He is not the only story writer with feet in many worlds
Ernest Hemingway in Idaho.
It is not hard to see why some writers have been drawn to hunting and fishing as a subject for their work. In the right hands, a story set in that environment can become a basic story of man versus nature, as in Ernest Hemingway’s story. The old man and the seaor a strong view of humanity’s connection to nature, such as Norman MacLean’s A River Runs Through It. But for some writers, hunting and fishing aren’t just the backdrop to memorable prose — they’re also a way to get better at their art.
In an essay from a career-spanning anthology recently published in Literary Hub, acclaimed writer Rick Bass convincingly argues that some of the same traits Hemingway learned while hunting also helped make him a great writer. . For Bass, this is the most striking feeling in Hemingway’s near-death experience. “[W]He sees, over and over again, how in becoming accustomed to death — drawn to the thing he fears, and with death the logical end of the hunt — Hemingway has built his brain to serve him as a writer of happy endings.
As Nick Ripatrazone pointed out in a 2014 essay in The Millions, Hemingway also made connections between writing and his fishing experience, citing a passage from Hemingway’s Death in Japan about the paradoxical nature of behavior and who is truly in control.
Hemingway is not the only writer mentioned in the fishing essay. Ripatrazone also releases the work of Thomas McGuane — who you may know from his acclaimed books or his long friendship with Jimmy Buffet. In 2019, with the publication of a new edition of McGuane’s The Longest Silence: A Fishing LifeJonathan Miles labeled it a “masterpiece of fishing literature” in a review on Garden and Guns.
As Miles points out, McGuane’s observations on fishing are about more. “Leave the water, and you realize that this level of immersion – durable, alert, enthusiastic – is not only worth applying to fishing,” Miles wrote. “The Longest Silence is, at its heart, less a book about how to fish than how to live.” With that in mind, it’s not surprising to see how many writers find the key to their own craft in something surprising. which is close to home.
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