I feel like I would have liked this a lot more if I had been familiar with this writer before. Like, this one felt like it was for the fans.

Delighted to include this title in The Globe and Mail newspaper’s extensive annual Holiday Gift Books package in the Arts weekend section.

John McPhee undertook this book of essays as an "old-man project." As an author, McPhee recognizes he may be running shorter on time: a book project may not reach its conclusion. However, essays have limitless potential. Mark Twain was the inspiration, who dictated his autobiography in bits and pieces towards the end of his life. 

McPhee's premise has a touch of meta about it: in TABULA RASA, each essay is a topic he meant to write on, but didn't. So here we get glimpses of writing projects of various lengths, snippets of what could have been. We have this retrospective that touches on his huge range of interests, and it's aptly called Volume One, to allow for future installments.

It was a pleasurable read, and I'm drawn to books of essays (as well as poetry and short stories) when my schedule is especially demanding, as it allows me to get closure even if the only time I have to read is a handful of minutes as I wait at school pickup.

(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

The manger of our bookstore introduced me to the work of John McPhee and I enjoyed reading Tabula Rasa. It's the kind of book that you can pick up any time you have a spare minute or two and immerse yourself in McPhee's enthralling writing. I can see why it was recommended to me and why McPhee is such a popular seller at our bookstore.

Bits and pieces from McPhee. Amazingly good. Even though, some may not be new, they feel fresh. Nothing longer than a short essay. Some pieces are only a page long. They are about projects the author didn't do; things that happen to him in life; many descriptions of the real world and real world science. Some examples: The Province Line; a line that divides New Jersey into east and west. Delays in basketball games for commercial sponsors. What his students wrote during Covid. The places he's traveled and is still a home boy in Princeton. He's 92. I'm 61% through the book and submitting my review now because I don't want to rush-read it. Buy this book? Yes.

Thank you, NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, for the ARC. I was not commissioned in any way.

An absolute delight to read. John McPhee's particular blend of humor, total nerd-out journalistic integrity and love for detail, and keen eye for interesting personalities makes for a collection of essays that are niche, easy to get through, and entertaining. Tabula Rasa is comprised of pieces as short as a few paragraphs to as long as a medium-length article, all sketching out the topics, people, and stories McPhee wanted to get to but never could and might never be able to, given the finite nature of life. Tabula Rasa is the de facto nonfiction essay evidence that something is better than nothing.

"Tabula Rasa" by John McPhee was just an absolute pleasure--reading it felt like sinking into a cozy armchair in his study with a cup of coffee (or perhaps the bourbon that he writes about here) and watching as he rummages through scraps of paper from his desk and bookshelves and fondly reminisces about the projects that never were. In contrast to his long form pieces for The New Yorker, the bits of writing collected here are bite-sized morsels, some tasty enough that you wish McPhee and his editor at The New Yorker, the redoubtable Mr. Shawn, had decided to spin them out into full length articles, and others the kind of fun but half-baked concepts that were clearly not meant to be. Reading about them all, however, is nothing less than interesting (and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny) and reinforces why McPhee is an undisputed master of his craft. He jokingly refers to this as “Volume 1,” calling it the kind of “old-person project” meant to “keep the old writer alive by never coming to an end.” We can only hope that a “Tabula Rasa: Volume 2” is forthcoming.

I sometimes listened to the audiobook of this title and sometimes read the digital ARC and loved both experiences. Narrator Grover Gardner was an inspired choice to read the audiobook; his narrative skill was particularly impressive when he was reading an entire passage written in Spanish (in “La Torre Pendente”); a piece that was clearly not meant to be read aloud (“Hyperlincs, the Gettysburg Addresses, or the Shot Heard Round the Web”); or a piece entitled “The Monks of Pharma,” about the intentionally difficult to pronounce and remember names of generic drugs. Kudos to him for making even these pieces a pleasure to listen to. I will definitely be adding the lovely hardcover edition to my reference shelf. Highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a digital ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review, and to Recorded Books for providing the audiobook.

Tabula Rasa means “clean slate". McPhee tells the reader that this project is a slate clearing, as he looks through old files and thinks about the stories that didn’t get all the way written. He says this is an “Old man’s project”, one he describes as one that has no end or an end so far away that it instills in the back of one’s mind the belief that one will continue to live in order to complete it. It gives a purpose to each new day.
“To Keep writing is to keep living.” He said in a recent interview. McPhee is currently 92 and still writing lots.

