Inspired by Sara Levine’s “The Self on a Shelf”, I thought I’d take a closer look at John McPhee’s persona in “The Search for Marvin Gardens”. Upon closer inspection, McPhee’s persona does not “create the illusion of an intelligent, complex, dynamic self, one who can look inward and outward” (Levine, 161). I notice some rhetorical questions, excessive descriptions, and scenes created from the third-person, but nothing in McPhee’s style cultivates a persona. Nothing leaps like the variance in Elkin’s style (colloquial, hyphenated-whole-phrase-adjectives, cliché play, etc.). What leaps in McPhee’s essay, though, was his selective use of “I”. The pronoun submerges and emerges throughout.

While Levine believes that the essayist should create a complex persona, she emphasizes, also, that the essayist displays a “style-as-deviance” (Levine, 162). The essayist says something differently than the “status quo” prose writers. “Style-as-deviance” may help to better understand the “persona” crafted by McPhee—not as a lack of persona (as it sometimes seems)–but a persona that submerges to differentiate.

“Where is Marvin Gardens” is, on the surface, a series of Monopoly games played by McPhee and his opponent—“a tall shadowy figure…[who will] always go for the quick kill” (McPhee, 9). The “I” is prevalent in these surface level game sequences: “I roll the dice”; “I buy Vermont Avenue”; “I buy Illinois for $240” (McPhee, 9-10). The competition is egoistic. It dehumanizes the opponent (his opponent is “a shadowy figure” with a history, but no name). The essay is interspersed with descriptions of dilapidated streets, scenes narrated in the third person, and historical facts that submerge McPhee’s “I”. That “I” only asks: “‘Do you know where Marvin Gardens is?’” (McPhee, 14).

McPhee, like every Monopoly player, is not interested in the reality of property buying; he’s interested in “winning”. He wants to be an Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, he wants to win “chess at Wall Street level” (McPhee, 16). Despite the overwhelming socioeconomic disparities that McPhee’s “I” witnesses, the “I” is submerged to avoid any serious contemplation of Atlantic City’s physical realities. A financial winner can’t think about losers.

Rather than writing a journalistic essay exposing Atlantic City’s retail realities, McPhee’s submersion of the “I” places the reader in a familiar position. The deviance from a woeful socioeconomic tale creates an “I” that lacks style, but is relatable. It forces the reader to ask: what makes me or any Monopoly player different from a Biddle? No answer is provided.