The New Yorker & Me: Approaches to Writing: McPhee v. Klinkenborg

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Approaches to Writing: McPhee v. Klinkenborg

John McPhee and Verlyn Klinkenborg, two of my favorite writers, approach composition quite differently from each other. McPhee is a structuralist. He always starts by making a plan, conceptualizing his entire piece in outline. In his Draft No. 4 (2017), he says, “I always know where I intend to end before I have much begun to write.” Klinkenborg is an anti-structuralist. He’s against outlines. In his Several Short Sentences About Writing (2012), he says,

You’re more likely to find the right path –
The interesting path through your subject and thoughts –
In a sentence-by-sentence search than in an outline.

Who is right? I can see the merits of McPhee’s structuralism. But Klinkenborg’s sentence-by-sentence search appeals to me, too. Neither writer is dogmatic about his method. McPhee says, “What counts is a finished piece, and how you get there is idiosyncratic.” Klinkenborg says, “You decide what works for you.”

Composing these ephemeral blog notes, I find I’m more Klinkenborg than McPhee. One point both writers agree on is the importance of following your interests. McPhee says, “I include what interests me and exclude what doesn’t interest me.” Klinkenborg says, “Start by learning to recognize what interests you.” That is one of this blog’s main aims.