John McPhee’s Annals Of The Former World. July 9, 2021, Part 2

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🗓️ 9 July 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Writing, Like Geology, Requires A Little Digging When author John McPhee first considered the piece of writing that would become his 1998 book, Annals of the Former World, he envisioned a short, un-bylined article in The New Yorker, in which he would visit a road cut on Route 80—a piece that could probably be completed in a few days. Instead, that idea became a 700-page coast to coast exploration of the geology of North America, a project that took over 20 years to complete. In this archival interview, recorded in June 1999, McPhee talks with Ira Flatow about the process of reporting Annals of the Former World, which had just won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. They talk about rocks, maps, and geology, of course—but also about characters, nuclear physics, migrating fish, and the craft of writing. McPhee, who also teaches nonfiction writing at Princeton University, likened his teaching role to that of a previous job as a swimming coach. “The people I was teaching swimming [to] all knew how to swim,” he said. “What I was trying to do was to help them swim better, to streamline them. And that's very analogous to talking to people about writing. I'm not teaching anyone to write. I'm just helping people with little ideas that they may or may not pick up."

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flitto. This hour, we're opening up the SciFry Vault and setting the
0:07.2	wayback machine to 1999, 22 years ago. Our destination, a conversation with writer John McPhee about his
0:17.2	geologic epic annals of the former world. Let me set the scene for you.
0:22.0	When this conversation was recorded, the UN was struggling with how to aid refugees from the war in Kosovo.
0:28.7	Bill Clinton was president.
0:30.7	And then Texas Governor George W. Bush had just announced his intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination.
0:37.9	And the day after this conversation, the Dallas Stars defeated the Buffalo Sabres
0:43.1	in triple overtime of game six of the Stanley Cup finals.
0:48.2	Sad news for me, Buffalo is where I got started in radio.
0:52.1	But the good news, McPhee's book Annals of the Former World first published in 1998,
0:57.7	won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
1:02.0	So have a listen.
1:03.9	A literary legend is going to join us this hour on Science Friday.
1:07.7	John McPhee is a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine and the author of
1:12.5	25 books on subjects as diverse as oranges, the pine barons, and nuclear physics. Two of
1:19.6	his books, encounters with the Ark Druid and the Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for
1:24.8	National Book Awards in the science category.
1:28.1	In 1977, he received the award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters,
1:33.5	and more recently, the coveted Pulitzer Prize for his latest book, Annals of the Former World.
1:39.1	He also teaches nonfiction writing at Princeton University and joins us today from the campus there. John McPhee,
1:45.1	welcome to the program. Hello, Ira. Hi. Nice to be here. Thank you. Everybody's interested
1:51.0	when they pick up this huge volume and it's a big one and a lot of good reading in it. The annals of
	...

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