An artful assortment of nonfiction writings from an unequivocal master of the form, "arguably America's greatest nonfiction essayist ever" (Rob Merrill, The Associated Press)
The Patch is the seventh collection of essays by the nonfiction master John McPhee. It is divided into two parts. Part 1, “The Sporting Scene,” consists of pieces on fishing, football, golf, and lacrosse—from fly casting for chain pickerel in fall in New Hampshire to walking the linksland of St. Andrews at an Open Championship. Part 2, called “An Album Quilt,” is a montage of fragments of varying length from pieces done across the years that have never appeared in book form—occasional pieces, memorial pieces, reflections, reminiscences, and short items in various magazines including The New Yorker. They range from a visit to the Hershey chocolate factory to encounters with Oscar Hammerstein, Joan Baez, and Mount Denali. Emphatically, the author’s purpose was not merely to preserve things but to choose passages that might entertain. Starting with 250,000 words, he gradually threw out 75 percent of them, and assembled the remaining fragments into “an album quilt": an object lesson that is also a covert memoir.