John McPhee Reads from New Book, Silk Parachute, 6pm Thursday April 22nd at Labyrinth Books Princeton
Posted on 16. Apr, 2010 by PNN Editor in Arts, Books, Events, University
Labyrinth Books welcomes author John McPhee to their store located at 122 Nassau Street in Princeton, NJ for a reading from his new book, “Silk Parachute”. This brief and brilliant essay, which first appeared in The New Yorker, has become John McPhee’s most anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces here — 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 writing about the subject , and each opens like a silk parachute, lofted skyward and suddenly blossoming with color and form.
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, 1968), Levels of the Game (1968), The Crofter and the Laird (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1971), 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. Selections from these books make up The John McPhee Reader (1976). Annals of the Former World, McPhee’s tetralogy on geology, was published in a single volume in 1998 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1999.Visit his website: www.johnmcphee.com
Labyrinth is an acclaimed independent bookstore for engaged readers. They are relied upon to provide those books that form the backbone of current debates both inside and outside of the universities. This commitment to new developments is matched by an equal commitment to the longevity of books.
Labyrinth Books sells new releases, discounted remainder-titles, and used books, specializing in academic and serious general-interest books in all areas of the humanities and social sciences, and in literature, art, architecture, and photography. Visit their website: www.labyrinthbooks.com