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On the Campus: April 2, 1997
Writer John McPhee '53 talks about his "peculiar compulsion" BY DAVE ITZKOFF '98 McPhee got his feet wet contributing to a slew of campus periodicals, from The Daily Princetonian to the Princeton Tiger to, yes, the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Looking back on his days as a PAW contributor, he regards his "On the Campus" position as "a very good job. You got paid, you got an audience of 60-66,000 alumni; all they had in common was the fact they went to Princeton (and, in those days, they were men). Now they were all over the country and the world, in countless different professions and occupations." Even in McPhee's day, application for the column was competitive; just one reporter was selected each year, and the post traditionally went to a senior. The chosen student journalist was responsible for about three or four news articles in each issue of PAW, providing up-to-date campus coverage for alums who were now miles and years away from Old Nassau. During his tenure, McPhee reported on everything from an appearance of Linda Christian, wife of screen star Tyrone Power, at a party at Tiger Inn, to Richard Nixon's whistle-stop at the Princeton Battle Monument during his 1952 vice-presidential campaign. ("I missed a football game to cover that," he grumbles. "I think it may have contributed to my lifelong antipathy towards him.") Some long-standing Princeton traditions were already in place, as McPhee's own work habits demonstrate: "I wrote it all in my room. I never did anything in my carrel." Including . . . ? "Including my thesis." After graduation, McPhee traveled to England to study at Cambridge University, where he wrote occasional correspondence pieces for Time magazine. Venturing beyond the confines of FitzRandolph Gate, the longtime resident of Princeton learned that he had lost a true writer's paradise. "When you're a student at Princeton, you have a real feast of possibilities," he muses. "As soon as you graduate: nothing. It's just a marvelous place to do writing. And that's as true today as it was in 1953-the moment you finish, it's gone." Returning to the States brought McPhee closer to his dream only in the geographical sense; his steady flow of freelance contributions to the New Yorker was being rejected just as steadily, and he took up other writing projects to support himself. For a short time he even wrote screenplays for NBC's Robert Montgomery Presents, one of the many live-action drama showcases that dominated the airwaves during television's golden age. The job left McPhee unfulfilled-of the three scripts he sold, only two were produced. "It wasn't my kind of thing," he realized. "After you wrote your piece, other people took it over. Everyone got a crack at it, even the casting director. You didn't make the whole shoe. I bagged that." Finally, in 1963, at the age of 32 ("damn near 33"), now a husband and a father, McPhee sold his first piece to the New Yorker, an essay on playing basketball at Cambridge. Ironically, it would be another composition about basketball at another alma mater, this one a profile of graduating Princeton basketball captain Bill Bradley, that would earn McPhee his staff writer's position at the magazine two years later. But don't make the mistake (as I did) of attributing McPhee's achievement to perseverance or discipline: "What discipline?" he barks. "It's really a peculiar form of compulsion, something there that's pulling you along. It's too discouraging a field to work in unless there's something driving you, a desire to see your words on paper." McPhee resumed his ongoing relationship with Princeton University in 1975, when the Council of the Humanities invited him to instruct a spring-term class in nonfiction writing called "The Literature of Fact." There was no pressure to accept the offer, he says, only the knowledge that his predecessor quit the previous December-just two months before the semester was to begin. "I didn't even think it over. I just came here and took it." More than two decades later, McPhee is still going strong, teaching his course two out of every three spring semesters, and using the off-year for his own writing. Despite his reputation for superhuman productivity (a total output of 23 books, with another due out in April), his keyboard remains all but silent during the months when he's teaching. "Unless my back's against the wall, I don't write at all-I only have about a day and a half a week to myself anyway. When I'm teaching, I prefer not to be writing. When I go back to my work, I feel like it." The time away from his own writing allows McPhee to focus his full attention on the work of his students, an occupation of which he is both proud and protective. "Every once in a while, someone will ask me, 'Do you really think you can teach writing?' I think that has to be a strong competitor for the world's dumbest question. Writers grow. They learn. You don't teach writing from scratch. People come into the class knowing how to write." Never at a loss for a metaphor, McPhee reaches once more into his ample reserve of formative experiences: "I used to be a Red Cross water safety instructor, but I didn't teach non-swimmers. My job was to help them get through the water more smoothly. And that's exactly what I'm doing here." Dave Itzkoff is currently enrolled in HUM 440, "The Literature of Fact." His dream is to write for The Village Voice.
