The John McPhee Exception
I read one thing at a time. That is to say that I read many things through a given day, contemporaneously but not simultaneously. Typically, I am listening to an audiobook (Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot as I write this); and have a paper book on the nightstand (Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom by Conrad Black). And I read a lot of magazine articles. Generally speaking, my rule for magazine articles is that I read them in the actual paper magazine. Ostensibly, this gives my eyes some time during the day when they are not fixed on a screen. The feeling is akin to floating in warm, calm water.
There are two exceptions, the main one being when a magazine (or a stand-in for a magazine) is only available online. I try to squeeze these in to times otherwise filled with boredom. Standing in lines, waiting for meetings to start, doctor’s office waiting rooms, for instance.
Then there is the John McPhee exception. I enjoy my paper magazine time, but spoiled as I have been by our world of instant gratification, I will read a John McPhee piece on a screen as soon as I am aware of its existence. For instance: I subscribe to the New Yorker and every time I get the magazine in the mail, I scan its table of contents hoping for another installment of John McPhee’s ongoing series of “Tabula Rasa” pieces. The New Yorker is published on Mondays and usually ends up in my mailbox on Wednesday or Thursday. Sometimes–today for instance–I can’t help myself and I’ll open the app on my phone to scan the table of contents.
Today, in scanning the TOC, there it was: “Tabula Rasa: Volume Five” by John McPhee.
I could tell you that I hesitated, that I thought to myself, imagine how nice it will be to read this on paper in a few days’ time. But I flunked the marshmallow test, gang. I forgot about everything else I was doing and sank into the bliss of John McPhee’s writing. No writer of creative nonfiction since E. B. White has given me such enjoyment.
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