A bold and eloquent work in which New York Times editorial page director Raines (Whiskey Man, My Soul Is Rested—both 1977) looks at his obsession with fly fishing as cause, symptom, and remedy for the woes of middle-aging. While he tries not to ridicule the men's movement, Raines—who grew up in Alabama fishing the Redneck Way—notes that many men are already ``hard-wired to all the raw masculine force [they can] handle.'' There's a need, he says, for an antidote to the anxiety, alienation, and sadness that's been ``a secret silent force among men in America''—but the antidote needn't have ``become an industry with its own speakers' bureau.'' A man who's fished with Presidents as well as with his own two sons, Raines ``measured'' the fish in his life on his 40th birthday when his then-wife presented him with a photo album of the passion that had endured since age seven, when he caught 20 crappies from a bridge near his hometown. Raines admitted that he'd been, at best, a ``middling'' fisherman. Worse, he saw himself as ``a middle-aged man in a gray suit who trudged to the White House press room'' to do what ``felt like stenography,'' rather than as the great novelist he'd set out to be. He also saw ``the black dog on his trail,'' conjured up by the death of his friend and mentor Dick Blalock, who'd showed him fishing as ``a way of living easefully in the world of nature.'' Raines's wonderful descriptions of streams, people, and fish; his perceptive, practical approach to the literature of fishing; and his commentary on manhood and male-bonding, from Hemingway to Robert Bly—all serve to sharpen the intensity and perspective of his journey through divorce, affairs, family problems, sickness, and death. A profound work that will hook readers from the start.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-10346-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.
The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.
As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich...
A reflective and entertaining journey through Japan, as the author seeks to reconnect with his martial arts sensei.
Lowry is a student of koryu (not to be confused with kendo), a style of Japanese classical swordsmanship. Koryu is a medieval art, like Noh and the tea ceremony, a style of combat born on the battlefield–but more importantly, it’s a way to address the world (though an esoteric one: Lowry may well be the only American practicing the art in the United States). Indeed, present-day practitioners refrain from exercising its fatal possibilities. Lowry’s sensei left the U.S. to return to Japan, urging Lowry to follow. Though his life headed in a different direction, he never forgot his training–when the time was ripe, he journeyed to Japan to join his sensei. The narrative revolves around this pivotal decision, and it provides a warm center from which the author expounds on such topics as the glories of a Japanese bath; the evolution of the Samurai caste; the peculiarities of Japanese landscape architecture; the elements of proper sandal-tying; the custom of the premarital shenanigans called yobai; and the teachings of mikkyo Buddhism. He also includes the vital story of the sword–what it reveals about Japanese life and technology, social structure and aesthetic values, etiquette, apprenticeship and the process of education. Lowry’s seriousness lends an earnest cast to the proceedings, but he’s not without a sense of humor–commenting upon his accomplished slurping of noodles, a friend’s wife notes, “He really sucks!”
A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich tradition.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2005
ISBN: 1-890536-10-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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