Pieces of the Frame

First Edition.
Pieces of the Frame is a gathering of recent and memorable writings by one of the best journalists and storytellers of our time. They take one from the backwoods roads of Georgia, and a picaresque journey along the boundary between man and nature in the company of two guides with a practiced, shrewd knowledge of both sides of the line (“Travels in Georgia”); to the high altitude and higher stakes at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico, where a small-time Arkansas horseman attempts to win the world’s richest horse race, the All-American Futurity for two-year-old quarter horses (“Ruidoso”); to Atlantic City, where McPhee chronicles social decay ag nst the background of the game that immortalized the city’s geography (“In Search of Marvin Gardens”); to Scotland, where a pilgrimage for art’s sake leads to a surprising encounter with history or a hilltop with a view of a fifth of all Scotland (“From Birnam Wood to Dunsinane”).
McPhee’s writing is more than informative; these are stories, artful and full of character, that make compelling reading.
They play with and against one another, so that Pieces of the Frame is distinguished as much by its unity as by its variety. Subjects familiar to McPhee’s readers-sports, Scotland, conservation-are treated here with intimacy and a sense of the writer at work.
Whether he is profiling the director of the National Park Service (“Ranger”) or recalling the time he almost played basketball in the courtyard of the Tower of London (“Basketball and Beefeaters”), McPhee endows his world with warmth, companionability, and a sense of fine spirits-not at all unlike the greatest of Scotch whiskies, The Glenlivet (“Josie’s Well”).
John McPhee is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He lives and works in Princeton, New Jersey. He has written ten previous books published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.