WEBVTT - Ep. 092: John Gierach 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.320 This is Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless severely 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:18.599 vote bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You can't 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:29.440 predict anything, all right, John Arrack, I'm gonna start by 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:32.040 kind of um, I'm gonna make you uncomfortable and butter 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:37.040 you up. Uh you. I wanted to talk to you 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:42.640 for for twenty years I think or what year to 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:50.479 trout Bump come out, um, mid eighties, maybe six. I 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:52.320 didn't discover it until a little bit later than that. 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.200 But I've wanted to talk to you since I did. 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:59.720 Because there's a thing like like that book, which was 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.000 your first book, right, No, because you had you had 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.160 the fly Fish in the High Countries before that. But 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:10.840 troump Bomb fell into When I say our lap, I 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:14.920 mean the lapse of me, my brothers and like our 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:18.360 main hunting and fishing friends that we grew up with, 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:21.120 and it fell into our lap at this time in life. 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:23.840 That will always stick in my head because it was 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.160 we're kind of coming out of coming out of college, 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:34.399 being mid college, and there was just this uh tremendous 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.039 amount of anxiety that was unspoken at the time, but 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:38.360 there was sort of like a lot of there's just 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:41.840 like like this palpable anxiety in the air about what 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:45.760 we were all gonna what was gonna happen to us? All, yeah, 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:49.320 like not like now right, No, I I just feel 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.040 like I know better. I kind of like now I 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:52.960 have anxiety about my kids. Right. But at the time, 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.480 I just, yeah, I know, I kind of could picture 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:57.160 it all. Now by the time I couldn't picture it. 0:01:57.160 --> 0:01:59.160 There was like a tremendous amount of anxiety. But there's 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:01.560 a thing that we were just discovering, is that that 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.040 we'd all grown up fishing all the time because our 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.720 dad's fish. We just fished. But all of a sudden, 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.239 I was like, it seemed like there's so much possibility 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:13.120 out in the world, and we were starting to to 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:18.080 to screw around with traveling to go places and and 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:20.880 just do nothing, and almost making a conscious decision to 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:23.560 not have a lot of the material goods that you 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:26.760 saw other people going towards at that age, because we 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.400 were just really in love with just messing around with 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:34.120 our friends and camping and pulling your money together to 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:37.359 buy gas to go fish somewhere and doing these things 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:39.400 that didn't make sense. And you're doing all this stuff 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.359 that doesn't make sense and you felt like anxiety about 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:45.040 it and some level of guilt about it because it 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.440 didn't seem sustainable and seem foolish and childish. But we 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:51.240 were so in love with how we were living. And 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:54.680 then I read when your book came out, man, and 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:56.840 I remember this so clearly, all these years later and 0:02:56.880 --> 0:02:59.320 all the things I've read since then, but it was 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.480 like it made me feel like, oh my god, this 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.200 is okay. Like this is a thing that people do 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:09.960 and it happens to people, and there's like a way 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:12.239 you can live your life like this. Yeah, I was 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.919 gonna say, I recognize everything you said, except the guilt part. 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:18.359 I never felt an ounce of guilt. You never had 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.720 the guilt. You feel like. You grew up in a 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:26.359 working class family though, Yeah, that didn't Robot. I mean 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:27.800 not that you don't work. I mean you didn't have 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:30.360 that sense of like that you needed to be do 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.960 you needed to be doing something you didn't like. Well, 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:35.920 I had the sense I needed to make a living, 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.440 and I always did. I mean I worked all kinds 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:42.960 of jobs. Um, even while I was writing, I worked 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:45.920 a lot of odd jobs and part time jobs and 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.200 full time jobs sometimes and just to get by because 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:55.000 you were brought up in Ohio, right well, born in uh, Illinois, 0:03:55.080 --> 0:04:01.480 small town Illinois. Moved to Minnesota for a while, moved 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:06.680 to Ohio. Dad worked for serious so we moved around. Uh. 