Table of contents.

Table of Contents

THOUGH THE DEATH OF E. B. White last fall felt us the poorer, still we have John McPhee at The New Yorker to carry on in White's tradition with no diminution of power and grace. Of the dozen and a half collections of his reportage published since A Sense of Where You Are (1965), on professional basketball player (now senator from New Jersey) Bill Bradley, this latest one sustains the general excellence. It reflects McPhee's continuing interest in the natural aspect of this world, and he writes about natural things almost for love's sake alone and not in the disgruntled mode of some latter-day Thoreau. The opening eassy in Table of Contents, "Under the Snow," illustrates McPhee's beautifully controlled state of mind and temperament. It also exhibits his characteristics talent for getting unusual stories out of seemingly common materials--in this case, the revelation of the many black bears' dens in Pennsylvania. A precise and lovely prose describes a state biologist reaching into a den whose sow has been calmed by the hypodermic jab stick: "From deeps of shining fur, he fished out cubs." This is a disarming kind of simplicity. As more or less fugitive pieces, however, the essays do not give us the unity of such McPhee masterpieces as The Pine Barrens (1968), The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975), and Coming into the Country (1977), but there are prime choices here for a new edition of William H. Howarth's fine collection, published in 1976. With what has been called our greatest magazine going into decline, John McPhee may nowadays be The New Yorker's solitary boast.