty satisfaction, with something of interest for all tastes. John McPhee is a master of the literate essay. He seeks out topics that most of us would never think to be interested in, and makes them available to us. Best of all, McPhee always remembers that it isn't just the technical details of a subject that are interesting, but the people. His essays can be found first in the pages of "New Yorker" magazine, but then usually make it out in book form quickly.

In "Giving Good Weight", McPhee serves up five splendid examples of the essayist's art. First, the title essay, about the produce sellers of the open-air farmer's market, the Brooklyn Greenmarket. McPhee interviewed, and sacked produce for, several of the sellers. His specialty, green peppers. He follows the sellers back to their farms, tracking the greens from seed to sale.

What if you had a dream of how to produce electricity cleanly, out-of-sight, and still be competitive? That's what Richard Eckert, subject of the second essay, 'The Atlantic Generating Station' had. McPhee focuses on Eckert and the other dreamers involved, but along the way gives us lots of information about oceangraphy, marine biology, the electrical utility industry, and nuclear regualation.

'Pinball Philosphy' is about the two best pinball players in New York City, at a time (1975) when public pinball was illegal there. We learn about the machines, the sub culture that saw pinball play as their life and work as the finacing mechanism to supply quarters, and tricks of play. Then, McPhee puts Tony Lukas and Tom Buckley head-to-head for play on a Williams Fun-Fest machine. Only the best flipper can win.

Next, we join McPhee and some cronies for canoeing in Maine, mostly on the St. John River, in 'The Keel of Lake Dickey'. McPhee's first mass market bestseller was his Alaskan classic "Coming into the Country" and in this essay he shows yet again his love and feel for nature.

The last, and best, essay in the book is 'Brigade de Cuisine'. This is about a restaurant, it's one man kitchen crew Chef "Otto" (hence the title), and his family. In the essay, McPhee never identifies 'Otto', the name of the restaurant, or even it's location. This caused quite a fuss with the professional food critics of New York when the essay was published in the 'New Yorker', as they couldn't believe that such a place could exist. In time they found the place, and did their best to destroy it, out of sheer pique. Fortunately, 'Otto' already had plans to move out West and open a new place. It would be fun if McPhee would write a sequel to 'Brigade' and tell us his view of all the fuss. Oh, for anyone who has read the essay, and might be interested to know, 'Otto's real name is Alan Lieb, and his restaurant was in Shohola. PA.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McPhee's best volume of "assortments", October 31, 2001

By 

Eric Krupin (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Giving Good Weight (Paperback)

John McPhee is, by universal agreement, our greatest non-fiction writer. Although his single-focus books about geology and Alaska are the foundation of his reputation, I find this varied collection of shorter pieces to be the most enjoyable reading. My particular favorite is "Brigade de Cuisine" which details the single-minded dedication of a chef/owner to expressing himself in food. Mouth-watering stuff.

(A background story to illustrate the politics of the food world: The chef, who asked McPhee not to identify him, was quoted in the piece as saying that the famous Andre Soltner of Lutece used frozen shrimp in one of his dishes. The outraged Soltner demanded a retraction and McPhee, for perhaps the only time in his career, grudgingly complied. Rallying behind Soltner, its favored son, The New York Times dispatched a reporter to learn the chef's identity. Having done so, they printed a scathing review of his restaurant - one that is hard to reconcile with McPhee's rapturous descriptions of its food. The proof would be in the pudding, so to speak, but this sure sounds like a vendetta to me.)

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gift, March 28, 2006

By 

Bruce Banner "Hulk" (19th hole, Pasatiempo) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giving Good Weight (Paperback)

For its story of Otto alone, this book is a treasure.

Every lover of wonderful storytelling/reportage/writing should read this. As McPhee might, I will say nothing more-except to apologize, because he would express that sentiment more artfully.

Here's hoping there are a couple more McPhee's coming along.