‘If the Starlight Creek Angling Society had had a charter, it would have applauded nothing more loudly than angling’s potential for mystery and intimation, for renewing the shrinking inherent, libidinal connections between man and earth, the natural world, wildness’
Certain pastimes and hobbies are fortunate to attract the attention of gifted writers, or is it perhaps vice versa? Horse racing in the 19th and early 20th century; cricket through much of the 20th; and assuredly, angling. Even if I commit the heresy of dismissing The Complete Angler as being of historical significance rather than literary excellence, the names of Halford, Sherringham, Venables, and Yates need no qualification.
We all have our own favourites to add to that list. I’d like to offer a name for your reading consideration, Harry Middleton. Far from an unknown, but also not a household name even in his native America. Middleton authored five books, published between 1989 and 1993. Before and during those years he also wrote many articles in angling and broader outdoor publications, esteemed titles such as Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian, Gray’s Sporting Journal and Southern Living.
This prolific output was tragically ended with his untimely death in 1993 at aged only 43. A collection of his magazine articles was published in book format many years later.Middleton’s books are usually catalogued under “fly fishing” in a bookstore, but not always and never convincingly. He is the furthest thing from a “how to” fishing writer. I haven’t counted pages, but fishing – even broadly, time on a river – is less than a quarter of his best writing. Despite, or perhaps because of that, I hope to persuade you that his books are worthy of your literary attention.By fortunate chance, my introduction to Middleton was his first book, published in 1989.
Later I found and read the other five somewhat haphazardly. Each can be read in isolation, none left me disappointed, but I found the style and chronology confusing. Respectfully, I hope my experience can aid the enjoyment that a new reader will find in Middleton’s works. I will tread cautiously, as Middleton writes of wonder and surprise and I must not rob you of that pleasure. So, choosing my words carefully, let me navigate you through Middleton’s six books.
Other Middleton fans – and there are many – will doubtless classify his work differently, but I find it helpful to group the six into a trilogy, and three “other” books.The trilogy are The Earth is Enough (1989), On The Spine Of Time (1991) and The Bright Country (1993). Only after reading the first did I learn that these are autobiographical, at least in broad outline. That qualification is appropriate as the author concedes that the characters are “more real than imagined”. Elsewhere his writing is described as “creative nonfiction”, which strikes me as a fine categorisation.
As an autobiography, he samples his life rather than chronicling it, and there is none of the self-aggrandizing that often mars this literary genre. The trilogy dips selectively into his life from schoolboy to middle age, but with numerous diversions and distractions. Each book features a cast of characters befitting a fertile, fictional imagination, yet who are always relevant and credible. Much of the narrative is told through these friends and associates, with the author being the thread that binds these characters together, not the focus of the story.
The Earth is Enough focuses on Middleton’s teenage years. From the nomadic routine of a military family, Middleton is sent to live with his ageing grandfather and great uncle on a small, primitive farm in the Ozark mountains of Alabama. This is rural America even now, much more so in the 1960s, and the characters embody many of the familiar stereotypes. Trout fishing is a recurring theme, indeed, a daily activity, but this is not a book about fishing. The official publishers classification is closer: “Ozark Mountains Region-Fishing; Hunting; Social life and customs”.
Closer still would be a love of nature and family, and the wonders of both.
‘These mountains, the land they lived on, the cold, swift waters of Starlight Creek, were never an escape from life, but life real and immediate, life beyond the artificial, life intensified. The solitude they sought was a natural part of their lives, something they cultivated and cherished, longed for rather than struggled against. Solitude was their profit, more valuable to them than a fat bank account, and they determined to spend it wisely and well.‘
On the Spine Of Time, published in 1991, finds Middletons in his 30’s. That there is only the briefest reference to his early adult life is a telling omission and reiterates that these are unconventional autobiographical tones. Living and working in Alabama, the book focuses instead on his leisure trips to the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. If it is fishing content you want, this book has the most of the trilogy, though again it serves to anchor rather than dominate the story. As with everything he wrote, his trademark is the beautiful, descriptive narrative; flowing and effusive, while avoiding familiar cliches. He shares this world with another eclectic mix of characters; Exie Sopwith; Arby Mulligan; and the Owl Creek Gap Church of Universal Harmony.
Each enjoys the author’s close scrutiny. Seamlessly into this mix Middleton weaves the science of plate tectonics in describing the mountains, and embraces the environmental case against air pollution in discussing tree mortality, aways in a style befitting fiction rather than academia.
‘The Gareth home place is not so much an expression of any particular architectural theory as it is a triumph of common sense and practicality. Like the old dog that hangs about the place, it is a mongrel of sorts, a mix of curious features, traits, characteristics, all of them more functional than ornamental. …… The porch slopes uncertainly to the left, down towards the highway. Miss Hattie says the porch threatened to give way altogether on a March day in 1957 when a posse of Methodist revivalists showed up at her door looking not to save her soul but to question her about a roving band of renegade Calvinists who were rumored to be in the mountains sowing blasphemy and handing out gold-fringed Bibles, high-toned church music, and no-risk redemption.‘
The Bright Country closes out the trilogy as I have chosen to categorise these books. It is shocking to realise that the author’s Preface was written only nine months before his untimely death, and the book officially published three weeks after his passing. Likely no coincidence, there is no denying that this is a dark book. Middleton wrestles with unemployment, family separation, clinical depression, and the death of his mother. It is a stark realisation that a year before his death, Middleton was working three jobs in Alabama; cleaning a shoe factory, stocking supermarket shelves, and loading garbage into a truck. Writing this book was strictly a private vocation in the early hours of a morning, hours that could have been spent sleeping, but thankfully if selfishly, weren’t. These subjects are confronted honestly, at times brutally, but his tone is not sombre.
To the contrary, Middleton continues to write with the same exuberance, a joy, humour, a love of the moment, never self-pity. We enjoy, as Middleton did, the company of a new but unsurprising cast of colourful characters; Dr. Lilly Mutzpah, Velveeta Cheese, Woody Moos, Swami Bill and his partner Kiwi LaReaux. Middleton admits to not having fished for nearly two years, and it is a sad reflection that this streak was likely extended up to his death. Yet he remains fortified by his memories, chief among them being of mountains, running water, and trout.This and all his books reach back to memories of his earlier life (and earlier books), but he introduces us here to new geographies and rivers. Here I must admit to a personal bias and resulting affection.
Unknown to me when I started this book, much of it focuses on the few short months he lived in Denver in 1989 and ‘90. On weekends he made the two hour drive west into the mountains and the high basin of South Park, the very same South Park where I stay at my cabin on Tarryall Creek. The Tarryall Mountains, though not the Creek, are named by Middleton, and the whole area – its mountains, rivers and towns – is intimately familiar to me in a way that the previous books are not. As he describes these familiar scenes, in prose that I can never dream of commanding, I am left with the warm glow of a privileged insider sharing the master’s experience.
‘Among the great charms of fly-fishing, trout fishing, fishing mountain rivers, are the long hours spent looking for fish, waiting for fish, praying for fish, thinking of fish, or simply not fishing at all, at least not for fish. My own addiction to angling is so ruinous because I am such a terrible junkie for the water and country that wild trout demand. …. Sometimes, when a trout does show up, it feels almost coincidental, more blind luck.‘
to be continued…
Writing & Photograph Paul Adams
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