Trash Fish: A Life

by Greg Keeler

Trash Fish is the story of a boy who gives himself over to his obsession with fish as an escape from the trials of growing up. Time and again, as his life unfolds to reveal his failings and foibles to those around him, he returns to the fish, which cast him a lifeline of their own. Laugh-out-loud funny yet sardonically raw to the bone, Keeler tells a whole whirlpool of a story—the women, the Peace Corps, the teaching jobs, the marriage and children, and, of course, the rod and reel. Eventually, however, his serene fishing life becomes contaminated with real-world a polite society of angling purists insists that he choose between flies and bait, while his alter ego (and nemesis) begins to use fishing as an excuse to cheat on his wife. Ultimately, Keeler’s fisherman must acknowledge that he can’t escape down the river bend, and that in order to experience true love, he must accept the complexities within himself and within the people on land around him.

Genres: Memoir

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2008

Reviews

[David Ward]

Trash Fish: A Life by Greg Keeler (Counterpoint Books 2008) (Biography). This is a very offbeat memoir. The author measures his life by fishing. It's implied that he’s the trash fish to which he refers, the drug addled old hippie! The guy’s now on the faculty as a lit professor at Montana State University and is a crony of the grizzly bear guy Doug Peacock. My rating: 7/10, finished 2011.

[Mel Raschke]

A series of satirical chapters that eventually cast him a life line

[Steve]

My thanks to the owner of Vargo's Jazz City and Books in Bozeman (where Keeler teaches at MT State U) for suggesting this book. Keeler also has a number of small books of poetry published. Hard, but not impossible to find.
I don't even like to fish, never have, but I enjoyed this quick memoir of fishing from the time he was a boy to later in his life. Perhaps too much time spent in the last 50 pages on what an idiot he was chasing after a co-ed 20 yrs younger than him (how many times have we read that same story?). He's brushed shoulders with some somewhat famous people, including dating one of the Hemingway grand daughters when in his 20's and being a good friend to Brautigan.
But his enjoyment of fishing, in whatever form - fly or bait or for "trash fish" - is infectious and he tells a good, and humorous, story well. I'd suggest this books to others as enjoyable, and a quick read with short chapters. You'll like it, but much more for men than for women.

[Jill]

Think Vonnegut's black humor and ruthless satire and you're getting warm. Has everything you need to know about fishing, family and freedom!

[Lori]

Laugh out funny. I liked it and I know nothing of fishing and I don't care to know anything of fishing but it was a poignant memoir and I enjoyed it.

[Debra]

mixed feeling about this book.

[Tracy Wendt]

I really enjoyed the essays about his childhood, but did not like the rest of the book at all.

[Glen]

Funny, Disgusting and Sad