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    Silk Parachute
    Silk Parachute
    Silk Parachute
    Audiobook6 hours

    Silk Parachute

    Written by John McPhee

    Narrated by John McPhee

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A WONDROUS BOOK OF MCPHEE'S PROSE PIECES-IN MANY ASPECTS HIS MOST PERSONAL IN FOUR DECADES The brief, brilliant essay "Silk Parachute," which first appeared in The New Yorker over a decade ago, has become John McPhee's most anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces here- highly varied in length and theme-McPhee ranges with his characteristic humor and intensity through lacrosse, long-exposure view-camera 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 piece-on whatever theme-contains 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. Author bio: John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1969), The Crofter and the Laird (1969), Levels of the Game (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1972), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), The Curve of Binding Energy (1974), Pieces of the Frame (collection, 1975), and The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975). Both Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateDec 15, 2017
    ISBN9781501962028
    Silk Parachute
    Author

    John McPhee

    John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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    Reviews for Silk Parachute

    3.5/5

    39 ratings4 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Great Cover Photo!Collection felt uneven, with Parachute game a lot of fun,then veering into mostly boring Chalk until Champagne and Veuve Cliquot are reached.Lacrosse is only for true fans, while "Under the Cloth" was too repetitive.Then came "My Life List" > agog with disgusting overBEARing MEAT and dying animals,followed by the horror of The Manhattan Project.Checkpoints at last added some fun again, with "Rip Van Golfer" the best of the whole lot.
    • 4/5
      This latest collection of essays by New Yorker staff writer John McPhee is also his most autobiographical. I can't say I liked the subjects of all the essays. The one on lacrosse started to get a bit tiresome and McPhee writes more about geology than I like to read, but I always still with him because the man can write! If even a quarter of those blogging out there would stop long enough to read a good dose of McPhee's prose the world would be a better place.
    • 2/5
      A series of essays by John McPhee. There are some occasional insights, but one is left with the impression that this venerable writer should retire.
    • 5/5
      McPhee has the knack of taking a subject you might have no interest in, and then through the careful buildup of facts, characters, and clean, lucid prose, he has you captivated. Here, McPhee achieves his usual excellence with essays on diverse subjects ranging from canoeing to Lacrosse.. He does appear to include more autobiographical references - indeed, I am hard pressed to recall any in his earlier works. His essay on Lacrosse did drag for me at times. This, however, is minor criticism. Whenever, I am mentoring young attorneys with respect to their writing skills, I always recommend they read McPhee. To become a good writer, you need to read good writing. McPhee is good writing.