Papa Goes Fishing A trophy collection of piscatorial reading

...for more articles about Alaska fishing subscribe to Fish Alaska Magazine!

“The leader had broken where the hook was tied to it,” Hemingway writes in “Big Two-Hearted River,” the opening story in this wonderful collection published by The Lyons Press. “Nick took it in his hand. He thought of the trout somewhere on the bottom, holding himself steady over the gravel, far down below the light under the logs, with the hook in his jaw. Nick knew the trout’s teeth would cut through the snell of the hook. The hook would imbed itself in his jaw. He’d bet the trout was angry. Anything that size would be angry. That was a trout. He had been solidly hooked. Solid as a rock. He felt like a rock, too, before he started off. By God, he was a big one. By God, he was the biggest one I ever heard of.”

With that, the reader is transported into Hemingway’s world, where fishing is more than any mere sport or recreation—it’s where all men with a spiritual life gain what they need: peace of soul. It is universal; it is thoroughly therapeutic.

Hemingway on Fishing presents for the first time, in one tome, the Nobel Prize-winning author’s writing on what he loved best.

From early childhood forays in Michigan to his legendary battles on the open sea, Hemingway relates and recounts the best—and worst—of what it means to be an angler. The collection features 32 monochrome images of the author at work and 21 excerpts, short stories, newspaper and magazine articles, the icon penned over his illustrious career. With a warm introduction from editor, publisher, writer, and fisherman Nick Lyons and a candid foreward by son Jack, the work succeeds in bringing to life the passions that left Hemingway towering larger than life.

There is something lost in re-arranging the work around a niche, of course, as too much is missing in terms of the relationships between the characters—most notably in the excerpts from longer works. Hemingway on Fishing reveals the entire spectrum of his progression as a writer, however, and is a service in its own right. We watch the evolution of one of the Twentieth Century’s towering figures. “Big Two-Hearted River,” hailed by many literary critics as the author’s finest short fiction opens the collection. Lyons, in his introduction, mentions that the piece is the one work which brings together the author’s love of fishing with the best of his prose. Among the journalism, there’s a starkly bizarre Esquire piece from 1935 in which Hemingway relates shooting himself in both calves while trying to gaff a shark, as well as several anecdotal “letters” in which we see a generous wit, a facet of the Nobel Laureates work that’s largely overlooked by critics today.

In all, this collection is for everyone from the Papa enthusiast to anglers the world over. All the trademarks of the Hemingway we have come to know, love, revere, and sometimes even pity, are here—his unmatched richness as a writer, the fresh, evocative prose, the uncluttered language that he made his hallmark in describing events so vividly, yet so simply, as to land us in the story, making his emotions ours. The book truly is a trophy catch and deserves a spot in every library.

Hemingway on Fishing Edited and with an introduction by Nick Lyons,
Foreword by Jack Hemingway,
$29.99; 288 pages
ISBN: 1-58574-144-2, www.lyonspress.com

Home | About Fish Alaska magazine | Staff | Advertising Info | Subscriptions | Site Map
 

P.O. Box 113403
Anchorage, AK  99511
907-345-4337
info@fishalaskamagazine.com

© Fish Alaska Magazine, all rights reserved. Photos and written materials may not be distributed or used without permission.

Crucible Designs
email webmaster