Rain, Rain Go Away...

According to the graygoatflyfishing.com, last night Western Wisconsin got six inches of rain. Some of the roads were washed out. Streams are chocolate and largely unfishable. On top of that it is 95 degrees today in Saint Paul and the dew point is 70 degrees.

I feel like getting Thai for dinner.

When is gets like this I go over to the corner coffee shop, take in THEIR air conditioning (so I don't run up expenses burning out my own window unit--I live on the top floor of a three story walk up and it's equally hot in the winter when everyone has their radiator wide open.

I've been re-reading the complete catalog of novels and novellas by Jim Harrison, at least the writings that contain copious amounts of trout fishing. Here's the list:

The English Major
True North
Returning to Earth
The Woman Lit By Fireflies
Julip
The Beast God Forgot to Invent
The Summer He Didn't Die
The Farmer's Daughter

If you are also a fan of food and drinking and carousing with women then he is a good author to read. He's filthy and funny. Though his settings and material seem to point to Hemingway, Harrison seems to have more in common with Faulkner, Welty, and Flannery O'Connor. Sense of place is important as it is with those Southern authors, but unlike Hemingway whose characters seem to have deeply hidden scars, the damage in the characters of Harrison's work is plainly evident and in fact the crux of his writing seems to be more about the effects of the scars on those close to key characters rather than the scars themselves. A good comparison would be to read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Harrison's True North, and O'Connor's Wise Blood. All the books deal with characters damaged by WWI and WWII. But, the way those scars manifest themselves is quite different. Plus, two of the three texts deal beautifully with the healing powerss of fly fishing for trout.

There you have it. Go to the library and read. Then when the sun gets low go fishing!

Here is Jim Harrison as profiled by the PBS News Hour Last Year.

Or watch it here: