Silk Parachute

A WONDROUS NEW BOOK OF MCPHEES PROSE PIECESIN MANY ASPECTS HIS MOST PERSONAL IN FOUR DECADESThe brief, brilliant essay Silk Parachute, which first appeared in The New Yorker a decade ago, has become John McPhees most anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces herehighly varied in length and themeMcPhee ranges with his characteristic humor and intensity through lacrosse, longexposure viewcamera photography, the weird foods he has sometimes been served in the course of his reportorial travels, a U.S. Open golf championship, and a season in Europe on the chalk from the downs and sea cliffs of England to the Maas valley in the Netherlands and the champagne country of northern France. Some of the pieces are wholly personal. In luminous recollections of his early years, for example, he goes on outings with his mother, deliberately overturns canoes in a learning process at a summer camp, and germinates a future book while riding on a jump seat to away games as a basketball player. But each pieceon whatever themecontains somewhere a personal aspect in which McPhee suggests why he was attracted to write about the subject, and each opens like a silk parachute, lofted skyward and suddenly blossoming with color and form.