Even Brook Trout Get The Blues ANNOTATION
From his reminiscences about learning to fish to a lyrical piece about fishing during a late spring snow to a wry, though compassionate, look at the hard life of a brook trout, Gierach provides entertainment for fly-fishers and literature lovers alike. Drawings.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
From the critically acclaimed author of Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing and Trout Bum comes Gierach's most entertaining book yet about the fly-fishing way of life.
As only he can. John Gierach writes about the hard life of a brook trout in the Rockies; bamboo versus graphite rods, hog holes, secret streams, and poachers; and, of course, the sport - or is it religion? - of fly-fishing. He fondly recalls learning to fish on the family farm pond; fishing for gar; fishing in the mountains during a late spring snow. As always with Gierach, all of it is richly observed and wryly described.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Behind the sardonic, hip titles of Gierach's fly-fishing travelogues ( Trout Bum ; Sex, Death and Fly-Fishing ) lurk grace, passion and wit--even angling epiphanies. Assembled here are 16 lively essays on his Rocky Mountain home streams, farm ponds, dogs and the peculiarity of fishing companions. Every Gierach story, while loaded with lore, is finally about trying to fit the odd but compelling perspectives that fishing bestows into accepted conventions of 20th-century sanity. In a funny, self-reflective mode that owes much to the writings of Richard Brautigan and Tom McGuane, Gierach highlights the fly fisher's single-minded devotion to the sport, with its elements of art, to suggest that the eccentricity is a very real wisdom: ``That is why we like to wander around the mountains with expensive flyrods: to get a taste of things the way they really are.'' His reflections persuade as they entertain. (May)
Library Journal
There are three writers all self-respecting fly-fishing collections should purchase on principle; Nick Lyons ( Confessions of a Fly-Fishing Addict , LJ 5/15/89) and W.D. Wetherell ( Upland Stream: Notes on the Fishing Passion , LJ 3/15/91) are the other two. The 16 stories in this collection lack some of the snap and verve of Trout Bum ( LJ 6/15/86) and The View from Rat Lake ( LJ 2/1/88), but Gierach again shows off his capacity to startle the reader with profanity or humor, much as a fisherman working a deep corner of a pond ties into an 18 brook trout. Colorado-based and Western water-oriented, he is nonetheless a writer for any region and any season to those who prize the literature of this sport. Recommended.-- David Panciera, Westerly P.L., R.I.
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