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:08.920 I was in Ohio for my last two years of 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.320 high school, and then I went to college in Ohio, 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:16.919 and then after that I was just I was in 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.120 New York, I was in Colorado, I was in hate Ashbury, 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:25.560 I was And you studied philosophy. Yeah, we like explain that. 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:33.560 I don't even explain philosophy. What why? I mean, what 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.360 kind of led you to that? Um? Well, I started 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:41.359 out was an English major, and always hard for me 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:46.960 to say that without thinking to Garrison Keeler now, But um, 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.240 I don't know. I didn't like the way they taught 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:52.240 There's an arrogant thing to say, but I don't like 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:56.839 the way they taught English literature. It was just, you know, 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:58.839 it was like it was code and you were supposed 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.560 to decode in and it was like they kept asking 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.760 what does the author mean? And I kept asking why 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:09.200 can't he just mean what he said? I remember that 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:11.440 being I remember that being difficult too, and in the 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.560 way they kind of march you through the timeline being 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.440 frustrating as well. All right, we'll start with bail Wolf, yeah, 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:20.760 and this year we'll make it to Shakespeare and then 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:25.159 we'll pick up and yeah, yeah, talking about hitting meanings 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:27.520 and like you'd read something and dig it, but then 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:29.640 you felt like, well, I must not have really liked it, 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:32.039 because when they asked me that for what it meant, 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.480 I can't tell you what the symbolism was. I liked it. 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:39.000 If that counts for anything. Yeah, well, you know I could. 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:43.200 I can sort of do it now, but I've read 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:46.920 probably thousands of books since then. I mean, I think 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.360 you don't. I think you don't do enough reading. By 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:53.960 the time you're studying English in college. I think you 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:57.960 haven't done enough reading yet. Oh you mean like it's premature. 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.440 Yeah yeah, I mean you're you're just you're just being 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:05.200 introduced to literature and you're being asked to look at 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:08.279 it as deeply as anyone ever looks at it. And 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:12.640 I think maybe you should. Maybe you should read for 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:16.080 twenty years and then study English. I don't know. I mean, 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:20.000 there's only so much time. But yeah, I remember meet 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:22.200 a guy I was fishing with, a late friend of 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:26.400 mine on the big hole river. I'm sure you fished 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:28.560 that river in Montana. We're on the Big Hole River. 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:33.760 And we met a guy who had was explained as 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:37.640 that he had been a doctor and had just recently retired, 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:40.120 and the two things he was never able to do 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:44.680 as a doctor was read and fish, And so now 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.880 he was devoting his retirement to fishing in the morning, 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.680 and then while he was still fresh of mind to 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.280 go and read, and he had in his head that 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:56.760 he was going to read even at the word he 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:01.159 was he was going to read the Cannon. Yeah, struck 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.520 me as like you'll probably get more out of it 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.560 than I did when I read the Canon starting at 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:11.760 eighteen years of age, exactly, exactly. Yeah, So you bumped 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:15.840 the philosophy. Yeah, And was there like a thing you 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:17.280 thought you were gonna go do with it? Like did 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:20.760 you want to be a philosophy teacher? No? I mean 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:26.640 I realized at some point that that was what you did, right, No, 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.240 I don't. I don't. I mean, if if if you 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:32.000 were to get a degree in philosophy, that's the only 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:34.640 outlet you're not gonna go. You're not gonna go home 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:37.440 and hang out your shingle. You know, you're gonna be 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:40.600 a teacher, that's it. Or you're gonna go to law 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:44.400 school because law schools like philosophy majors because they could 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:47.560 read complicated stuff and you figure out what it. Man. 