A staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1965, John McPhee is one of America's foremost writers of creative nonfiction. Known especially for his profiles and travel writings, McPhee has published 27 books, and in 1999 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his geological study Annals of the Former World.

Originally published in The New Yorker, McPhee's essay "Giving Good Weight" provides a detailed study of the vendors and customers at the Greenmarket in New York City. In this excerpt, he combines vivid descriptions with direct quotations in his sketch of a schoolteacher who works in the market during summer vacations.

Sketch of Derryck Brooks-Smith

from "Giving Good Weight," by John McPhee

"These tomatoes come from a remote corner of Afghanistan," Derryck Brooks-Smith is saying to some hapless client. "They will send you into ecstasy." She is young and appears to believe him, but she may be in ecstasy already. Brooks-Smith is a physical masterpiece. He wears running shorts. Under a blue T-shirt, his breasts bulge. His calves and thighs are ribbed with muscle. His biceps are smooth brown loaves. His hair is short and for the most part black, here and there brindled with gray. His face is fine-featured, smile disarming. He continues about the tomatoes: "The smaller ones are from Hunza, a little country in the Himalayas. The people of Hunza attribute their longevity to these tomatoes. Yes, three pounds for a dollar. They also attribute their longevity to yogurt and a friendly family. I like your dress. It fits you well."

Brooks-Smith teaches at John Marshall Intermediate School, in Brooklyn. "A nice white name in a black neighborhood," he once remarked.

He was referring to the name of the school, but he could as well have meant his own. He was born in the British West Indies. His family moved to New York in 1950, when he was ten. He has a master's degree from City University. "It is exciting for me to be up here in Harlem, among my own people," he has told me over the scale. "Many of them are from the South. They talk about Georgia, about South Carolina. They have a feeling for the farm a lot of people in the city don't have." He quotes Rimbaud to his customers. He fills up the sky for them with the "permanganate sunsets" of Henry Miller. He instructs them in nutrition. He lectures on architecture in a manner that makes them conclude correctly that he is talking about them. They bring him things. Books, mainly. Cards of salutation and farewell, anticipating his return to school. "Peace, brother, may you always get back the true kindness you give." The message is handwritten. The card and its envelope are four feet wide. A woman in her eighties who is a Jehovah's Witness hands him a book, her purpose to immortalize his soul. She will miss him. He has always given her a little more than good weight. "I love old people," he says when she departs. "We have a lot to learn from them."

John McPhee's "Giving Good Weight" originally appeared in The New Yorker magazine (July, 3, 1978) and serves as the title essay of his collection Giving Good Weight, published by Farrar, Straus Giroux in 1979, reprinted in paperback in 1994.