I graduated from journalism school at a time before computers, when we were herded into a back room that might have been used by a secretarial school, with rows and rows of typewriters. It will age us both, McPhee and I, in those days John McPhee, a writer of pieces for the New Yorker and long essay type books was held as the gold standard for a type of writing he is credited to have perfected in those years, that of Creative Non-fiction. Now he teaches students in this special art.

McPhee has written lots and lots of books that we now call Narrative Non-fiction, discussing a subject as if telling a story. This latest in a compilation of stories that might have been written for various publications through his writing career or pieces for books that he did write and these bits just didn’t fit or grow into anything.

He says that these are scenes in need of stories and that’s exactly what they are. They are small bites of what might have made an interesting meal or really had so little substance or flavors to chew on and were better left aside. I listened to the audio and like a short story collection there were pieces I loved and several I had little interest in. McPhee often wrote books about landscape and geography and there are several pieces that fit into that genre of his writing, but I found the ones I liked best were of a more personal nature, describing his growing up in and around Princeton University, his father was an doctor for some of the sports teams, his later attending there and now as a professor of writing. Some of this runs through many of the unfinished pieces and there are several that are in a more polished present-day form. They are the best in the collection for sure. In particular one discussing teaching classes remotely during covid was excellent.
A great collection especially in audio, read by Grove Gardner. I felt the narration was well done, so easy to listen to and with the occasional really great pieces spread throughout I found this collection quite thought provoking and made me want to go back and enjoy some of McPhee’s other works.

if I were to be marooned on a deserted island, John McPhee books would take up more space in my backpack than would be deemed appropriate. This 'old man project' book about pieces left undeveloped in the drawer is a rewinding of over seventy years of writing and taking a closer look at those fragments that never made it on the page.
until now.
I revere John McPhee, esteemed writer for The New Yorker, for his wit, his longform type of journalism, and his precision with words. He is fun to read, as a writer with over ninety laps around the sun, his latest book is a gem.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect with this collection of stories as it was my first experience with John McPhee. It sounds like he has led an incredible and memorable life, and reading his stories made me wonder why I spend so much time at home and not enough time looking for new experiences.

I gave it 3 stars instead of more because, although there were many interesting stories, I also found a few to be very tedious to get through and those would make me set the book down and not want to pick it back up for a few days.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, for giving me an electronic advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

My thanks to NetGalley and FSG for an e-ARC of this title.
Late in his life, McPhee has been going through his files of stories he did not develop further. This is a selection of some of those pieces, with his contemporary commentary added.
Some are only a page long, some are maybe 10 pages long (hard to tell with an e-book that gives "location” rather than page). Despite this being a collection of his "throw offs", there was maybe only 10 pages of material that I would not have included in the volume myself.
And, I think we readers need to be aware that the subtitle of this book is "Volume 1"! More to come it looks like.
As always, some interesting facts - my favorite was the short piece on how Rx drugs are named for the "regular" release, and for the later to be released generic.
There is a LOT of Princeton in here! And a good portion of it about his youth and early post-graduate days. Sadly there is little of his time spent in the West and the Rockies here.
As always, McPhee is a an enjoyable, and informative, read. This makes me want to go back and (re)read some of his earlier publications - his book on Bill Bradley for sure!
4 out of 5. With the shortness of most of the pieces, verges on "bathroom reading".

If you’re not familiar with John McPhee, he’s considered “a pioneer of creative nonfiction” and won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1999 book Annals of the Former World. That book is the complete collection of two decades worth of road trips he took with eminent geologists, through which he tells the history of North America’s geological landscapes. This book, Tabula Rasa, comes at the tail end of his illustrious career as a sort of reverse-autobiography. But, instead of compiling the highlights and heights, he’s assembled all the off cuts, and unwritten ideas, and moments in between.

Early into the book is an anecdote about Thornton Wilder, which serves as the primer for Tabula Rasa. Wilder had taken on the gargantuan task of cataloguing the plays of one of the world’s most prolific playwrights, Lope de Vega. Why?

