One River More [Hardcover]

W. D. Wetherell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

This essay collection, which celebrates the delights of fly-fishing, the beauty of rivers, and the splendor of the natural world, completes Wetherell's trilogy of fishing.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This essay collection completes Wetherell's trilogy of fishing books that includes Upland Stream (1991) and Vermont River (1993). The book's title comes from the last essay's litany of yearnings, recollections, and regrets, all of which an angler experiences on the last day of trout season. Wetherell, also a novelist, examines such topics as fishing friends, fishing camps, the upper Connecticut River, and the rivers around Yellowstone National Park. The essays are casual and congenial, reflecting both environmental concerns and strong family ties, and are sprinkled with a rich variety of literary allusions, from Tolstoy to Nelson Algren. The upper Connecticut is Wetherell's muse, inspiring an eloquence that causes four-pound rainbows to burst from the page and bright river light to illuminate the reader. This fine book belongs beside the work of such other literary anglers as Bill Barich and Bill Tapply. John Rowen

From Kirkus Reviews

come to pass as fishing storiesthe pompous pretensions of the competitive jet-set anglerfrom Wetherell (North of Now, 1997, etc.). Wetherell is not a prolific writer on fly-fishing, though he is one of the best. He is the kind of guy who stops and smells the coffee while astream: Intuition tells him that knowing ``something of the landscape, terrain, history, and culture of the region through which your river flows'' is infinitely more important than casting talent. It is elusive, that feel for a place, but attentiveness to it is the only game in town for Wetherell. Some of the best accounts in this book are the tours on which he takes readers to various locales, setting the rivers in their context as he tries to learn the quirks and portents of the water. He shares the joys of discovering a river new to him, the upper Connecticut, where the wild trout announce that ``life can be ironic and bitter and cruel, and it is only moments and places like these that redeem it.'' He takes trips to Maine fishing camps, forgotten outposts now vulnerable as their very rareness and isolation act as enticements. He also visits Vermont fishing clubs that seek to maintain a level of authenticity. Wetherell is enjoyable as the curmudgeon (fuming when he finds a parvenu fishing one of his secret holesthe freebooter is talking on a cell phone toohe wants to ``slink back to the 1940s where I belong''), whether complaining about the commercialization of the sport, ripping into ``the contemporary fascist style in sportswear,'' or detailing the importance of secrecy when it comes to giving out tips. Wetherell doesn't claim an ability to untie every knot a river throws his way, and there are many. It is a humility that becomes him. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558216987
• ISBN-13: 978-1558216983
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,369,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wistful, even sad, must-read for the devoted flyfisher., January 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: One River More (Hardcover)

"One River More," the third flyfishing book by New England novelist and short story writer W.D. Wetherell, is very definitely a writer's book. If you enjoy evocative writing, writing that paints a sense of place so tangible you feel are there, you most likely will enjoy this book.

Wetherell is a remarkable writer. A precise writer. An artist with words. One whose talent I would dearly love to have. Indeed, I can picture him mining his vocabulary and our entire literary heritage, for that mater, for the just the right word to put the finishing brushstroke on his verbal canvas. As fellow writer John Gierach says on the dust jacket, "Wetherell writes about fishing with an angler's love for the sport and a novelist's eye for detail. `One River More' is his best yet.'"

I agree with Gierach ... except for the final sentence.

I enjoyed "One River More," don't get me wrong. But I cannot say I enjoyed it more than or even as much as either of the two earlier books in his now-complete flyfishing trilogy. The earlier books are "Vermont River," named by Trout Unlimited's Trout magazine as one of the best fishing books of the past 30 years, and "Upland Stream."

What separates this work from the earlier books? I recall them being more buoyant. They generated loads of smiles. They made me feel as if I was wading alongside the author. I felt the rod load with each cast and delighted in each fly taken whether it was sipped, attacked or just plain gulped.

In "One River More," Wetherell dishes up a tasty bouillabaisse to be sure. The ingredients include an unabashed love of flyfishing, trout, ferociously pugnacious smallmouth bass and his home water (the Connecticut River), startlingly somber reflection, and a dash or two of a cantankerousness -- about crowded rivers, flyfishing's trendiness, and newcomers ignorant of or oblivious to the sport's etiquette -- that I don't recall from his earlier books. This mix he spices up with flourishes of down-home boyish enthusiasm, especially the section celebrating recent adventures on Yellowstone's rivers. The tales of experiences on the famous rivers - the Yellowstone, Madison, Gallatin, Firehole and Gibbon - and waters previous unknown to me -- Grayling Creek, Nez Perce Creek and the Bechler -- are my favorites in this book.

So, what's there not to like?

Maybe it is the overall tone. Simply put, it left me sad. This book, in many ways, acknowledges his having entered the autumn of life and the realization that his finest days of flyfishing are likely behind him.

He writes: "As a man nears fifty ... everything takes on a burnish, a retrospective glow, and it becomes harder to that vernal kind of brightness that makes you want tot throw your hands up and shout in sheer delight. Your eyes begin noticing how the pines all seem to be dying from roadside salt or acid rain; you see the houses going up too close to the river, the wanton disregard for all you hold dear; the fishing doesn't seem quite so good anymore; rapids you would have pushed aside in disdain only a few years ago now seem dangerous; the river in little ways, seems out to get you. If you're lucky, there still enough boy in you to bull past this sunset kind of vision, but it takes effort now; it's not something your genes do instinctively on their own."

Perhaps it's that 40 grows a more-distant memory with each day, but I find this tone too melancholy. My wish is to prolong indefinitely the "sheer delight" I find in flyfishing. "One River More," however, is an all-too-sober reminder of how the meandering, irresistible river of time can erode and undercut that wish.