Books: Hemingway On Fishing

Edited by Nick Lyons, afterword by Jack Hemingway

Lyons Press $65

Reviewed by Peter Jessup


American author P.J. O'Rourke defined deep-sea fishing as "a serious, physically demanding sport that you can play while sitting in a chair drinking beer - as close as a middle-aged man gets to heaven."

Ernest Hemingway had discovered it about 50 years earlier and was way better at both fishing and drinking. Hemingway began fishing as a kid, hooking trout in the streams of his home state of Michigan, before becoming one of the first "outsiders" to fish for marlin in the Gulf Stream off Cuba.

Hemingway on Fishing takes us from the home-made dock on Walloon Lake, Michigan, with the macho guy aged 4 in a girl's dress to the late 40s, when he's depicted with beer belly and marlin the size anglers dream of.

It's a book of excerpts from all his books, from Big Two Hearted River through to The Old Man and the Sea with letters, magazine articles and other jottings thrown in for a collection that's best just for those knotted in nylon. The description of the chase and catch of trout in the American Midwest and of billfish off the east coast, and the detail of the filleting and eating of the catch, are beyond anything in modern literature. For game fishers, he has anecdotes regarding bait and lures, for inland fishers, the recipe for the Swiss "blue trout."

Hemingway's love of his subject shines. Short sentences rule.

He describes the end of his day out as "400 waterfront Cubans wanting to know why the fish isn't being cut up and distributed. Instead you are sitting in the stern of the boat feeling pretty good and having a drink while the fish is being butchered out. You can't do everything."

It's Hemingway's ability to turn experience into word picture that makes this a good read.

Fiction and non, Hemingway on Fishing offers a brilliant insight into the driving passion behind one of the 20th century's greatest authors.

* Peter Jessup is a Herald sports writer.