“Conservation is a dynamic, not a static, conception. It does not mean simply hanging onto things, like a miser to his gold. It means putting them to use, seeking a valuable return from them and at the same time ensuring future yields of at least equal value. It means having enough faith in the future to respect the future and the needs of future people; it means accepting moral and practical restraints that limit immediate self-interest; it means finding a measure of wisdom and understanding of natural things that few peoples have attained; ultimately, though we no longer see it in this way, it is a religious concept—the most universal and fundamental of all such concepts, the worship of fertility to which man has dedicated himself in every civilization since his race began.”
Instructional books about fly fishing are generally the dreariest form of angling literature, but Haig-Brown’s A Primer of Fly Fishing stands alone because of his application of the same seamless literary style. Fly fishing, he said, “is undoubtedly the best and finest of all forms of fishing, making the strongest demands on the attention and understanding of its followers and yielding in return the greatest and richest rewards; but in this it is exactly the same as the best in music, painting, literature or anything else. Men from every conceivable walk of life are fly fishermen, and good ones, for nothing but individual choice limits membership in the brotherhood.”
I might point out that those words were written in the early 1960s, and I think it’s likely that if he were writing today, Haig-Brown would be careful to include women among the ranks of fly fishers.
But enough examples. What is it about these words that make them so meaningful and emotionally charged? What technique did Haig-Brown use to make his work so appealing? Or, to put it another way, how did he set the hook and play us as readers?
Well, to begin with, Haig-Brown’s prose is always uncomplicated. He said things in the simplest way possible, so there could never be any doubt about his meaning. This seems an obvious thing for any writer to do, yet it can often be devilishly difficult; even the most experienced writer struggles to make things easy for the reader, and many writers fall short of that goal. To be able to write in a simple, uncomplicated fashion may, in fact, be more a function of natural talent than any amount of learning or experience, for it has often been said that the true measure of a genius is in the simplicity of his or her expression.
Repetition is another technique Haig-Brown used when he wanted to drive home a point. His definition of conservation in The Living Land serves as a good example, especially when he said that conservation “means having enough faith in the future to respect the future and the needs of future people.” The word “future” appears three times in that single short phrase, and you can’t read it and go away without thinking about the future, which of course is exactly what he wanted you to be thinking about.
Haig-Brown also loved alliteration, or the use of similar sounds in a sequence. Consider, for example, the repeated F- and B-sounds when he wrote that the creeks were “turning brown and foamy and tumbling faster in their rocky beds,” or the repeated L-sounds when he said “The steelhead … is livest of all the river’s life,” or the sequence of S’s when he said “the mountains were clear in the sunlight; they are clear still, yet somehow veiled by the lesser light of the sinking sun.” He used these sounds almost as if they were musical notes, and indeed alliteration is a technique often used by composers of music, and it works just as well in writing. If it sounds right, it reads right, and Haig-Brown’s frequent and successful use of alliteration surely added to the impact of his words.
There are other similarities between musical composition and writing, and one of the most obvious is the use of rhythm or cadence. I don’t know if Haig-Brown was a student of music, but he often wrote with a very deliberate rhythm, and I suspect he did so purposely. Repeated use of the word “future” in his definition of conservation is one example; in fact, the whole paragraph containing that definition has a steady and distinctive cadence. The same sort of rhythm is apparent in nearly all of Haig-Brown’s later works; you may not always be aware of it, but it’s always there, reaching out to satisfy some inner need that we all have, perhaps subconsciously driven by the beating of our own hearts.
Another distinctive feature in Haig-Brown’s writing is his use of what I call “action” words. By that I mean there was nothing wimpy in his choice of descriptive terms. He used adjectives like “bold,” “strong,” “live,” and “brilliant,” often linking them in alliterative fashion.
What’s so special about that? Perhaps the best way to gauge its impact is to look for a moment at the work of another writer. Some years ago an absolutely fascinating book called Reeling in Russia was published by Fen Montaigne, a former correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The book is an account of Montaigne’s months-long fishing journey all the way across Russia from the Baltic to the Pacific, and while Montaigne isn’t much of a fisherman, the chronicle of his adventures will keep any reader turning the pages. His book makes wonderful reading until he begins trying to describe the wilds of Siberia, one of the greatest wilderness areas left on the planet, and here his powers of description utterly fails him. He tells of forests that are dark, waters that are blue, and mountains that are snow-capped—all bland, watery clichés that convey nothing of the majesty of that great land.
Imagine how Haig-Brown would have described those scenes. I suspect his Siberian mountains would have been brushed with that same “clean, bright” sunset flame, or maybe something even more vivid. I’m certain he would have found the Siberian rivers bright, brilliant, and full of quick life, and his Siberian forests would have stood out boldly against the endless sky. I think the point is clear.