“I am eighty-eight years old at this writing and I know that those four hundred and thirty-one plays were serving to extend Thornton Wilder’s life. Reading them and cataloguing them was something to do, and do, and do. It beat dying. It was a project meant not to end. I could use one of my own. And why not? With the same ulterior motive, I could undertake to describe in capsule form the many writing projects that I have conceived and seriously planned across the years but have never written.

By the way, did you ever write about Extremadura? No, but I’m thinking about it.”

As said so pleasantly above, Tabula Rasa is a similar ‘old man project’. It’s mostly disorganised and unfocused, and yet charming nonetheless. He tells of this town in Spain, Extremadura, where he listened to Spanish poetry by the river, watched storks in the church towers, and moves on to discussing Cortés the conquistador; then on to the projects of his Princeton students during the Pandemic; and on to The Airplane That Crashed in the Woods.

He cites Mark Twain’s memoirs for this approach – “Just jump in anywhere, tell whatever comes to mind from any era. If something distracts your memory and seems more interesting at the moment, interrupt the first story and launch into the new one.” And, somehow this works well, perhaps due to the strength of the prose, the voice of the writer, and the generally interesting anecdotes.

In fact, it works better than well. This messy selection of tales is splendid. It becomes like the ramblings of an old friend or relative, while being surprisingly engaging.

It’s truly a worthy collection of the stories that hadn’t had the time to be told, resisted and strained against conventional telling, or were left on the cutting room floor.

John McPhee turned 92 last March. He also finished penning his 32nd book soon after. A prolific writer of nonfiction, his indefatigable optimism towards his craft, and life in general, is given full expression by the fact that Tabula Rasa is titled Volume 1. McPhee calls this work an ‘old-people projects.’ The imaginative logic behind such a venture being, “old people projects keep old people old. You’re no longer old when you are dead.” As ardent readers of his works, we fervently and faithfully wish that McPhee continues to age as imperceptibly as Gandalf so that we can have the pleasure of basking in his reflected glory that is a splendid assemblage of words!

Tabula Rasa is an agglomeration of the unfinished. A paean to projects dumped halfway, stories that did not see the light of the day, and ideas that fermented robustly only to meekly fizzle out. The book is also a delectable mishmash of fuzzy memories and frazzled encounters. McPhee swears that he once met Ernest Hemingway across a table when on a Spanish jaunt. He also manages to incur the wrath of Thornton Wilder over lunch by possessing the temerity to question the prudence of a cataloguing project that would extend over a decade.

Bemoaning the deluge of ‘time-outs’ in a game of basketball (one of his favourite sports), to satiate the insatiable demands of capitalistic sponsors, he writes, “time-outs in superabundance violate the spirit of the game, they turn coaches into puppeteers and players into puppets.” McPhee also randomly muses about the time spent in the company of some of the most rambunctious and egregious conservationists railing against the construction of ecologically unfriendly dams.

The randomness attached to the events reflected in the pages of Tabula Rasa pay tribute to the vicissitudes, rigours, and the unpredictability of life. In recounting one particularly tragic episode, McPhee muses over a couple of his friends who urged him to accompany them on a Sunday skating mission. But McPhee’s mother insisted that he honour a commitment given to the Church. As fate would have it, both his friends (12-year-olds), perished in a calamitous manner when a sheet of ice gave way. When their small bodies were recovered the next day both the kids had their arms spread out in front.

Many of the 50 short chapters are peppered and laced with an inimitable sense of humour. When World War II broke out, McPhee along with some other young boys and older women were trained to spot enemy aircraft in preparation for exigencies. Slides containing names and descriptions of aircrafts were shown to the potential ‘spotters.’ Describing the plight of some of the women, McPhee writes, “…. Mrs. Hall, Mrs.Hambling, they didn’t know a Focke-Wulf 200 from a white throated sparrow.”

When pandemic forced McPhee to conduct his Princeton course (yes, he still teaches) via Zoom, he recounts some of the projects his students engaged in. One Ian McInnis of Virginia immersed himself in a book recommended by his girlfriend. The book bearing the interminably long and challenging title, The Art of Bundling: Being an Inquiry into the Nature & Origins of That Curious but Universal Folk-Custom, With an Exposition of the Rise & Fall of Bundling in the Eastern Part of North America, dealt with couples courting when fully dressed. In the words of McPhee, “it made a lot of sense if a country boy walked a distance from his farm to spend the evening with his girl, and thanks to bundling, did not have to walk home, often in snow, late at night. Shoes off, clothes intact, further, and separately wrapped in sheets, he and she spent the night in bed, sometimes in her parent’s bedroom.”

