Coming into the Country

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding work of reportage
Review: Again and again we hear it, but it's true: John McPhee can interest a reader in anything. He manages to combine a richly sedimented prose, which frequently rises to a level of virtuosity of which 95% of novelists would be envious, with a tangible involvement in the activities of the people he writes about. And he does always write, first and foremost, about people. 'Coming into the Country' is McPhee's longest single book and contains about ten capsule biographies (and quite a bit of modest autobiography, too) in addition to observations on the hibernation of bears, the various techniques of panning for gold, the advantages of sled-dogs against snow-machines, the failings of bush-pilots, and three-dozen other disquisitions.

Without wishing to carp, I do think that the book is a shade too long -- the final section 'Coming into the Country' could profitably have been pruned of about forty pages -- but the greater length does allow the reader to see the effort McPhee goes to to provide his stories with an aesthetically pleasing structure. The first section, 'The Encircled River' deposits us, in medias res, halfway down a tributary of one of Alaska's northenmost rivers. McPhee and his companions travel downriver to the confluence of a larger river, and then we head back to the headwaters of the earlier river -- the story describes an encircling pattern. The second part 'What they were looking for' is a very funny record of a helicopter trip taken by a committee established to decide on a new capital for Alaska. Here the story skips around the theme as the chopper skips around proposed sites for the new metropolis. It's in the final section which gives the book its title that McPhee really lets loose, leaping from the present to the past, from those living on the river to those encamped in the small town of Eagle, back to the Indian village, on to a white mountain trapper and his Indian wife, back to the first goldrush era in the Yukon valley, all the time incorporating off-the-record views of Eagle townspeople, journal entries, his own observations of the breathtaking landscape. It's a tour-de-force. McPhee is the best journalist in the English-speaking world. Alaska is a wonderful place. The meeting of the two is something to behold.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Great book - as usual for McPhee. The best book on Alaska.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Great book - as usual for McPhee. The best book on Alaska.

Rating:
Summary: Taming the Wild
Review: Having formed my impression of Alaska by reading Jack London stories and Into the Wild, I expected Coming into the Country to describe a harsh, brutish and often deadly land. Instead, it highlighted many of the virtues of Alaska--the diverse people who reside there, the unsettled countryside and sense of freedom. He doesn't avoid the topic of people who froze to death in their shacks or disappeared on flights through the bush, but these are just used as entertaining anecdotes to remind the reader that Alaska is still wild. This is a very well written and entertaining book and it does an excellent job of describing the complex politics and ecology of Alaska as well as the incredible beauty of the state. If you are hoping to travel to Alaska or simply want to learn more about the state and its residents who choose to live in the middle of no where in one of the harshest climates on earth, this is an excellent book. It is good pleasure reading as well, but perhaps not beach reading so much as a good bed time or lunch hour book.

Rating:
Summary: Going Into Alaska
Review: I bought this book as a way to get to know Alaska a little bit before a cruise this summer up the Inside Passage. While it is arguably a little dated - it was written in the 70s - I found the history, background and flavor to be fascinating and valuable. As I was flying over the Susitna River to Mt McKinley, I could see the geological features that made it an unsuitable but still desirable location for a new Alaskan capital.

Alaska is, if nothing else, a big place, and this book, by examing three parts of the state, gives you a sense of the land and the people like nothing - except going there - does.

John McPhee is a wonderful writer, and I would read - and recommend - anything of his. (Do yourself a favor, though, and stay away from Michener's "Alaska." By the time I got from the moving of the landmasses up to the wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers - still about 10,000 years ago - I was so bored I quit.)

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books
Review: I've read this book 5 times because it fills a huge hole in my heart that has grown wider due to urbanization. My favorite part is the bush and the characters living there. The feeling you get from these people being grounded to the earth literally is so refreshing yet life is hard and living in Alaska is not like looking at a postcard from there. Anyone needing a sense of spiritual uplift should check out this book.

Rating:
Summary: Tricky, imaginative: McPhee at his best.
Review: If you already love McPhee's work or are interested in trying him, Coming into the Country will fulfill any expectations. The completed book leaves one with a profound sense of having been there, as well as having recieved a considerable lecture on back-country living. McPhee's ability to wrap lessons, stories, personalities, cultures, habitats and countrysides into an intriguing package makes this book a must.

Rating:
Summary: The Portable Alaska
Review: In the late 1970's my mother and father were inspired by John McPhee's Coming Into the Country to the point of venturing out onto the open highway. I was but two years old, headed across America, from Georgia to Alaska, towards Eagle, the tiny community that McPhee discusses with a keen eye in the third section of his book. I spent my childhood in that community and it would not be until I was fully grown that I would actually read his book. Just a couple of years ago, when I was attending college in Georgia, I became homesick for Alaska and decided to read the book that had been so impressive to my parents. I was amazed by McPhee's way of seeing the truth in something foreign to him -- how he described the people of Eagle. I highly recommend this book to all those who wish to venture into the land of Alaska, whether in their actual travels or in their imagination.

Rating:
Summary: Growing Up in the Country
Review: In the late 1970's my mother and father were inspired by John McPhee's Coming Into the Country to the point of venturing out onto the open highway. I was but two years old, headed across America, from Georgia to Alaska, towards Eagle, the tiny community that McPhee discusses with a keen eye in the third section of his book. I spent my childhood in that community and it would not be until I was fully grown that I would actually read his book. Just a couple of years ago, when I was attending college in Georgia, I became homesick for Alaska and decided to read the book that had been so impressive to my parents. I was amazed by McPhee's way of seeing the truth in something foreign to him -- how he described the people of Eagle. I highly recommend this book to all those who wish to venture into the land of Alaska, whether in their actual travels or in their imagination.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating reporting on an Alaska that no longer exists
Review: In the mid 1970s, John McPhee turned his powers of description toward Alaska at a time when the "Alaskan way of life" was under siege. Alaska had been a state less than 20 years. The claims of natives to the land had been resolved by putting millions of acres in the hands of native corporations. The old "tradition" of immigrants to the land being able to plop down and build a cabin almost anywhere was disappearing under the burden of new regulations. Huge new national parks were designated, and at the same time the pipeline was being constructed, highlighting the old conflict between development and ecology, between preservation and self-determination.

Sadly, the Alaska that McPhee wrote about no longer exists. In the first segment, he writes about the Brooks Range wilderness, and discusses the controversy around establishing the "Gates of the Arctic" National Park there. That park is now established. In the second segment, he writes about the aftereffects of the decision to move the state capital from Juneau to somewhere north of Anchorage. That move never occurred. In the third (and longest and most compelling) segment, he reports on the lives of the people of isolated Eagle, Alaska, a town that today boasts a fax machine.

The third segment is where McPhee's writing really shines: I don't think anyone has ever conveyed the personality of Alaska and Alaskans as well as McPhee has. My favorite was the story of how one man and his son managed to get an entire C9 Caterpillar bulldozer into the middle of nowhere, clearing their way through 70-foot winter drifts, to set up a gold dredging operation. McPhee conveys the extreme beauty and wildness of the place, and the fire and determination of the people to belong to it.

I was sad but impressed to find McPhee accurately foretelling the Exxon Valdez tragedy by predicting that an oil spill in Prince William Sound was the greatest threat to Alaska's environmental health. However, McPhee's account is remarkably balanced; if you're looking for polemic (either pro or anti-environmentalism, for example), you won't find it.

In sum, I give this book five stars for the quality of the writing and the insight, but four for being somewhat dated. If you want to learn more about what Alaska was like, you couldn't do better than this, but if you want to know what it's like NOW, you might prefer to supplement this otherwise wonderful book with something else.