So those are some of the techniques Haig-Brown used to construct the word-pictures that first appealed to his readers seventy-five years ago and still appeal to us today. But he could never have constructed such images out of whole cloth; he had to have the experiences to back them up. So when he wrote of that mountain sunset, he was surely thinking of a sunset he had seen, and when he described steelhead with the brightness of the sea still on them, he was undoubtedly thinking of fish he had actually held in his hands. He used the techniques of a writer to recreate these scenes and offer clues that would help readers construct their own versions. When a reader does this, he or she also naturally relies on experience, so when Haig-Brown says “clean, bright flame,” the reader is likely to remember a sunset just like that and say, yes, that’s exactly the way it was. It doesn’t matter that the image Haig-Brown had in mind might be very different from the one the reader has summoned from memory; both are just as vivid and just as personal in the eye of the beholder.
And that, I think, is the real secret of Haig-Brown’s prose: He described things in ways that bring our own memories to life, and that’s why his writing seems so alive, so compelling, and so emotionally powerful. He awakens the best of our own recollections, stirs the depths of our imaginations, and brings light to our mind’s eye.
I don’t know whether Haig-Brown did this intentionally or merely by instinct, although I suspect it was a little of both. But it doesn’t really matter; the fact is that he did it, and everyone who reads his work is better for it.
“Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers,” he said. “If so, I’m glad I thought of it.” I suspect for Roderick Haig-Brown, fishing was a great deal more than only an excuse to be near rivers. I think it also was a way for him to write about the natural world, as only a fly fisherman could see it.
If so, we can all be glad he thought of it.
CALM, COOL, AND COLLECTED
A LONG time ago I decided never to become a collector of fly-fishing books. I made that decision after witnessing what happened to several friends who became collectors. They started spending less time fishing and a lot more time in pursuit of books, especially rare old ones, until at last they stopped fishing altogether. Their addiction to books had become so absorbing, so obsessive
, so all-consuming, and so expensive that they had no time or money left for fishing. Worse yet, they didn’t even seem to miss it.
That was a fate I desperately wanted to avoid.
But I soon discovered it wasn’t easy to resist becoming a collector. My wife, Joan, worked in the book department of a major department store, so there were nearly always new fly-fishing books under the Christmas tree or at birthdays. Other people gave me books, and I bought quite a few myself. Later, when I began writing fly-fishing book reviews for several publications, I started receiving many new books directly from publishers. After the reviews were written, I donated nearly all those books to charities, but a few inevitably found their way into my fishing library, which continued growing despite my best intentions.
After decades in Seattle, we moved to Whidbey Island in northern Puget Sound. I was still unpacking things when my friend Dale Broughton visited, inspected the space designated for an office in our new home, and volunteered to build bookshelves along one wall, just because he enjoys doing things like that. I gratefully accepted his offer, which resulted in a series of handsome pine shelves with more than sixty linear feet of space.
The many boxes of fishing and history books (history being another great love of mine) I had brought from Seattle easily filled all that space, with no room to spare. That meant I would soon face the dilemma of what to do if I wanted to add a new book to my library. The only way to make room for it would be to remove a book already on the shelf, and I knew the time would soon come when that challenge would have to be faced.
Which it did. So I began a merciless sort of triage, culling older volumes and replacing them with new ones I thought of greater value or importance. These choices were always difficult, but each time I was forced to make one I also silently congratulated myself for successfully resisting the urge to become a book collector. As long as I had limited shelf space, my library would never be able to grow any larger than it already was, and I still had the time, energy, money—and, most important, the desire—to go fishing.
Until then, I’d never gotten around to counting the number of fly-fishing books in my library, though my estimate was somewhere around 200. So when I finally did take an inventory, it was a great shock to discover the actual number was 425. No matter how you slice it, a library that size has to qualify as a collection, and those handsome pine shelves were beginning to bow under the weight of those 425 volumes.
I’m still not sure how this happened, but it was clear I had become a book collector despite my best intentions. That it occurred slowly, almost painlessly, and without my even realizing it was, I suppose, a good thing. I hadn’t fallen victim to the collecting urge as much as some of my friends, who gave up not only fishing but also much of their income to pursue books. If one is fated to become a book collector, I suppose I had unwittingly discovered the easiest way to go about it.
The discovery that I had so many books also made me curious as to exactly what was in my collection, so I decided to take a closer look at its contents. I found many works on fisheries biology and genetics, several weighty tomes on aquatic entomology, and several others on stream management—all essential references for someone who wants to write about fishing. I also found numerous books about fly-tying techniques and fly patterns, a good selection of works on fly-fishing history and literature, and many volumes describing fly-fishing tactics for various species of fish in various types of water.
The authors most often represented among the large selection of books about fly tying and fly patterns included Kenneth E. Bay, George F. Grant, Eric Leiser, Art Lingren, and Richard Talleur. Works by John McDonald, Paul Schullery, John Waller Hills, Alfred Joshua Butler, and William Radcliffe topped my collection of books about fly-fishing history. There were many books on saltwater fly fishing by a great many authors, but the inimitable Lefty Kreh topped the list with five titles. Six volumes by the late Charles E. Brooks made him the most prolific of a large number of authors of books about stream fishing and tactics. Trey Combs ranked first for steelhead, with three books, and if there is such a thing as all-around fly-fishing miscellany, then Dave Hughes was my champion with five titles, each exploring a different aspect of the sport.
