Giving Good Weight
McPhee is the master of the long-form literary essay. Geology, nuclear physics, basketball, farmers' markets rendered with astonishing precision. His structural innovations (braided narratives, nonlinear architecture) changed magazine writing.
The Pinball Philosophy, McPhee’s short profile of two pinball wizards, is the one nearly everyone flags as the weak link, and at least one more reader admits it “turned out to be utterly forgettable.” Readers who otherwise rate the collection highly still call it uneven, and a critic summed it up as “a mixed bag, then, best in its larger reaches.” Even Brigade de Cuisine, the closing favorite, draws a craft complaint of its own: McPhee “recites a long string of nouns,” untranslated French dish names included, and one reader says the piece “could be half the length.” The three middle pieces, the nuclear-plant proposal, the pinball profile, and the Maine canoe trip, get called aimless by readers who otherwise praise the book’s opening and closing. The restaurant itself no longer exists to visit; the piece now reads strictly as period history.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
