Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:
I see the largest island
Still ahead somehow.
I see the island
And its sands are fair:
Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.
In ‘Tabula Rasa,’ John McPhee looks back at books not written
The prolific New Yorker writer offers a charming, breezy collection of reminiscences about projects that didn’t make it
All writers have false starts. We once stuffed them in manila folders and pushed them deep inside our desks; now we store them in a different kind of folder. But we still rarely give up on them, harboring a shameful hope that someday we’ll perform freelancer’s CPR, breathing new, sellable life into them.
John McPhee’s false starts. In the life of a writer, especially one at work for decades, a lot of projects don’t make it...
Newyorker
"...Last fall, after I [McPhee] was invited to speak here on January 30th, Roger Straus soon called me to say that this was entirely the club’s idea, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth, and so on, and definitely not his idea. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I told them I didn’t think you were very bright.’ He said that he did not want me to feel any obligation whatsoever to him. There was no need for me to have to come all the way in from Princeton. Et cetera, et cetera. And so forth, and so on.
“I said, ‘That’s not the issue, Roger. That’s not what we’re discussing. What I need to know is, Is it all right to say '**** you' in the Lotos Club?
“He said, ‘I see the lines along which you are thinking. Of course it’s all right. It’s perfectly all right. And, besides, you’re not a member’...”