The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing
by Thomas McGuaneKnopf, 320 pp., $25
In such wonderfully improbable novels as The Sporting Club (1968) and Ninety Two in the Shade (1973), Thomas McGuane gave the literary world pistol-wielding, flyfishing heroes whose antics and pyrotechnic abilities defied conventional notions of flyfishermen being one-dimensional, transcendental pacifists. Through these novels, along with the radiant flyfishing scenes underscoring Nothing but Blue Skies (1992), McGuane has established himself as one of the best-loved novelists in the flyfishing fellowship. While McGuane’s literary popularity extends well beyond the fishing domain, it is certainly the fly-rod-toting loyalists who will receive his long-anticipated collection of fishing essays, The Longest Silence, most enthusiastically. From McGuane’s local trout waters in Montana to the bonefish flats of Florida, from sea-run brown trout in Argentina to the salmon runs of Iceland — and plenty of places in between — Silence reaffirms the old maxim that flyfishing invites the angler to our world’s most attractive environs. McGuane invokes subtle cautions against taking the quarry too seriously or the scenery too lightly, realizing that the moments of success are comparatively brief and paid for by long hours of pursuit which begin, essentially, not on the water but in the angler’s living room, at his fly-tying bench, and as he stares from his car into rush hour traffic.
McGuane’s recognition of this peculiarity among flyfishermen — the adolescent leanings toward rumination and anticipation — establishes the essential crux of these 33 essays; the idea that the pursuit of fish transcends the capture, with such pursuit serving as a kind of connective tissue between the things we love and desire most: namely our families and close companions, our regard for nature, and our desire to establish a crossroads between daydreams and reality.
This is not to suggest that this quotable book belongs solely to the fisherman. In Silence we find nature writing in its finest form, with McGuane’s inimitable wit and uncanny powers of observation rendering imagery and insight with diamond incisiveness. Nevertheless, reading this rare book tends to mirror the act of fishing itself — each essay inspires moments when the reader must pause with the index finger marking the page, thus imitating those moments when the fisherman must rest his rod against the tree. Every fisherman identifies with these moments; the pause — inspired by a newfound connection — that causes us to contemplate the unrecognized vastness of our lives: the deepest silence.
This article appears in February 4 • 2000.