"March Madness" takes on special meaning here as seniors enter the final round of thesis crunch. The supposedly yearlong independent project is touted as the pinnacle of a Princeton education, allowing us to utilize the analytical skills we've been honing since freshman year. (I have recently developed a different theory concerning the purpose of the senior thesis: to distract soon-to-be graduates suffering from separation anxiety. We bemoan the task of writing a thesis, rather than considering the fact that a month or two from now we get booted outta here.) Thesis topics are finally coming into focus, or perhaps merely coming into existence-as of late February a few poor souls hadn't even chosen one-which makes a final list of topics unavailable at this time. Consequently, it's difficult for seniors to learn of their fellows' projects. To remedy this situation, I e-mailed several classmates asking about their theses. As a group, the responses displayed an amazing diversity of subject matter, as well as many claims of how boring those topics have become to their respective researchers. One interesting intersection between individual projects involves my own thesis on fictional and nonfictional representations of the virus in contemporary culture. As an English major, I am examining the symbiotic relationship between biomedical speculation and social paranoia. Many cultural anxieties are encapsulated within the virus's tiny protein coat, and my thesis aims to unravel epidemiology's nexus of subjective, ideology-driven scientific metaphors. I learned recently through my e-mail inquiry that Rachel Malane has been working on a similar project for the molecular-biology department, investigating the anxieties surrounding contemporaneous scientific experimentation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. While Malane's work concentrates on attempts to generate life through purely scientific means and mine focuses on viral transmission, both independently conceived theses analyze texts "that are metaphorical and prescient of the impact of biology on society," as Malane writes. Completing a topical trio of literature, science, and science-writing, Aaron Henderson is collaborating with the creative writing program and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology to produce what he describes as "a suspense techno-thriller concerning genetic engineering." The novel, titled GENESIS, deals with evolutionary DNA and viral vectors. Unfortunately it is still in progress, or Rachel and I might have included it as a primary source. Meanwhile, four engineers are producing a techno-thriller of a different sort. John Haller (electrical), Alex Macievich (civil), Philippe McAuliffe (civil), and Chris Powers (mechanical) are developing a guidance system to allow a vehicle to drive itself. A video camera supplies a computer with images of the road, which are then processed by road-modeling software written by the students. The software identifies the lane lines and uses control algorithms to handle the necessary steering, acceleration, and braking to keep the car on the road. Implementation has been in the works for the three years, and the group recently upgraded its test vehicle from a golf cart to a Geo Metro. "The tricky part," according to Macievich, "will involve building the mechanical linkages and the necessary safety overrides that will reliably connect the computer's commands to a conventional automobile." Marnie Rosenberg wins for the most enthusiastic response. Her anthropology thesis on the Argentine Tango aims to reveal the meaning behind this cultural institution. From the tango's birthplace in the brothels to its appropriation by the white upperclass, she is examining the dance as a spectacle of race, class, and gender; working out disputes over who started the tango and which musical genres contributed to it; and looking into whether the tango was chosen by the Argentine people as a symbol of their identity or if it was assigned to them by Western culture. "The music is powerful, the dancing is sexy, and the people who call themselves tangueros make tango their way of life," Rosenberg writes. "The tango is an incredibly interesting topic. I'm actually enjoying this!" Leading the pack with the most equivocal topic description is philosophy major Jonah Bossewitch: "I'm not sure how interesting this is, but I've been busy all year researching the relationship between creativity and humor. Research involves intensive viewings of The Simpsons and Dr. Katz [two cartoon series], as well as nightly doses of [David] Letterman. Am busy trying to develop a comprehensive theory of humor that even a computer could learn to apply. Impossible, you say? Get back to me on April 28 . . . " Julie Rawe hopes you'll soon be able to find her thesis listed online, along with all the other completed senior theses. See PAW's homepage (http://www.princeton.edu/~paw) for a link and more information.
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