Tabula Rasa: Volume 1

by John McPhee Narrated by Grover Gardner

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Fans of John McPhee will revel in his exploration of his own unfinished ideas. This is a truly rare and valuable window into the mind of a literary mainstay that is riveting for its literary value alone. His narrative voice is unmatched, even if these ideas are unfinished.

Over seven decades, John McPhee has set a standard for literary nonfiction.
Assaying mountain ranges, bark canoes, experimental aircraft, the Swiss Army, geophysical hot spots, ocean shipping, shad fishing, and dissident art in the Soviet Union, among myriad other subjects, he has consistently written narrative pieces of immaculate design.
In Tabula Rasa, McPhee looks back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, reflecting wryly upon projects he began but never completed or published. Collected and augmented, these pieces form a “reminiscent montage” of a writing life. This volume includes, among
other things, a frosty encounter with Thornton Wilder, interrogative dinners with Henry Luce, glimpses of the allure of western Spain, fireworks over the East River as seen from Malcolm Forbes's yacht, the evolving inclinations of the Tower of Pisa, the islands in the river delta of central
California, teaching in a pandemic, and persuading The New Yorker to publish an entire book on oranges. The result is a fresh survey of McPhee's singular planet.

Editorial Reviews

July 2023 - AudioFile

This audio collection of essays and sketches is a marriage of good storytellers. Author John McPhee has the ability to make topics like plate tectonics, commercial shipping, and life under Covid lockdown interesting, as well as informative. Combine that with the mellow voice of Grover Gardner, and you have a work that nearly any listener will enjoy. The audiobook is a collection of McPhee's ideas that never came to fruition as books or magazine articles--topics such as his mother's autobiography, blind skiers, and lessons in geology. They're interesting and engaging. Gardner slows things down a bit when a passage is technical, such as a description of geomorphology. Otherwise, he carries the work along with an even pace and pleasant voice. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2023

In this solid collection, McPhee (The Patch), a New Yorker staff writer since 1965, describes “in capsule form the many writing projects that I have conceived and seriously planned across the years but have never written.” The 51 brief pieces stick to the Pulitzer winner’s signature mix of personal reflection and observational journalism, touching on his recollections of visiting Extremadura (an “autonomous community” in Spain that was the birthplace of many conquistadors, including Hernando de Soto and Hernán Cortés), stumbling into a professorship at Princeton’s fledgling journalism program in 1975, and road-tripping from Maryland to Ohio with his daughters. Several dispatches meditate on the 92-year-old author’s mortality, as when he discusses abandoning his plan to write “about a 25,000-cow dairy farm in Indiana” to instead compile this volume, which he suggests is an “old-man project” intended to keep him active. Standout selections consider the “neologymnasts” in the pharmaceutical industry who rebrand generic medications, the construction of the leaning tower of Pisa, and the creative pieces of nonfiction writing his students came up with during Covid-19 lockdown. McPhee’s gift for language is on full display (he calls Vermont and New Hampshire “two goat legs reversed for packaging”), but the unfinished snippets will likely hold the greatest appeal for the author’s most ardent admirers, who will enjoy the intimate look inside his process. It’s a revealing compendium of curios from a first-rate writer. (July)

From the Publisher

Praise for Tabula Rasa

"It’s not faint praise to say [McPhee] is still more pleasingly consistent than any other writer working. There is never a dud metaphor, never a cliché . . . McPhee collapses the distance between man and métier as he rarely has before." —Mark Oppenheimer, The Washington Post

"It is telling that McPhee’s random exercise in notebook-emptying proves a more pleasant read than most writers’ fully formed projects . . . In writing Tabula Rasa, McPhee, a legend of what is now often called creative nonfiction, found a replenishment of another quality that can lead to a long life: fun." —Chris Vognar, Los Angeles Times

“McPhee is uncommonly perceptive about his own orientations and process . . . Tabula Rasa both demystifies what it means to write about the world and deepens one’s pleasure as to the many mysteries inherent to writing.” —John Warner, Chicago Tribune

"[McPhee's] talent at turning any subject that interests him into writing that is fresh and compelling is unmatched. He is always a deep pleasure to read . . . [Tabula Rasa] is as close to an autobiography as we will get." —Jim Kelly, Air Mail

"An insightful book by a master of literary nonfiction . . . As he explores what might have been, Mr. McPhee also proves how enjoyable it can be to spend time with such an expert storyteller." —The Economist