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:54.400 But I don't know, I was just never I wasn't 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.680 on that track. It was man, birds banded against the window, yeah, 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.840 dead know. No, I saw him going, He's all right, 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.320 tis the five with him? Those were those were doves. 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:12.840 We could have eaten them. So sorry. I just wasn't 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:17.000 on a career track. It was his sixties and we 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:20.520 were hippies and we weren't looking to go to the 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.480 office every day. But you like to fish at that 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.400 point too, because you grew up fishing. I did, but 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:31.600 I didn't do much, um the last two years of 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:34.600 high school and we lived in northern you know, Rush belt, 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.880 northern Ohio. And then in college, I mean, it just 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.800 wasn't fishing around. Yeah, let's just fishing bullheads and stuff 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:47.640 like that. Yeah. And when I lived in northern Ohio, Um, 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:50.360 that's when the Cuyahoga River caught fire every couple of 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:54.240 years and Lake Erie would eat the paint off a 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:58.280 ship's coming in. And nobody wants to fish in that 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:00.560 she just didn't feel a strong connection to it there 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:03.840 all the time, I feel any connection to it at all. 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.360 When because if you're if your self described like that 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:11.480 you were that you were hippi or affiliated with the counterculture, 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.280 and we're familiar with fishing. Did you at the time 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.040 were you reading uh like Trout Fishing in America by 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:19.960 broad Again? I remember what year that came out, but 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:24.319 that came out later. I did read it. What were 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:26.600 your thoughts of that? And you know the Curtis Creek 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:31.720 Manifesto and all that stuff. Um my thoughts, Well, you 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:36.880 know I always like brought Again. Um he might be 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.880 a little thin in retrospect, but I liked him at 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:43.079 the time. Yeah. Broad Again's like, um, like Tom Robbins 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:45.920 if you read Time, but but later you can't go retime, 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:47.360 Like once you get in your forties and you have 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.160 kids and stuff, you can't go like it doesn't hold upright, 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.360 not like holy Ship, this guy's a genius. Yeah, it's 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:54.520 kind of you kind of like, how did I used 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:56.680 to think this was good? But broad Again is still 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:00.079 funny though, Man, he is still funny. Yeah, didn't not 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:05.280 have a funny end um So when so if you. 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.800 Here's I guess what kind of driving at this I 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:12.439 maybe I should just ask you, at what point did 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:15.160 you At what point did you like make these connections? 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:17.920 Like there is such a thing as a guy. There's 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.559 such thing as a guy who writes about an activity 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:27.679 like fishing, and if he is really good, can make 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:34.760 it living at it. And I will shoot for that. Um. 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:40.839 I was probably probably in the mid seventies, um, because 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.600 you know, I got into fly fishing. I didn't get 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:45.360 out of it. I didn't get into fly fishing until 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:50.640 I came out West in my early twenties, late sixties, 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:55.920 early seventies. I've never really seen it before. It's that 0:10:57.040 --> 0:10:59.480 in the Midwest you never saw people fly fishing. You 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:05.480 do now, but you didn't then. And I just got 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.000 into it for what I think were the purest reasons. 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:11.839 I thought, that's beautiful. That's the prettiest thing I've ever seen, 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.760 and I mean just the act of it. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:18.839 and people are catching fish and I thought that was 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:23.319 just freaking beautiful. And was what was the year that 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:28.200 you had that sort of thought or oh, eight sixties, okay, 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:35.840 maybe seventy maybe, um. And at some point and I 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.240 was still trying to be a serious writer. Dan. I 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:41.160 had a little book of poetry and print. I was 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:47.640 writing for a little literary magazines, and but I was 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.040 fly fishing and I was reading fly Fisherman magazine. I 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:56.560 don't think fly fishing the West was out, um, I 0:11:56.600 --> 0:12:01.079 think trout, salmon and steelheader was out. Then there weren't 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:05.800 many and I just sort of of course. There were 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.560 the you know, field and stream out theor life guys 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:12.080 like Lee Wolf around, and I just thought, well, people 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.040 do make a living at this. Did you feel like 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:17.160 it was coarse and low because you want, because you 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:19.160 were an aspiring poet. Did you feel like it was 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:23.880 less artful to become like a a like a a 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:28.600 writer with sort of a beat? You know? Not really? 