McPhee also introduces a plethora of new words, while not sounding pretentious at all in the process. Sample these: fricatives, uncatadromous, ophiolitic, prestidigitational, querencia, pallesthesia, schistose……. These worlds might mean things delectable for a copy of one of the books penned by McPhee, Coming into the Country ended up being chewed to bits by a grizzly! Thankfully the trapper to whom the inscribed book was gifted to by McPhee was not part of that day’s menu!

Tabula Rasa: Volume 2 – Bring it on!

Reflective and refreshing nonfiction for a spring-time reading experience. I'll think back on many passages for a long time.

This is a book of ghost stories. Not stories about ghosts, but the ghosts of stories that were never written. This are the ideas or remnants, the spectral resonances of stories we won't read. It is also a great "bathroom book", with short pieces that only take a few minutes to read.

Surprisingly, the fragments are linked in different ways and do flow. It should have been choppy and disconnected, but the pieces do fit together in some sort of whole, especially the bits about growing up and living in Princeton.

There are all sorts of reasons why these stories didn't pan out. In a couple of cases, they turned into books. My favorite is when his ship passage through the Sacramento Delta was canceled at the last minute by the company CEO. He explains, "I wasn’t going to do the piece without riding through the delta on the bridge wing of a merchant ship, looking down across the tops of blossoming fruit trees." Can't argue with that.

My thank to both NetGalley and the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advance copy of this collection of story ideas, bits of memories, memoir and where ideas come from, and why they sometimes never leave the draft stage.

I was in my second year of working at a chain bookstore, and my second year of college when opening a box of books I saw a white hardcover with a picture of a boat (yes it was a ship and upon reading the book under discussion I learned the difference) on the cover with the title of Looking for a Ship. I had never heard of the author bur remembered a review I had seen on the book, and thought about looking at it better on break. I still have the copy, the first of many John McPhee books I have bought over the years. An author who made me care about things I never really thought about. Alaska, geology, building canoes, even oranges. A writer who taught me about reading and always questioning why things are. And the stories that are all around us. Tabula Rosa Volume 1 is a look at those ideas that got away, along with bits about the authors life, adventures on the road, friends, his family, and even more importantly never stop thinking or creating.

The book begins with an invitation to lunch with Thorton Wilder. McPhee is impressed the meet the writer, playwright, but is confused as to why at his age Wilder was starting a project that would take so much time, might never be completed, and really for what reason. Wilder was miffed at what he thought was a dumb question, one that it took McPhee many years to figure out. Wilder wanted a project to give him a reason to continue to be creative. McPhee 92 at the time of this writing, knows that the longer book works are probably in the past, but he still has ideas, many that have never left the notes he made them on, and has decided to explore them. Some of these are longer pieces, about a trip to Pisa, the Tower and attempts to straighten it. Others are shorter, a name on a sign that might have been a story, but McPhee never got to. There is a lot about growing up in Princeton, including a work of autobiography by McPhee's mother about growing up, and becoming who she was.

I really can't talk about John McPhee enough. McPhee has made me read books on sports, and on fishing, and I love them as much as books about transportation, ships, or about fruit. McPhee Draft No. 4 is one of my favorite books on writing. This is a book at where ideas come from, and sadly where many ideas go to die. Either from lack of interest from editors, or just the writer forgetting and moving on. A lot of his ideas are just plain old luck, hearing a statement, seeing a sign, and going, hmm there is something there. Plus there is something inspirational about watching a person age, but still writing at the top of his game, teaching on Zoom, and working to clear his desk of all those things that time got ahead of him on. The writing is wonderful. Ideas are clear, even when discussing science terms, or bridge construction one can follow along and learn so much. The wonder he has in just seeing everyday things, and learning about them, and caring enough to try and share it.

Maybe it is age, maybe it is the pandemic, maybe it is the fact that stupid seems to be norm, but I am noticing a lot of things going away. To think at some point there might not be another John McPhee book coming really filled me with sadness. I really do hope for many, many volumes in this Tabula Rosa series. Recommended as a primer for McPhee especially if one is unfamiliar with McPhee's writing or books, or as a gift for someone you would like to introduce to a great writer.

