The Patch, by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pp., $26)John McPhee wrote his first essay for The New Yorker in 1963 and published his first book with Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1965. Over a hundred essays and more than 30 books later, McPhee still writes for the same magazine and publisher. He still lives in Princeton, N.J., where he was born in 1931 and attended high school and college (he's taught at Princeton University himself since 1974). In an era when freelance writers flock from market to market, McPhee is a throwback to a time when writers found success through a steady output, a methodical approach, and a sense of loyalty.
The Patch, his new book of essays, pairs nicely with his previous volume of writing instruction — Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process. McPhee is the prototypal writer who has built a career on talent and craft rather than ideology; on patience and perception over outrage. Yet to call McPhee “prototypal” suggests that others have followed in his keystrokes. He is a singular gem within the contemporary nonfiction genre: a writer who is known for his reported long-form narratives but who has a prose-poetic sense that extends down to his paragraphs and sentences.
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