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:33.280 Not really? I mean there were people I knew at 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:37.319 the time who thought it was I mean I had 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.800 writer friends at the time who thought it wasn't it 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:43.480 wasn't like the fine arts. Yeah, yeah, And maybe it's 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:45.520 not to like the fine arts. I don't know. Well 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:47.600 for most it's not. But I think that the reason, 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:52.560 the reason that you're you, and the reason that you've 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:54.680 been around so long and people like you so much, 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:57.120 is that you're one of the one of the rare 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:03.680 few who has transcended. Well, what it was was reading 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:10.440 Tom mcgwain, Jim Harrison, Russ Chatham, some of those guys. 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:17.000 And also you know, the new journalists were working in UM, 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:24.480 Tom Wolf, Hunter, Thompson, Um, Peter Matheson, and they were 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:30.040 they were sort of bringing literary techniques into what had 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:34.280 normally been journalism up to now. They were becoming dropping 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:37.680 the pretense of objectivity and becoming characters in their own 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:42.920 stories and UM and writing in a stream of consciousness. 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:45.520 I mean, you know, Electric Kuwaite acid test was not 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:49.959 a news story about LSD. It was you know, a 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:55.640 little deeper than that, and UM. But I think it 0:13:55.760 --> 0:14:01.120 was probably the single writer that showed me that this 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:03.600 could be done as well as any other kind of writing, 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:06.760 It could be just as as legitimates literature was Tom 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:11.200 mcgwain and some of his earlier stuff. So you were 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:15.840 reading his stuff then, yeah, like in Shade and some 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:16.800 of them. I don't know if I was going to 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.360 the earlier works. Yeah, but also his you know, he 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:26.200 wrote for uh sports a Field or I don't know, 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:29.280 he wrote for some of the magazines and Harrison back 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:31.840 then like in the seventies, Harrison was doing hunting and 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:37.080 fishing pieces for Sports Illustrated. Yeah, it's amazing. And that era, 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:40.560 even though participation was not super high in this country, 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:45.520 and that era the room that mainstream publications made for 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:49.120 like cooking bullet right hook and bullet writing of the finest, 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:54.440 highest caliber would find its way into very mainstream magazines. 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:57.280 But that's all stuff that I've always been like like 0:14:57.440 --> 0:14:59.480 a thing that if if I look at sort of 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.560 the stuff I've written and where it's been, I'm always 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:04.600 kind of like proud of those moments when I've been 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.760 able to take a wedge A thing about hunting and 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.880 fishing in an unexpected location always feel like it's like, 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.360 uh like counting coup almost, you know, to be able 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:17.360 to stick it in somewhere or no one ever expect 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:20.720 to see it. Just like being a sniper, like yeah, 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:24.880 but you're shooting shooting stories instead of bullets. You know what, 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.280 do you know? This is like a side out of 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:29.720 any kind of chronology we're following with you, but you 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.840 might have some perspective on it. One of the things 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:39.800 that troubles me most about fishing writing is that why 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:45.000 would why does spin tackle? Why why does spin tackle 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:51.840 not spawn great writers? That's a mixed metaphor. Why does 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:58.480 spin tackle spin fishing not produce the writers that fly 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:02.080 fishing does. I kind of get it, but I don't 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:07.600 get it. Um. I don't know. That's a good question 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.880 I've never given in a moment's thought. But it could 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:17.760 be just that writers tend to be attracted to fly 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:23.480 fishing because it's you know, it's old, and it's kind 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:28.880 of primitive, and it's complex, and the esthetics are complicated, 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:34.520 and yeah, there's a lot to write about. And so 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.200 