The Blues - Softcover

"Almost no one has answered 'why fish?' better than Mr. Hersey....what he does best of all is evoke wonder." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Blues is, of course, about much more than the pleasures and techniques of fishing; it is, as Fisherman tells Stranger, about interconnections -- the ties between mankind and the natural world, among others." -- The New Yorker

"Wonderful...He gives us a rich and vivid sense of ocean life....The whole thing is as stately as a minuet, and as graceful." -- Chicago Sun-Times

"Blues informs and enlightens in the grand tradition of open-air, 'universe-in-a-grain-of-sand' writing....Part philosophy, part natural history, part cookbook, part fishing lore, this is a book as singular as its author and his distinguished career."

-- Baltimore Sun

They meet by chance on a dock at Martha's Vineyarda young man and an old fisherman on his way to catch bluefish for dinner. With some reluctance, the stranger accepts the fisherman's invitation to join him; over the summer, a new world opens to the stranger. Hersey (Hiroshima, A Bell for Adano discourses with eloquence on the natural history of bluefish, Vineyard Sound, wind and weather. The stranger and fisherman go out 12 times between June and October, observing fish, birds and fish migrations. On each return, the fisherman prepares the bluefish a different way. In the course of conversation the two recall poets who have written about fish and the seafrom Homer and John Donne to Elizabeth Bishop and John Ciardi. Readersespecially fishermen and naturalistswho can surmount the artificial framework will find this a rewarding book. Illustrations. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.