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P H IL IP G. T E R R IE Bowling Green State University River of Paradox: John McPhee’s " ‘The Encircled River” John McPhee has been writing for The New Yorker since 1964; dur­ ing that time, in New Yorker columns and in nearly two score books, he has produced a canon of work prodigious in quality, quantity, and variety. His interests have included professional tennis, an elite New England board­ ing school, oranges, nuclear weapons, Princeton basketball star Bill Bradley, pinball, running a good French restaurant, the Swiss army, and a host of other subjects. Reviewers have universally praised the dazzling virtuosity of his style, his facility with detail and characterization, and his ability to make the ostensibly trivial enormously interesting.1 Behind the eclecticism of McPhee’s omnivorous appetite for all the fascinating features of our world and the diverse people inhabiting it lies a recurrent concern with nature. McPhee has often written about environ­ mental issues and the individuals living in or working to protect nature, and he has grappled intelligently with the significance to the modern conscious­ ness of understanding the natural world. Growing up in New Jersey, one of the country’s most urban, congested states, McPhee started camping in the East and later developed an intense interest in the open spaces of the American West. One of his earlier books described the terrain and both wild and human populations of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. In 1971 he published a book about David Brower, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club. This was followed by a book on canoeing in Maine in 1975 and Coming Into the Country, about the people and landscape of Alaska, in 1977. Since then, while still pursuing many other topics, he has written three books on geology, largely focusing on the western mountains. In these last volumes, McPhee has undertaken nothing less than penetrating, com­ prehending, and explaining the veryhistory and meaning of the earth itself.2 Among many McPhee fans Coming Into the Country holds a special place. Several books preceding it had developed the author’s abiding con­ cern with the natural world, but they did not take the thematic risks or achieve the aesthetic and structural complexity of this extraordinary tour 4 Western American Literature de force. As Edward Hoagland observed on the first page of the New York Times Book Review, McPhee had “published several books that were essen­ tially magazine articles between book covers. But here, presumably, hemade his will, took the gambit; and in so doing, he introduced a new generosity of tempo to his work, a leisurely artfulness of organization he ha[d] not had before.” This book, according to Hoagland, is “a species of masterpiece.” Writing in the Virginia Quarterly Review, George Core agreed that Com­ ing Into the Country was McPhee’s “magnum opus” and that his “con­ tinuing interest in the natural world and in conservation ha[d] culminated in this brilliant book.” And Ronald Weber declared in the Antioch Review that McPhee’s effort to capture the meaning of the Alaskan landscape and its denizens “stands apart from his earlier work as far more ambitious and artful.”3 One reason for the appeal of this book, I believe, is the persona of the author, who assumes a role quite different from that presented in his earlier (and later) work, where he seems almost obsessively committed to main­ taining his invisibility.4In the first part (out of three) of Coming Into the Country, “The Encircled River,” we can see especially well how McPhee is constructing a narrative not only about nature but also about inner discovery. In no other essay or book has McPhee allowed his own character to become such a vital part of his writing. In “The Encircled River” the thematic “point” of the narrative depends absolutely on our acknowledging the crucial function of the narrator and the deepened understanding he achieves of his place in nature. This description of a canoe and kayak trip down the remote Salmon River in Alaska’s Brooks Range introduces many of the issues dealt with in the remainder of the book; it celebrates the joys and hardships of life...

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