In Praise of Alex Abramovich's "Built to Last"

S. F. Denton, "Pickerel" (from John McPhee's "The Patch")

One aspect of Alex Abramovich’s “Built to Last” (Bookforum, Dec/Jan 2019) that I especially relish is his analysis of John McPhee’s style. He selects a “bravura passage” from McPhee’s “The Patch” (The New Yorker, February 8, 2010) and comments on it. Here’s the passage:

Pickerel have palatal teeth. They also have teeth on their tongues, not to mention those razor jaws. On their bodies, they sometimes bear scars from the teeth of other pickerel. Pickerel that have been found in the stomachs of pickerel have in turn contained pickerel in their stomachs. A minnow found in the stomach of a pickerel had a pickerel in its stomach that had in its stomach a minnow. Young pickerel start eating one another when they are scarcely two inches long. 

And here’s Abramovich’s comment:

That final turn is typical McPhee—you see the same fillip in the last line of the Cary Grant passage I’ve quoted above. A simple declarative sentence performs the rhetorical function a couplet provides in Shakespearean sonnets: It sticks the ending; it sums up the argument; and, in this instance, it sends us back to the Escher-like, ouroboric sentences that have preceded it.

That “Escher-like, ouroboric sentences” is wonderful. It’s an original attempt to describe McPhee’s pickerel-within-pickerel-within-pickerel construction. But what I really like about Abramovich’s approach is his use of quotation. Mark O’Connell says of James Wood, “When Wood block-quotes, you pay attention—as you would to a doctor who has just flipped an X-ray onto an illuminator screen—because you know something new and possibly crucial is going to get revealed” ("The Different Drummer," Slate, November 2, 2012). The same can be said about Abramovich's quotes in his McPhee piece. It's like he puts them up on a screen to highlight their brilliancies. 

McPhee is a master stylist. It’s time we had a full study of his form. Abramovich’s superb “Built to Last” points the way.