Rock, Silk and the End of the World

By Jonathan Kirsch

URL: http://www.jewishjournal.com/twelvetwelve/item/rock_silk_and_the_end_of_the_world_39100306/

John McPhee, a longtime contributor to the New Yorker and author of more than two dozen books, won a Pulitzer Prize for writing about rocks. Now he is writing about silk. “Silk Parachute” (Farrar Straus Giroux: $25.00, 227 pps.) is an anthology of essays, and the title piece refers to a toy parachute that his mother gave him when he was eleven or twelve years old. That silk parachute is his Rosebud. So McPhee is stepping back from the heart-shaking and mind-boggling revelations of his writings on natural history and turning his attention to the delicate workings of memory in a single human lifetime.

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Comments:	A friend has recommended you read the following from The Jewish Journal... Rock, Silk and the End of the World John McPhee, a longtime contributor to the New Yorker and author of more than two dozen books, won a Pulitzer Prize for writing about rocks. Now he is writing about silk. “Silk Parachute” (Farrar Straus Giroux: $25.00, 227 pps.) is an anthology of essays, and the title piece refers to a toy parachute that his mother gave him when he was eleven or twelve years old. That silk parachute is his Rosebud. So McPhee is stepping back from the heart-shaking and mind-boggling revelations of his writings on natural history and turning his attention to the delicate workings of memory in a single human lifetime. http://www.jewishjournal.com/twelvetwelve/item/rock_silk_and_the_end_of_the_world_39100306/