My Secret Fishing Life - Softcover

Lyons, Nick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080213842X ISBN 13: 9780802138422

Publisher: Grove Press, 2001

Synopsis

Nick Lyons has long been acclaimed as one of our preeminent fishing writers, praised for his great stories, philosophical and literary insights, self-deprecating humor, and ability to capture the passion that drives people to stand for hours at a time in a river, often in vain. My Secret Fishing Life is his most personal collection, an intimate look back at his own life and career as an angler, publisher, husband, father, and English professor. The capstone to an impressive career, this book belongs on the shelf of anyone who loves fishing.

About this title

Review:

"There are many of us," writes Nick Lyons, six decades on the pond behind him, "for whom a day on the trout river is so pleasant an event, such an amiable and engaging pastime, that it feels, both going and coming back, as comfortable as an old shoe. We go for the sheer joy of it, not to put notches on our rods." Anglers keep returning to Lyons's finely honed prose for precisely the same reason. The collection of essays that comprises My Secret Fishing Life is a personal journey into the various "rivers" he's waded as a husband, father, teacher, writer, collector, publisher--and, of course, as a fisherman, the single noun that manages to tie all these lines together. The shorter pieces of the first half, many of which were originally published in Fly Fisherman magazine, explore subsets of the fishing life, drifting casually between philosophical rumination and memoir: the rituals of preparing for a new season, getting older, a lunchbreak spent fishing for stripers in the waters off Wall Street. In such sketches he presents his languid yet alluring phrases as delicately as if they were flies to a rising trout. Here he is on the inherent purity of the dry fly: "The only possible practical argument for using the dry fly more frequently is Lee Wulff's--that the dry fly fished on a floating line grants for the trout the sanctuary of its part of the river, allowing the connection to take place only at that place where air and water meet, and only at certain times." Two longer pieces comprising the book's second half are less successful--maybe too personal here and there (especially a windy defense of his wife's painting career), but overall it's honest, thoughtful work. Like fly-fishing as a sporting enterprise, the writing casts more toward the journey than the destination, allowing itself to hook into a share of verities along the way. --Jeff Silverman

From the Back Cover:

Beyond his life as an English professor, book publisher, and writer, Nick Lyons has always had a "secret fishing life," a deep and abiding passion for fishing, especially with a fly. In this, his eighteenth book, he fishes in "riskier waters" than he has ever fished in before-and has caught his greatest prize.

Fishing and painting, business and leisure, very short essays and book-length explorations form the core of this new book by one of America's finest angling writers. As he says in his introduction, this book "punctuates a long period of my life, begun in early childhood, refashioned as an adult with fly rod and feathered things, brought full circle by my having put it all, enough times now, to paper, each time, I think, circumscribing a larger circle around that deep core, my secret fishing life."

My Secret Fishing Life is Lyons's effort to bring together the diverse threads of his life-the joys of a fly fisher's spring, the pleasures of fishing an old farm pond, reflections on first and last days of the season, a unique record of his life as an editor and publisher of books about angling, the process of aging, threats to fishing waters, various ways to fish, and much else, always tempered by Lyons's hallmark self-deprecating humor.

This is Nick Lyons's most personal book. It will be a revelation and joy to all those who have lived a full life and fished "risky waters."

Nick Lyons was for twenty-six years an English professor at Hunter College and is now a book publisher. He has published more than four hundred articles and eighteen books, most of them on fishing. Mari Lyons's paintings and drawings have graced previous books by her husband. She shows regularly at the First Street Gallery in New York City.

"I love Nick Lyons's books. Every sentence is so full and ripe with whatever it is that keeps us fishing-and the minute-by-minute surprise and delight of it."-Ted Hughes, former Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II and the author of Birthday Letters

"Nick Lyons is quite simply the tops, in stylish prose, gentle wit, and accumulated wisdom. Add his sense of humility and complete honesty-rare qualities among us fly fishermen-and you will begin to understand why Lyons' essays are essential to our sanity."-William W. Warner, author of Beautiful Swimmers

"Fly-fishing isn't a spectator sport, but if Nick Lyons fishes as skillfully as he writes about it, I'd pay to watch him. He's that happy and compulsive combination of angler-poet-romantic."-Ed Zern

"Nick Lyons writes about life and fishing with a compelling mix of familiarity and innocence. He knows what he's talking about, but it never ceases to amaze and delight him. And he's honest. This is real fishing done by real people in the world as it is, not one of those stylized versions of reality where the hero always catches fish and never has to go to work."-John Gierach

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 080213842X
• ISBN 13: 9780802138422
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208
• Illustrator: Lyons Mari