Gather at the River
(Disclaimer: Sections of the novel that I do not cover contain explicit words. By the end, I strongly disreccomend this book) Gather at the River is a collection of twenty-five essays by twenty-five different authors, with each being a commentary on their own relationship with the hobby of fishing. This book is a poignant example of how an essay, when in the form of a personal narrative adorned with heavy description, can qualify as prose poetry.
Some passages focus on the fish.“Ask an angler about the movement of a trout at the end of her line, the bending rod, the surge of power. Ask what it’s like to hold a fish, muscled sides thrashing, tail and head twisting. Ask about the beauty of the fish. The wormy ovals. The colors draped in a cloak woven from exquisite flecks of gold. The faint amethyst of its scales. Ask. You’ll be told–often in halting speech because language fails in moments like this–the life of that fish is somehow our life as well. Peering into the clear water of a stream, seeing beneath its surface as fingerlings flit and scatter beneath stone or undercut banks, is akin to an originary desire. I mean revelation in all its manifestations, in all its fierceness, all its mystically material forms.”
This is one of the strongest passages in the entire book, as it constitutes a stream of consciousness that presents an unexpected existential idea within this medium. Most of the sections in Gather at the River contain predictable emotions. When an author speaks about an emotion that the reader is unlikely to have experienced in normal life (as in this case), they are offering a visceral novelty, one of the most engaging sensations that literature can evoke.
Some passages focus on the water. “The water is a miraculous thing. You give it your time and patience, and it sometimes gives you fish in return. Or not. Maybe it fills you up with zen. Maybe it surreptitiously steals a piece of your heart along with your time. Maybe it invades your soul and stays there forever, sometimes rocking you to sleep and sometimes dripping inside your ear just to remind you that it’s there, that it knows where you’ve been, and that whatever comes next is as mysterious as what you pulled from its dark belly. And that’s okay.”
You can divide fish from water, but you cannot divide man from the act of fishing. The best passage in the entire book, the final one, is all about connections between people. Where some of the prior passages focus on one human relationship, maybe the final one focuses almost entirely on the people, as he has only ever had his extended family while fishing. “There are lots of pictures of us cleaning the fish. Here’s one: We’re all gathered around the table where we’ve cleaned dozens of fish on two rectangular cutting boards and with two metal dish pans–one for guts and scales, one for fresh water to wash the filets. I’m about eighteen, my face still plumb with promise and youth. A University of Kentucky cap sits awkwardly atop my head. I have a thin, unfortunate mustache. I’m wearing my Tom Petty Full Moon Fever t-shirt, which I wore so much that year that it fell apart in the washer one day. All around me are the men of my family. My cousin Terry has his arm crooked around my neck and is pulling me in toward him. We have on the same shirt as we’ve bought it at the same concert. We do everything together. Another cousin, John Paul, is leaning against me. My uncles are all in uproarious laughter. One of them has said something disparaging or vulgar about the other one. My Uncle Doug is giving Uncle Sam rabbit ears. My father is looking at me. In this picture, I belong.”
As this is a heavy spoiler article, you already know the Chase Verdict: it isn’t worth your time; but using my experience, I have offered you a distillation, which I hope makes you not want to read the book, but rather to go get on the water.