Tyrone, The short answer in my opinion is yesOriginally Posted by TyroneFly
As you may know McClain's day job for a number of years was an English Professor at the University of Chicago an institution whose liberal ambiance and emphasis on the theoretic makes it significantly different from Missoula, Mt. He had something of a reputation as a curmudgeon who took great pleasure in rejecting the first efforts of his student essays in the terse manner that his father rejected his own early attempts at writing. Only with work would his demeanor soften revealing a humane side that is evident in his writing.
His literary background is evident in the poetic nature of many of the book's passages. His description of grace through art through work as applied to fly fishing is a literary example of elitism that we fly fisheman are all too often accused of. In that same presbyterian vein the description of the fly cast is not only elegant but is useful to the neophyte's perception of proper technique.
His closing description of an old man who has outlived his family fishing alone in the fishing alone in the closing light of the canyon hoping for the rise of a trout and surrounded by memories is one of my favorite passages in the literature of angling.
The long reply is therefore that this is a small novelette well worth the time of any fisherman.
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