Ha! I just finished reading "The River Why." Hilarious and oh so good. To tempt those of you who have not read it yet to do so, here's one of my favorite parts. To set the scene: the main character, Gus, is a fisherman. His parents have had a life-long feud about whether it's better to fish with flies or bait. Gus moves to the woods to be a hermit fisherman and to excape their arguing (really, to figure life out.) While in the woods, he is interviewed by a clumsy sports-writer named Dutch Hines. For reasons I will not explain because you need to read the book, Gus decides to give a phony, and quite hilarious interview. Gus tells Dutch that he learned to fish in the desert around Palm Springs:
"After a day spent casting hookless flies into mirage creeks among the arid dunes, one begins to sense an order of things imperceptible to those whose minds are unaffected by extreme heat and dehydration. You see, Dutch, fish live in water. If one understands water one understands fish. And it is by craving water that one comes to understand it. Hence, to learn to fish, go to the desert and stay there. When the seizures and hallucinations start, you'll be amazed at what you'll learn!"
Ah, David James Duncan, you are amazing.
7 comments:
and wasn't she beautiful?
Gabe! Eddy's beauty is totally irrelevant! For all we know, she could have been an eleven-toed, wart-nosed toad-girl, and Gus only imagined her as ravishing. The POINT is that Gus fell in love with her because of the way she fished.
you've got me inspired to read another novel by him...i read the brother's k after listening to heidi and arlo spout off countless passages from that. duncan is very captivating. now i have to suffer the dreaded wait of inner-library loan.
Margo! Don't ruin it for me! His account of Eddy makes me think she was absolutely enchanting, a modern-day Lady of Shalot. The way she fished added, naturally, to her beauty.
Allow me to quote:
"Hell, if you'd been a hag or a whore or a zitty kid up in that alder fishing like that I'd have fallen for you! I'd have fallen for a one-eyed toad-faced frump in a Ronald McDonald outfit if she could fish like that! Because, I don't know, that huge nut-tree pole squirrels and birds used to sit on, and the insane way you handled it, and the Here-goes-nuthin' way you threw it, and the way you dove and swam. . . it showed you had a way of looking at things--not just at fishing but at the whole world--and it's a way of looking that I've been trying to look too . . ." (264).
Yes Eddy is beautiful, I'm not saying she isn't, only that she could have been ugly and Gus would have fallen for her anyway. Her beauty adds to her fishing, not the other way around.
Matt: read it. It's good. You can borrow my copy if you want.
Margo, great quote! I like your correct use of MLA citation format. I especially like Gus' last sentence, the way he talked about how Eddy looked at fishing and the world. I think it shows a lot of wisdom--which is probably why he got someone so wonderful as Eddy.
Ah, the DJD legacy continues on...
Thanks, Sarah. I graduated from Dordt College with a B.A. in English/Language Arts. That's how I know how to quote things. :)
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