Customer Reviews

United States Authors Series: John McPhee (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

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McPhee is an important American writer and should have had a number of books written about his work before Pearson's, but this is terrific beginning. Pearson's book is intelligent, wonderfully written (interesting in its own right as a piece of prose), and suggestive. His book does what all good criticism should do -- it makes a reader want to go back to the author's work and re-experience it.

I'd hoped for a John McPhee-type profile on John McPhee. Instead this. As far as information on John McPhee, Wikipedia is just as informative. The author spends minimal time and space on McPhee and maximum space summarizing all of his works. He loves McPhee, as do all of us fans, and is fulsome in his praise but we don't need that.

I've been reading McPhee for 55 years, I have read almost all of his works. I wanted to know more about the man who wrote them: how much writing for "The New Yorker" affected his style, what other authors influenced him, a day in his life, how he chooses his topics, how he is able to spend as much time as he does on his subjects and how he handles the logistics, what his family thinks about his being away from home so much, etc.

This book reads as if it was written for some sort of college English class.

This book gave me fascinating insights into the life and work of a writer I've admired for years. I especially liked the account of McPhee's early years in Princeton and Vermont.