I recently ‘discovered’ John Gierach, if it’s possible to discover in 2016 a writer who has been putting out books since the 70s, all of which are still in print. What I mean of course, is that I finally picked up one of his books, really liked it and then became a fan. In the course of a year, I went on a tear and read just about everything of his I could get my hands on. I know I should slow down and savor them more, but I can’t help myself, I consume it all until it’s gone; pretty much the same with hot dogs. It’s also the way I smoked pot in high school, which is why I don’t smoke pot anymore.
A couple things about binge reading one writer, especially a non-fiction one: if you don’t read them in order, the timeline gets all screwed up, one day he’s living next to the gas station on the edge of town, the next he’s living in a canyon writing for his girlfriend’s paper. One day he’s talking about some big political fight he had in the past to save a river and the next he’s talking about gearing up for that same fight.
Also, and this is the same with binge watching a show, you pick up on a couple of the writer’s tricks; they’ll use the same gimmick or a joke more than once. Gierach might have written a joke in 1992 and repeated himself twenty years later, but you read them both on the same long flight.
Gierach’s writing style is deceptive in that he makes it seem easy. He’s just kind of telling a story, it almost feels like the kind of story a good passenger would tell you while you’re driving on a long road trip to keep you awake. It’s conversational and it’s so well written it seems effortless, but that can’t be true. His paragraphs are sleek, everything in them is there for a reason, like he’s packing for a long trip on a small boat and can’t waste any space on useless cargo. Chekov’s trout.
One thing I really appreciate about Gierach is that he’s not a snob about fly fishing, if it swims he’ll fish for it. I’m the same way, I like fly fishing for blue gill and bass and trout and catfish and whatever else I can catch on a fly. If I could catch a hobo bathing in a stream on a fly, I’d bring him in, take his picture and release him (rubberized net, of course). Gierach is also not a snob about a lot of other stuff, but that’s not as appealing to me. I’m a huge snob on a lot of stuff and I appreciate snobbery in others. I’m especially snobby about TV, insufferably so. But when it comes to fly fishing, I’m not a snob; primarily because I’m not good enough at it to be snobby.
Also, it seems like fly fishing is already kind of snobby to begin with, you have to work hard not to be that guy who looks like page 32 of the LL Bean catalogue on the water. Maybe it’s different out west, but on the east coast, fly fishing carries with it a little bit of baggage. I grew up in Virginia and that’s where I do a lot of my fly fishing. Sometimes I’ll get to chatting with someone I don’t know well and it turns out he’s a spin fisherman and when I tell him I’m a fly fisherman, I always want to add “I’m sorry.”
Of course what constitutes snobbery and elitism change. Gierach writes lovingly about bamboo fly rods. He writes about them so well I can convince myself I need one, but when I look at the fly fishers now who are into bamboo – eh. I get it, and when Gierach got in to bamboo it didn’t have the same kind of elitist baggage it has now. A guy who’s always fished bamboo is different than a guy who’s “getting in to” bamboo the way some people are “getting in to vinyl records.” I’m old enough to remember vinyl and I’m also old enough to remember having to use Band-Aids to tape pennies on the arm of my record player so it wouldn’t skip. I missed coming at bamboo authentically, so I guess I’ve missed it. Plus, I’m too crappy of an angler to justify it. Louisville Slugger or $10 aluminum bat, you’re still striking out at the company softball game.
Because he writes so conversationally, it’s easy to imagine that Gierach and you could be friends. Kind of a straight middle aged guy’s version of a guy crush. He’s crusty and plain spoken and most guys like to think that they’re crusty and plain spoken, so you’d hang out and go fishing, maybe get beers later. Maybe you get to talking on a flight and what do you know, the guy you hit it off with is John Gierach. The fact is that I’m pretty much done with the new friend program. If I’m on a flight and the guy next to me starts to talk, I roll my eyes and get out my headphones. Mostly what I want out of other people is to be left alone. By that standard, John Gierach and I have about the perfect friendship, I haven’t heard a peep from him in over 50 years.
First Fish 