A wide-ranging writer

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, sports writing, essays, memoirs

This was a wild card selection for me, found in the 080 section of the library, classified as "General Collections." That's what happens when a librarian is confronted with a book that is in two clearly distinct sections, but must apply one number. The latter 60% of The Patch by John McPhee is indeed about as general as can be, but the first 40% really needs to be cataloged 790, "Sports, Games & Entertainment", as it consists of essays scattered across that category. Considering McPhee's wide-ranging interests, with a few million words in print over his career of fifty-plus years, I suspect a similar amount of material could be gathered for any of several subjects.

Here is my high accolade: Although I pay nearly no attention to sports, I greatly enjoyed reading his perspectives on fishing, football, basketball, golf, baseball, tennis, lacrosse, and the people (particularly coaches) surrounding them. None of it made me want to take up this or that sporting activity, but then, there wasn't much on walking or hiking, at which I excel...and I excel at nothing else, sporting-wise!

He titled the second section of his book "An Album Quilt". It consists of excerpts from fifty or so pieces of his writing over all his years riding a typewriter. It opens with a mini-bio of Cary Grant, from his own perspective, paying particular attention to Grant's perfectionism. He limns Richard Burton, and takes up cudgels on his behalf, where so many deplored Burton for forsaking the stage for film. He wangled a visit to the gold repository beneath Manhattan, where just one of the larger rooms housed 50,000 bars of bullion, which took a year for three shifts of "stackers" to assemble; he was soon overwhelmed by the inanity of it all (gold having no stable value any more), and fled to the street. It soon dawns: in his 88+ years, this fellow has done a great many things that none of us have a hope of experiencing, and has written about all of them.

I wonder how many typewriters he's worn out?