Rober Traver of course is John Voelker best known for his novel Anatomy of a Murder. After that great literary success, Voelker quit his job on the Michigan Supreme Court and fly-fished, wrote, played cribbage and drank bourbon for the rest of his life. This is a collection from several of his books about how and why, where and with whom he fished and drank and played.
He is a wonderful writer, absolutely passionate about fly-fishing, specifically for native brook trout in secret places in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He is witty, observant, irreverent.
His love for the woods and waterways of the Upper Peninsula is reason enough to read his stories. Or to read a poignant lovely vignette titled The Intruder. Or to laugh out loud as he writes of his friends and neighbors, his fellow Yoopers. Or to read hundreds of fine sentences like these:
"For trout, unlike men, will not--indeed cannot--live except where beauty dwells, so that any man who would catch a trout finds himself inevitably surrounded by beauty: he can't help himself."
"Since all fishing seems inevitably to involve progressive dementia, next summer I'll doubtless do my fishing from a streamside padded cell, for diversion making up long languid leaders of out of the dangling cobwebs."
"There is no substitute for fishing sense, and if a man doesn't have it, verily, he may cast like an angel and still use his creel largely to transport sandwiches and beer."
I have always felt it would be a wondrous thing to cast dry flies on trout-water with enviable skill, but since I will never do that, reading Robert Traver is a vicarious venture into this magic.
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