"What do you do when your writing career lasts seven decades but you haven’t said everything you once thought about saying? If you’re John McPhee, you crack open your notebooks and give fans a taste of the stories you never wrote . . . Tabula Rasa demonstrates just how broad McPhee’s 'tabula' has always been. He’s like an NBA star who always has the green light to shoot." —Rob Merrill, Associated Press

"The cogency, potency, and temperance of [McPhee’s] voice never waver . . . A gem from an exemplar of narrative nonfiction.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"McPhee’s gift for language is on full display . . . A revealing compendium of curios from a first-rate writer." —Publishers Weekly

Praise for John McPhee

"McPhee’s sentences are born of patience and attention: he seems to possess a pair of eyes with the swivel, zoom and reach of a peregrine falcon’s, and a pair of ears with the recording ability of a dictaphone." — Robert Macfarlane, The Guardian

"McPhee has always relied on prose that is fact-rich, leisurely, requiring a certain readerly patience with scientific and geographical description, and nearly always enthralling . . . For over half a century . . . [McPhee] has been writing profiles of scientists, eccentrics and specialists of every stripe. All are exceptional at what they do. So, too, is their discerning chronicler." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"McPhee has built a career on . . . small detonations of knowledge. His mind is pure curiosity: It aspires to flow into every last corner of the world, especially the places most of us overlook . . . In the grand cosmology of John McPhee, all the earth’s facts touch one another—all its regions, creatures and eras." —Sam Anderson, The New York Times Magazine

Washington Post

Still more pleasingly consistent than any other writer working. There is never a dud metaphor, never a cliché.”

AudioFile

A marriage of good storytellers. Author John McPhee has the ability to make topics like plate tectonics, commercial shipping, and life under Covid lockdown interesting, as well as informative. Combine that with the mellow voice of Grover Gardner, and you have a work that nearly any listener will enjoy…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

The Economist (London)

As he explores what might have been, Mr. McPhee also proves how enjoyable it can be to spend time with such an expert storyteller.”

Associated Press

What do you do when your writing career lasts seven decades but you haven’t said everything you once thought about saying? If you’re John McPhee, you crack open your notebooks and give fans a taste of the stories you never wrote.”

AudioFile - JULY 2023

This audio collection of essays and sketches is a marriage of good storytellers. Author John McPhee has the ability to make topics like plate tectonics, commercial shipping, and life under Covid lockdown interesting, as well as informative. Combine that with the mellow voice of Grover Gardner, and you have a work that nearly any listener will enjoy. The audiobook is a collection of McPhee's ideas that never came to fruition as books or magazine articles--topics such as his mother's autobiography, blind skiers, and lessons in geology. They're interesting and engaging. Gardner slows things down a bit when a passage is technical, such as a description of geomorphology. Otherwise, he carries the work along with an even pace and pleasant voice. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2023-04-11
A collection of articles published, in slightly different form, in the New Yorker over the past few years.

“I decided to describe many…saved-up, bypassed, intended pieces of writing as an old-man project,” writes McPhee, longtime New Yorker contributor and author of more than 30 books. "Doing such a project as this one,” he continues, “begets a desire to publish what you write, and publication defeats the ongoing project, the purpose of which is to keep the old writer alive by never coming to an end.” Among the many subjects the author covers in this first volume are the impression left on him by an exchange with Thornton Wilder almost 60 years ago, which served as the impetus for this project; assorted experiences as both student and professor at Princeton, including his plan to write “about workouts with varied coaches in various sports over the years, but I never got around to it”; the life and times of Woodrow Wilson, who briefly coached football at Wesleyan and “appointed the first Jew to the faculty” at Princeton and “literally turned [it] into a university”; and his thoughts on titles. “I can wax polemical on titles,” he writes. “Editors...seem to think titles are like chicken heads. They can cut them off without additional effect on the C.V. of the chicken. They can replace each one with their own idea of the head of an improved chicken.” Throughout, McPhee reflects on his writing career, explaining why he did or did not follow through on projects about a wide variety of concepts. Now in his early 90s, he occasionally quotes himself. The cogency, potency, and temperance of his voice never waver, no matter where he meanders. One of the strengths of this collection is that McPhee maintains both momentum and interest—including, not least of all, his own.

A gem from an exemplar of narrative nonfiction.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178336441
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	07/11/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

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