This collection of notes and half-formed pieces would be completely unappealing were it not John McPhee’s work.

Such a fun book. Many of the episodes are very short. Great book to read instead of scrolling.

Tabula Rasa by John McPhee is a brilliant narration based on a journey through the author’s life experiences. Projects that he meant to do. Meeting and interacting with different people, working with them. Places he visited in his lifetime. His days of learning, of travels and of professional life.

The reader feels like reading a mash-up or going through a roller coaster of the life of the author. The book is a compilation of John McPhee’s memories. Most of the stories revolve around Princeton, New Jersey which happens to be the author’s hometown.

Serving as a writer at Times, The Weekly News magazine, the reader enjoys the meeting between the author and Thornton Wilder in Thornton Wilder at the Century. It amuses how smoothly the story flows with a great amount of knowledge and experience.

The narration is easy to understand. It feels like the book is opening up to stories, with John deeply immersed in his thoughts while narrating them. The sense of place is very much present in the whole book.

In The Bridges of Christian Menn, there is a detailed description of bridges, the picturesque, the people the author mentions interacting with, the building of the footbridge and the vast amount of knowledge and experience that drops with every word of the author himself.

The stories continue getting interesting as one reads with a flow. Each story contains McPhee’s experience, knowledge and learning through his life experiences. The stories are beautifully crafted emerging from the author’s childhood days to when he was young to the present time.

The fascinating details in Extremadura involve a deep sense of place in the story.

The emotions of students and the author himself were beautifully portrayed in Zoom Laude when Covid-19 hit the world, striking the reader with thoughtfulness.

In Writing about Science, the genuine description of the know-how of science itself, and how to put it in writing, is well narrated and leads to an interesting story of the author’s life. Each story holds a significance, and that is very much understood by the reader as one goes deep through the book.

Walking the Province Line, Joseph Henry House, North East Rising Sun, Dams 2020, Breaking Away, Bourbon and Bing Cherries and Beantown and many other stories leave the reader in absolute wonderment at McPhee’s excellent skills in narration.

Tabula Rasa is a wonderful opening up of tales compiled beautifully and narrated amazingly through the author’s pen. It seems that John McPhee has put his heart and soul to bring to the reader some of the very personal experiences of his life. For that, I really honour him. This book is highly recommended to the audience interested in memoirs, biographies and even travelogues. Very well narrated. Enjoyed reading it.

At the beginning of his “Tabula Rasa,” John McPhee recalls when he was invited to lunch with the famous playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder. Asked what he was working on, Wilder replied that he was cataloging plays of Lope de Vega. About four hundred and thirty-one plays by Lope de Vega survived, and Thornton Wilder was sixty-six. It could take years to complete this project. Asked by the about thirty-years old McPhee why anyone would want to do that, Wilder angrily replied, “Young man, do not ever question the purpose of scholarship.”

These words beautifully reflect humans’ drive to learn and write - the passion which does not diminish with age. When writing “Tabula rasa,” John McPhee was eighty-eight and said he understood then that the cataloging of Lope de Vega plays was serving to extend Wilder’s life.

“Tabula rasa” is a collection of short chapters which describe many writing projects that John McPhee overtook as a writer for “New Yorker” and “Time,” as well as his independent projects. There are stories about dams in America and their impact on the environment, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the bridges of Christian Menn, a Swiss structural engineer. All the stories in “Tabula Rasa” are beautifully written in the style of the best The New Yorker articles of creative non-fiction. I could never guess that some subjects Mr. McPhee covers would so much spark my interest.

This book also brought up some memories of when I lived in Princeton, New Jersey, where the author was born, and educated, the town very close to his heart. I believe he’s still teaching at Princeton University. I remember the beautiful campus, the rose garden, the main street of Princeton, and the feeling of walking the streets where Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr walked. And Princeton is by no means a museum of past glories– it’s very lively, with the youthful energy of students (their men’s basketball team just advanced to the Sweet 16.)

I hope I will not have to wait long for John McPhee’s volume 2 of “Tabula Rasa.” Reading the thoughtful, intelligent, and informative first volume was a rare treat.