Appointed Rounds

Michael McFees new book takes its title from the unofficial motto of the US Postal Service: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. All of us have appointed rounds in our lives--essential things we are given to do and must try to complete, whatever the inner or outer weather, whenever the time of day or night, however we may approach those duties. This lively and wide-ranging collection of fifty essays addresses McFees appointed rounds, subjects he has been thinking and caring about for decades: books, his native Western North Carolina mountains, writing, reading, editing, teaching, and, as the title suggests, the daily mail. It includes pieces on My Inner Hillbilly and Appalachia, on Authors Photos and Blurbs and other parts of the physical book, on My New Yorker and contemporary literary culture, on Poets as Novelists and Marginalia, and being a writer.