I was checking out PurePiscator, which verges on romantic and pretentious tw@t territory at times but generally manages to pull back from the brink, when I saw news of an angling book and a link to a site I had visited before - and left screaming.
For me, Caught by the River represents all that is bad about the self-conscious, clever-cleverness of arty types. Worse still this lot think they have something to do with angling and the natural world too. Fishing bums they are not.
Back to the book in question - Powerlines. The title must be a play on fishing and written lines with an implication of quality in the 'power' bit. How clever...
I am wary of literature that sells itself as being "exceptional writing, which just happens to have fishing in it, on it, of it; for readers who crave good contemporary writing of any kind." "In it, on it, of it"? Pass the AK47 - and I don't mean the carp rod.
Does the editor really hope to be taken seriously with the world knowing he "lives in a caravan in Normandy, surviving on organic permaculture, mushroom hunting, rainwater, foraging winter fuel and old birds' nests to decorate the wattle sides of his dry toilet"?
We must resist this insidiously romantic trend at all costs. Grab a copy of Waterlog and a box of matches. To the barricades!!!