you think it said like the writerly sensibility is drawn 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:43.440 to fly fishing rather than like fly fishing inspires writers. Yeah. Maybe, 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:47.280 Like I say, I've never I've never thought of it before, 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:51.640 But you're right. Name name a great spin fishing writer 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:56.040 like Gray wrote some pretty good pieces about now I 0:16:56.040 --> 0:17:01.960 it was mostly because, yeah, having he wrote about deep 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.639 water well any and he wrote about fishing trout with 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:11.720 worms too, um and Hopper's big two hardered river fishing 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:14.679 live bait. So I mean, it's it's out there. But 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:21.280 I don't think anybody would consider him away a fishing writer. Well, 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:23.679 I mean he's definitely like informed by that, and I 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.440 think that he's like recognized as being I mean he's 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:28.280 as much of like he's recognized as much of a 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:30.240 dude who liked to watch bullfights as he is the 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:32.760 guy like the hunt fish. We definitely had that with 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:36.000 the Zane gray fly fish. I don't know, I've only 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.920 did like I think it was fishing Virgin Sees is 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:42.199 the book I have at home, And yeah, well he 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:46.280 did some steelheading too, But he not only was just 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:48.840 a writing about it, he was like an innovator of 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:51.920 tackle and equipment. I mean he goes into great depth 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:56.359 describing like making custom line back when he they didn't 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.240 have line they could hold up to an eight pound marlin. 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:01.119 And then the great depths that he went to to 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:04.520 have this line, or the products shipped from you know, 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:07.479 who knows where, and then it was you know, spun 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.040 somewhere else, and then you do all these tests and 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:13.520 still the big ones would get away. But he was hardcore. 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:16.600 He was just he wasn't just a trigger man, know, 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:22.760 he was into it. What was the first do you recollect? 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.280 What year was the first year that you wrote a 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:29.480 fishing piece where you looked at and thought like, that's 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:34.000 not technical writing, it's not how to it's like a 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:39.119 piece of art about fishing. And then that you published, 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:46.200 Um well, I think I felt that about uh the 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:50.840 SSA Asian trout bum so and they were not you know, 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:53.440 it came out and s where it was eighty six. 0:18:55.359 --> 0:19:00.919 So probably by the late seventies I was starting to 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.000 do that, like the writing things. You're like, this is 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:05.760 what I want to do, and I just did that. 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:13.720 Well yeah, yeah, And you were placing them where I 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.960 was placing them in in fishing magazines. I was in 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:24.640 Sports of Field, Field and Stream Fly Fisherman um now 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:30.360 defunct magazine called fly Fishing the West. Um, I don't 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:33.560 think fly ron um fly Rod and Reel was still 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:40.560 Rod and Reel. Then John Merwin had it recognize that 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:46.000 name published in there and here and there, and those 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:50.040 could not have been uh those couldn't have been huge 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:54.040 paychecks in those places. So you kind of knew that 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:55.760 you probably you probably knew that you had to go 0:19:55.840 --> 0:20:01.160 toward books. Um well, I wanted to go towards the books. 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:04.600 I think all writers want to see their name on 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:07.960 the cover of a book, right, don't you. I mean 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:11.240 magazines see someone else's name on the cover of my book. Yeah, 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:16.960 magazines come and go. Newspapers. I had a fight with 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.879 my I used to write outdoor column for the newspaper 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:22.800 for twenty eight years. I want, I want to ask 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:27.040 you about that book. They totally screwed up one of 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:31.680 my columns. It doesn't matter why, but they totally mucked 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:36.440 it up. And uh. I called my editor and yelled 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:38.600 at him, and he said, hold on, but what does 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:41.959 that mean? Like, what did it what what happened to it? Well, 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:47.160 they they they ran it in four columns, four vertical 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:51.320 columns at the top of the page. But the columns 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:56.560 weren't in the right order, got you, So it read 0:20:56.640 --> 0:21:01.840 like gibberish, okay, And I called and yelled at him, 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:05.560 and he said, man, that was yesterday. It's on the 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:11.320 bottom of a bird cage by now. So it's the 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:16.600 shitty feelings. Yeah, but he's right. Yeah, but it's like 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.120 it's painful to articulate it that way though, But there's 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:25.920 the truth to it. But that's that's that's newspapers, newspapers. 