A charming, breezy collection of reminiscences about projects that didn’t make it, ideas that never got fully baked, research never written up, either because the subject died or because McPhee, who was born in 1931, lost interest along the way ... Few of the subjects discussed in Tabula Rasa call out for the longform treatment; McPhee’s instincts (and editors) steered him well. But there are still pleasures to be had in these 50 short chapters. Minor league McPhee is still major league writing. It’s not faint praise to say he is still more pleasingly consistent than any other writer working. There is never a dud metaphor, never a cliché ... He still has stories to tell. Maybe they’re just not the ones he had the good sense to let go.
There are plenty of snippets here that will make readers wish McPhee had indeed delved deeper into particular topics ... Tabula Rasa demonstrates just how broad McPhee’s "tabula" has always been.
What Tabula Rasa really is about is John McPhee, now 92, and, along with his last couple of books, it is as close to an autobiography as we will get ... Of course, you do not need to be a Princeton student to learn these life lessons. All you have to do is read his work.
There are simply too many compelling and witty pieces in Volume 1 for a reviewer to recount. McPhee chooses his words with the care Proust did, only McPhee is always far more informative and funnier than Proust ... McPhee is a writer with a generous heart and sharp self-deprecatory sense of humor. Tabula Rasa is no blank slate. It is a story that tells the reader much about McPhee the writer, the man, and the teacher.
Of detritus Tabula Rasa makes diamonds. Its 50 chapters are McPhee books in miniature, with all the wit, panache, and exactitude we find in his long-form work.
Some of the best writing in this collection could be considered memoir — from McPhee’s high school job as a billy club- and flashlight-toting night watchman at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, to finding one-sentence and three-page autobiographies written by his late parents among their possessions ... Tabula Rasa” demonstrates just how broad McPhee’s 'tabula' has always been. He’s like an NBA star who always has the green light to shoot ... I don’t know about you, but I’d buy a McPhee book featuring the characters he’d meet along the way. Instead, all we can do is wait for Volume 2.
The cogency, potency, and temperance of his voice never waver, no matter where he meanders. One of the strengths of this collection is that McPhee maintains both momentum and interest—including, not least of all, his own. A gem from an exemplar of narrative nonfiction.
