Fishing and Thinking

by A.A. Luce

The perfect companion for the thoughtful fly fisherman,this is an international angling classic in the first U.S. paperback edition.

Genres: Philosophy

191 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 1993

About the author

Arthur Aston Luce - Irish professor of philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin and also Precentor of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin (1952-1973)

Reviews

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is more or less what the title describes. Luce was an Irish professor of theology and philosophy, and beyond that a fisher. The book appertains to the latter much more than the former; he describes the locales, technics, and anecdotes of Irish fishing life in great detail, and with an exceptionally strong style of prose, having a wide array of syntactical approaches, a good rhythm of diction, and strong sense of logical progression & moderation in scope across his paragraphs. Much of what he describes is, to my kenning, a little bit of a lost art, at least in the Americas; better technology and the predominance of bass fishing here quite commonly replace much of his fly-fishing (which he deems the only appropriate referent for the term 'fishing') artistry, although of course it is still widely done. One becomes very envious of his tales of catching salmon in rivers near his house, or off bridges in the city of Dublin(!) ... his main philosophical argument, a little recurrent throughout the book, is that fishing is primarily to be understood as a natural conflict, a perhaps-painful but genuine & organic motion up the cosmic chain of being; he makes the interesting claim that the fish-eater is less cruel than one who catches and releases, being indeed the one who fishes merely to cause pain for passing pleasure. I think he's probably right.

This book is incidentally exemplary in relation a larger problem in writing that I see - this book, being fundamentally well written, full of local details and obvious truths, presenting philosophical ideas in a way connected to the real world ... beyond being preferable in several aspects to many books of philosophy, does this book not satisfy all the merits people usually champion as the merit of great novels? I think it's helpful to try and contemplate why highest calibre of writer (or perhaps it is better to say, the highest-effort of writers) needs the paradigm of fiction in order to achieve the same goals.

[Tom Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book if one likes the British version of trout and salmon fishing. It seems that trout fishing in the mid 20th century hadn't really changed there in a couple hundred years. the book seems quite archaic with fishing methods and approaches. I am fine with it because the author tells some pretty interesting stories. The last chapter though, was the author's preach about that one should only kill and then eat all fish that one catches. He did not need to consume fish to survive. He had plenty of money. Present day catch and release would be deemed evil. Torturing fish only occurs when one doesn't kill it but releases it. His logic has many holes in it and comes from a religious/romantic viewpoint. His snobbery went so far as to say that pike and perch disgusted him.