WILL BURNS

Trout Fishing In America by Richard Brautigan

Will Burns is a songwriter, singer and poet from Wendover, Buckinghamshire

A Nature Book Reader

Although I think there are books that perhaps better fi t the term “nature book”, I don’t think there is a book that has communicated quite so well with my own personal relationship with nature and the outdoors. Brautigan’s breakthrough novel is a wide-eyed, at times nonsensical soup of ideas, occupying a landscape that is both rugged and wild yet at the same time domestic and small and somehow homely. It is not a book of authority; it is not a didactic guide to bird-watching, tying fl ies, building camps or, in fact, how to do anything at all. Instead it simply observes with a beautiful and hopeful sense of wonder, the environment and lucidly drawn characters that pass through the patchwork of poem-like chapters that

make up the book. From the recurring thread of All-American creek names to the brilliant evocation of life in the San Franciscan underbelly, this is a brilliantly imagined, kaleidoscopic vision of a weird America, an America made up of trout rivers for sale in sections from hardware stores, young parenthood, fi shing, drinking and travel. Oh yeah, and mayonnaise.

Further ReadingKlondike Tales by Jack London

Man Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett

WILL BURNS

Trout Fishing In America by Richard Brautigan

Will Burns is a songwriter, singer and poet from Wendover, Buckinghamshire

A NA NA ature Book Reader

Although I think there are books that perhaps better fi t the term “nature book”, I don’t think there is a book that has communicated quite so well with my own personal relationship with nature and the outdoors. Brautigan’s breakthrough novel is a wide-eyed, at times nonsensical soup of ideas, occupying a landscape that is both rugged and wild yet at the same time domestic and small and somehow homely. It is not a book of authority; it is not a didactic guide to bird-watching, tying fl ies, building camps or, in fact, how to do anything at all. Instead it simply observes with a beautiful and hopeful sense of wonder, the environment and lucidly drawn characters that pass through the patchwork of poem-like chapters that

make up the book. From the recurring thread of All-American creek names to the brilliant evocation of life in the San Franciscan underbelly, this is a brilliantly imagined, kaleidoscopic vision of a weird America, an America made up of trout rivers for sale in sections from hardware stores, young parenthood, fi shing, drinking and travel. Oh yeah, and mayonnaise.

Further ReadingKlondike Tales by Jack London

Man Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett