The History of the Future

February 20, 2017
This collection of seven geography-themed essays from McPherson (The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Facts) is both an entertaining exploration of Americana and a critical look at how people form memories. His knowledge of esoteric and diverse topics, such as the intricate science behind the atom bomb and the pop culture phenomenon of the soap opera Dallas, is on display in each spiraling essay. The collection begins in Dallas, discussing how the assassination of J.F.K. looms over both the city and its eponymous TV show. In an essay on St. Louis, after a detailed description of the architecture behind the Gateway Arch monument, McPherson declares the “balance an illusion,” nodding to his theme of the illusory border separating past from present and history from future. The most searing and poignant essay of the collection is “Chasing the Boundary: Boom and Bust on the High Prairie,” which explores how North Dakota’s recent oil boom brought thousands of itinerant workers to an otherwise stark landscape. McPherson goes deep into his subject matter as well as into the land. He descends through a Brooklyn manhole into what is considered the world’s first subway, and into a contemporary bomb shelter in L.A. This collection brims with subdued, self-aware brilliance. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit.

March 1, 2017
Off to look for America.McPherson (Creative Writing/Washington Univ., St. Louis; The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer's Journey into the World of Bridge, 2007, etc.) took the Paul Simon line, "gone to look for America," to heart when he was compiling this collection, in which he offers seven reflective essays that scrutinize and personally dissect different cities and parts of the U.S. In "Echo Patterns," Dallas, Texas, where the author grew up, a city that was "called forth in the minds of white men," is seen through three lenses: its history, the eponymous TV series, and the JFK assassination. It doesn't fare too well. "Lost and Found" is a rueful, autobiographical piece about the McPherson family home built by his great-great-grandfather in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1870. It's literally about the home and the many things in it, found, lost, and stolen: "Am I really writing about the past, or am I stealing it?" Then it's on to the author's current hometown, St. Louis, a "city of gates that do not normally swing wide." McPherson goes back and forth, juxtaposing the 1904 World's Fair with the current city, often ranked as America's most segregated. With terrible public schools, failed public housing, and high crime rates, it's "a city haunted, proud of its past but worried its best days are behind it." After a brief detour to another city the author lived in, New York, with its imposing, mystifying underground tunnels, he's off to Los Alamos and the site of the atomic bomb blast. "How to Survive an Atomic Bomb" is richly informative and unsettling, but the best essay is the longest, on the "blazing rigs, equipment, settlements, and gas flares of the North Dakota Miracle...a.k.a. Kuwait on the Prairie." It's a frightening profile of a land and people gone oil crazy. The final essay, about LA, is aptly titled "Three Minutes to Midnight." A lively, enlightening, and occasionally disturbing book that envisions the future as already broken.

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