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:28.040 That's the problem with newspapers and magazines. If you're gonna 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:29.760 bring up the idea of having your name on the book. 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:34.240 Because I've considered myself like a pretty careful reader, okay, 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:35.960 and I'm aware of the publishing world, and i pay 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:40.960 attention to what's going on. I'll read pieces and uh 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:44.000 later some and be like, uh, who wrote the piece? 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:47.000 Like you know what, you don't know. As much as 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:52.200 I've spent my life pursuing this and in this business, 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:55.720 I never looked. And then you imagine that. And if 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:57.359 you think of yourself as like a careful reader who 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:00.160 is paying attention, and you imagine how most people will 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:05.760 perceive it, it winds up. It winds up. Yeah, it 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:10.080 makes you hungry for something that um, it makes you 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:13.399 hungry for something that's more that you could just like 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:15.760 continue to point to it as this thing that you 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:19.560 did because it sounds shallow in some ways in vain. 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:23.800 But people do want to be like recognized for their work. Yeah, 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:27.760 And um, you know, I wouldn't be the first writer 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:32.080 that was shallow in vain, right, No, No, there wasn't 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:34.200 a little hint of it. You wouldn't be a writer. Yeah, 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:38.320 I mean we do shine our work, right, we could. 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:41.000 We could all write under a pseudonym and be anonymous, 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:48.040 but we don't not many of us do. Um, yeah, 0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:50.520 I just And the other thing is, I mean people 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:53.520 are gonna somebody reads a book and likes it. They're 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:58.640 gonna remember who wrote it. And a book could conceivably 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:03.040 last no ar in tees. But you know a book 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:08.280 could last whereas a magazine. Right, it's gonna end up 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:11.199 on the coffee table in the dentist's office eventually, and 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:15.080 then it's gonna get recycled and it's gonna be going. 0:23:15.240 --> 0:23:18.240 People don't retain them. Well, some people do. Some people 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:21.159 save every issue with some magazine, but I mean not 0:23:21.240 --> 0:23:23.120 like they retain a book. Man, you were done reading 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:24.560 the book, they don't throw in the garbage. They go 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:27.840 bring it to a donation center. Well, or they put 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:29.840 it in the bookshelf. If you saw in my office, 0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:32.720 I don't know how many books I have down here. 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:35.760 When you like when you came out with your where 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:37.399 your were your first book? And then men, you I 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:41.080 know many of yourself school books and you can cry 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:48.359 if it's in fact all of them are collected pieces. 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:53.639 Do all of your books appear in print before they 0:23:53.680 --> 0:23:55.800 go into your books, or do you have the original 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:59.720 material that appeared nowhere else that goes into your books. Uh, 0:23:59.760 --> 0:24:03.679 there has been original material that appeared nowhere else, and 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:07.680 most of the stuff that was originally published somewhere else 0:24:09.280 --> 0:24:14.760 has been expanded and into a book chapter. Have you 0:24:14.840 --> 0:24:18.800 ever thought about like, like, why is that you haven't 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:25.400 done um, like like a full narrative book. I did 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:31.120 um at the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman. Kay, tell 0:24:31.119 --> 0:24:33.120 me about that book, like what that was like doing 0:24:33.880 --> 0:24:39.400 or what was like doing that book? It was, um, 0:24:39.440 --> 0:24:42.240 you know, it was one of those uh seasons of 0:24:42.359 --> 0:24:44.240 the Angler thing. I mean it was it was a 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:49.200 fourth season thing. And I just had this idea that 0:24:49.200 --> 0:24:51.760 that would be the way to to do a book 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:57.080 is to go through the seasons and U and I 0:24:57.119 --> 0:25:03.600 wrote the chapters as essays and I published most of 0:25:03.600 --> 0:25:07.200 them in in magazines and then collected them into a book. 0:25:08.440 --> 0:25:11.879 The thing about that's think about your writing that, uh 0:25:12.000 --> 0:25:14.560 what does that kind of admire most about it is 0:25:15.000 --> 0:25:18.560 even like the books, your books are often collections of 0:25:19.960 --> 0:25:22.800 of pieces that that that are free standing pieces like 0:25:22.840 --> 0:25:25.280 that they make sense and work in a free standing 0:25:25.320 --> 0:25:29.960 form like chapter length form. But throughout it is this 0:25:30.080 --> 0:25:33.159 is this broader story of you in your life and 0:25:33.160 --> 0:25:35.679