The Bookworm: Basin and Range

Basin and Range by John McPhee. 229 pages. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1981.

People think in five generations — two ahead, two behind — with heavy concentration on the one in the middle. Possibly this is tragic, and possibly there is no choice. The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time. It may only be able to measure it. At least, that is what geologists wonder sometimes, and they have imparted the questions to me. They wonder to what extent they truly sense the passage of millions of years. They wonder to what extent it is possible to absorb a set of facts and move with them, in a sensory manner, beyond the recording intellect and into the abyssal eons. Primordial inhibition may stand in the way.

Basin and Range is the other book I bought at City Lights. I took a slight risk in buying more McPhee before reading Uncommon Carriers, especially since my only experience with his writing had been a literary essay. But, in retrospect, it wasn’t a bad decision. Impulsively buying more McPhee is something I recommend for all lovers of narrative nonfiction and new journalism.

When writing about Uncommon Carriers, I wrote, “McPhee is my new idol.” Having read Basin and Range, I’ve realized McPhee is not only worthy of idolization, but Golden Idolization. He’s a fucking god. The expertise he exhibits as an observer, journalist, and wordsmith, as well as his prolific production, places him, in my opinion, among the legends of American writing.

The thing about McPhee, though, is his books and short pieces are not for everyone. Case in point: Basin and Range.

McPhee’s writings reflect his eclectic personal interests (something I am building inspiration from). He’s written about bodybuilding, controlling the Mississippi River, and oranges. Yes — a whole book on oranges. His first book was a profile of Bill Bradley when he was a basketball superstar at Princeton. Another interest of McPhee’s is geology, something he apparently grew fond of as a schoolboy. “There was almost enough resonance in some terms to stir the adolescent groin,” he wrote, and Basin and Range is the first of a five book series focusing on that crotch-hardening fascination. Collected in Annals of the Former World, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1999, the series is an account of the geological history of North America, with each book centering on a different region.

The focus of Basin and Range is the Great Basin region of Nevada and Utah — the Basin and Range, as McPhee refers to it. It’s an alternately beautiful and dull landscape, in my opinion, of mountain ranges and arid plains striping the area between the Sierra Nevada’s and Wasatch Range. McPhee travels to Salt Lake City and drives west on Interstate 80 with Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a geology professor at Princeton, to observe the layers and folds of ancient rock exposed by road cuts. McPhee relays the story of continental collisions, former ecosystems, and mountain building — millions of years of slow geological activity — told by the stratum of rock and color. Interspersed in the narration of the trip are often long, but pertinent and very interesting, digressions about mining, westbound pioneers, and the establishment of modern geological theories. By chance, McPhee and Deffeyes even see a UFO. Personally gratifying was a mention of downtown Iowa City in a part about ancient coral.

Basin and Range was an excellent read — the writing was well balanced and flawless — but there were parts at the beginning, though, that were tedious, like swimming through molasses. It was heavy with geological argot, and the landscapes McPhee described, both in the present and past, were hard to envision without the background information and definitions he provided later. There were times when I wondered, “What the hell have I gotten myself into,” doubting my impulse purchase. But the book eventually evened out and thoroughly impressed me.

New word I learned: Sure, I did say I was retiring this feature, but I reconsidered and decided to showcase only one of the new words I learned, as I used to. (If I listed all the new words I learned while reading Basin and Range, this post would probably double the length.) Here’s the most interesting word I learned: benthic. It makes me think of The Abyss; one of the ships, or maybe the oilrig on the ocean floor, was named Benthic Explorer. “Benthic” is a derivative of “benthos,” which means: “the flora and fauna found on the bottom, or in the bottom sediments, of a sea, lake, or other body of water.”

Another incredible word I learned was alpenglow, which means “the rosy light of the setting or rising sun seen on high mountains.” Alpenglow, from my experience, can highlight anything — homes, trees, hills, tall buildings; my room in the house I grew up in, with its west facing window, would be lighted by alpenglow every evening — so I’m unsure why the definition narrows it to high mountains.