But the largest number of books were those I vaguely defined as “just good reading”—the kind of books best perused in front of the fireplace on a winter evening, perhaps with a snifter of brandy for accompaniment. They were books describing the experiences, contemplations, introspections, and philosophies of other anglers, books calculated to inspire and entertain.
Among these authors, Roderick Haig-Brown was by far the most often represented, with seventeen titles. That was no surprise; Haig-Brown is my all-time favorite angling writer and literary inspiration. My old friend (and several times publisher) Nick Lyons was next, with eight titles. Other writers in the same “just good reading” category included John Gierach (even though I once referred to him in a review as master of the “smart-ass” school of fly-fishing writing), Russell Chatham, Arnold Gingrich, William Humphrey, Dana Lamb, Ben Hur Lampman, Robert Traver, and W. D. Wetherell, each represented by at least three titles. There were quite a few other authors who contributed one or two books.
Most of these are American writers, but my library also includes many works from the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and France. New Zealand in particular has produced some fine fly-fishing authors—O. S. “Budge” Hintz, John Parsons, and Tony Jenson, to mention just a few.
Most of the books in my library date from the late twentieth or early twenty-first century, though a few date back to the nineteenth century.
Many of my books were autographed by their authors. Most collectors treasure works signed by their authors because it makes them more valuable on the commercial market, a matter of great importance to collectors who consider books as investments. That’s especially true if the author who signed the book is no longer living. I couldn’t care less about the commercial value of the books in my collection—I have always considered them an investment in knowledge and enjoyment, not a financial investment—and nearly all my autographed books were gifts. With only one or two exceptions, I have never asked another author to sign a book.
One reason I haven’t is that I think signing books is one of the most difficult things a writer is ever asked to do. I don’t mean just signing one’s name; that’s easy (unless you have to sign it 2,000 times, as a publisher once asked of me). The difficulty comes when someone asks for more than just a signature, such as a personal inscription for him- or herself, or for Dear Old Uncle Harry or somebody. It’s always a challenge to think of something fresh, original, or personal to say under such circumstances, and I can’t imagine anything that can cause a faster attack of writer’s block. I don’t believe I’m alone in this, either, because—let’s face it—most authors’ personal inscriptions are hopelessly inane, and I suspect it’s because they couldn’t quickly think of anything else to say.
I know. I’m as guilty of this as any other writer. To avoid inanity—or to avoid the awkward pause that always follows a request for a personal inscription while I’m trying desperately to think of something worthwhile to say—I’ve developed a certain number of stock phrases and inscriptions I’ve used many times in many books. But I don’t like doing that, either, because I’m always worried that some readers will end up comparing books and discover that what they thought was an original inscription written just for them is exactly the same as the inscription in someone else’s book.
I think the late Arnold Gingrich had a good solution to this problem. My copy of his book, The Joys of Trout, contains this inscription: For Steve Raymond, Fraternally, Arnold Gingrich. That was it—short, succinct, easy, and right to the point. But Arnold’s solution unfortunately doesn’t work in every case, because when someone who’s just bought one of your books asks you to “write something about sea-run cutthroat fishing” in it, he’s probably not going to settle just for “fraternally.” And if t
he person who wants you to sign the book is a woman—well, “fraternally” just isn’t going to work.
It’s especially difficult to think of something appropriate to say for someone you’ve never met, but it does help if you’ve at least heard something about him or her. I was once asked to sign a book for Tiger Woods, and although I’d never met him, I knew who he was. So I wrote an inscription thanking him for encouraging people to play golf because it keeps them off the streams.
I remember another time an angler showed me a book he had purchased only because he thought I had signed it. Something about the inscription made him suspicious, however, and he asked me to confirm the autograph was genuine. It took only a glance inside the book to determine that someone had forged my signature, and very badly at that. Adding insult to injury, he had then written “Good fishing!” Please! Even I would never stoop to such crass inanity. I placed my genuine signature under the forgery, parenthetically added “the real one,” and returned the book to its owner.
A book I once owned offered proof that authors’ inscriptions sometimes unwittingly turn out to be even more personal than intended. The store where my wife worked once hosted a book signing by Richard Nixon before he was elected president, and she thought I might like to have a signed copy of his book Six Crises. Nixon obligingly signed his name, but also inadvertently left a piece of his breakfast pastry stuck to the signature page. I don’t know if that would have made the book more valuable to a collector, and I never tried to find out; I gave the book away long ago.
Many of the autographed books in my library contain typically inane inscriptions, but there are also some pretty good ones, and a few that have special meaning for me. The late Stanley Bascom, who, under the pseudonym Milford Poltroon, edited the extremely funny “piscatorial periodical” known as The Wretched Mess News, sent me a copy of his 1971 book, How to Fish Good, with the following inscription: “Steve! This is the best book I ever wrote. Milf Poltroon.” At the time it also was the only book he’d ever written. Milf and I had some good times together and I wrote a number of goofy stories for the Wretched Mess. Since I lived in Washington State, he always identified me as his “Washington correspondent.”
A Fly Fisher's Sixty Seasons Page 8
