Draft No. 4 by John Mcphee

Draft No. 4 by John Mcphee

Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer’s craft. In a series of playful, expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his career and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the most esteemed writers of recent decades. McPhee offers definitive guidance in the decisions regarding arrangement, diction, and tone that shape non fiction pieces, and he presents extracts from his work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny. In one essay, he considers the delicate art of getting sources to tell you what they might not otherwise reveal. In another, he discusses how to use flashback to place a bear encounter in a travel narrative while observing that “readers are not supposed to notice the structure. It is meant to be about as visible as someone’s bones.” The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from reporting to drafting to revising - and revising, and revising. Draft No. 4 is enriched by multiple diagrams and by personal anecdotes and charming reflections on the life of a writer. McPhee describes his enduring relationships with The New Yorker and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and recalls his early years at Time magazine. Throughout, Draft No. 4 is enlivened by his keen sense of writing as a way of being in the world.

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1969), The Crofter and the Laird (1969), Levels of the Game (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1972), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), The Curve of Binding Energy (1974), Pieces of the Frame (collection (1975), and The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975). Both Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. William Fiennes is the best-selling author of The Snow Geese, winner of the 2003 Hawthornden Prize, Somerset Maugham Award and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2002. He is also a founder member of the charity First Story, set up to place published authors in creative writing residencies in state schools across the UK.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780374537975
ISBN 10	0374537976
Title	Draft No. 4
Author	John Mcphee
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Year published	2018-10-01
Number of pages	208
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable