Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

by Lulu Miller

After meeting Joshua, David renounced his love of beauty, declaring that the dull and ugly flowers—the dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) and buttercups (Ranunculus acris)—held better clues to nature’s blueprint. “The little ones,” he wrote, “even though not beautiful, meant more to me than a hundred big ones all of a kind. A special proof of scientific as distinguished from aesthetic interest is to care for the hidden and insignificant.”

With each new fish, each new catch, each new name placed on a formerly unknown piece of the universe, came that impossibly intoxicating feeling. That sweet honey on the tongue. That hit of fantasized omnipotence. That lovely sensation of order. What a salve, a name.

When people have this feeling of personal inefficiency, compulsive collecting helps them in feeling better.

rosy view of yourself was anathema to self-development. A way to keep yourself stagnant, stunted, morally inchoate. A fast track to sad-sackery.

“There is no hope for you unless this bit of sod under your feet is the sweetest to you in this world—in any world”—and