Almost two years ago, I interviewed John Gierach for the Trout Underground – another publicity chore for the notoriously PR-averse writer.

Sadly, that interview never saw the light of day.

John Gierach

The original Trout Bum

It was destined to be a short, “ten questions” thing – a quick glimpse into the life of fly fishing’s most-famous trout bum.

Instead, the new recording gadget I’d bought (and tested several times) fizzled exactly three minutes into the interview, which turned into a rambling talk almost two hours long.

Naturally, I didn’t know it had failed (it worked perfectly prior, and never worked after, earning it a trip to the trash bin).

So I didn’t take notes.

Later – after discovering the empty space where the recorded interview should have been – I didn’t feel like publishing my impressions of what Gierach may or may not have said in response to my questions (“When asked about his motivation for devoting his life to fly fishing, the author presumably could have said something sorta like this…”).

In a career spanning almost 2.5 decades, this was not my proudest moment.

That’s why stumbling across a new Gierach essay and interview is like finding a pod of big, happy trout eating Green Drakes – on a small stream you’ve driven by, but never fished before.

It’s not something you expect to happen, but because fly fishermen live in hope, you allow for the possibility.

And you sure as hell take advantage when the stars finally align.

In this essay, Gierach muses about his own writing process – a dangerous place for any writer to go (that way lies madness).

That’s because writers are often hideous egoists, though in Gierach’s case, the essay offers proof of the opposite:

One of the things that happens when you gain some small measure of notoriety as an author is that strangers begin to write about you. In the beginning it’s book reviews, which both you and your publisher are happy to see. Good reviews are naturally better than lukewarm or outright bad ones, but bad ones aren’t the worst thing that can happen. The worst that can happen is dead silence.

But although a merciful percentage of my reviews have been favorable, it never seemed to me that the reviewers got it entirely right. The problem was that they never quite saw me as I secretly see myself. Of course there was no way they could, but I was still always a little disappointed when they didn’t.

The interviews and profiles that came later should have been better because I was allowed to speak for myself, but then I was thinking on my feet (something writers aren’t typically good at) and if I was in the proper state of mind for being interviewed, I was eager to please, so there was the temptation to come up with glib, easily digested sound bites.

This is encouraged, especially in the broadcast end of the business. Once, five seconds before going on the air, a DJ said to me, “Remember, this is talk radio, not an intelligent conversation.” I began to understand what William Kittredge meant when he said that the lies told by the media are “truths twisted about a quarter turn.” He might have added that you quickly learn to do the twisting yourself, if only to keep someone else from doing it for you.

During my interview, I asked Gierach about fame – at least fly fishing’s version of it, where you’re unlikely to be recognized on the street unless the sidewalks happen to be jammed with fly fishermen.

His response was remarkably direct: “Any writer who says he doesn’t like the attention is an asshole.”

Gierach’s essay also offers up a definition of his work, and many fly fishermen might be surprised at the result:

I write books of personal essays that are ostensibly about fly fishing, although as far as I’m concerned, they’re about grace, acceptance, sport as metaphor, the relationship between technological humans and the beleaguered natural environment, and how to live well in an imperfect world. Still, when I once quoted the poet Gary Snyder, a reviewer said he thought that might be “a little too high-brow for the beer and bass crowd.” When you write what are considered to be genre books—as opposed to literary novels or dense tomes on foreign policy—you’re expected to color inside the lines.

Attached to the essay is an interview with Gierach, and – boldly seizing the opportunity – I plan to offer a few of the nuggets that survived my interview, placing them within the context of Gierach’s interview with Lawrence Morgan – an assistant professor of English.

In the meantime, you can read Gierach’s essay here.

You can read his interview here.

And you can read my review of his latest book – Fool’s Paradise – here.

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See you in the stacks, Tom Chandler.

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