Duncan's debut novel follows a young fly fisherman who retreats to a cabin in the Oregon Cascades and discovers that rivers are not a pastime but a way of life — a theology, a comedy, and a love affair. One of the great river novels in American literature: lyrical, funny, and deeply spiritual about moving water.
David James Duncan's first novel, and one of the great fly-fishing books even though it is only incidentally a fly-fishing book. Gus Orviston, the narrator, is a young Oregon man raised by two warring parents — a bait-fishing mother and a fly-fishing father — who moves to a remote cabin on a coastal river to devote himself to what he thinks is going to be pure angling practice. What he gets instead is a slow-motion spiritual breakdown, a love affair, and an education in what the river can actually teach a person who is willing to stay in one spot long enough to learn.
The book's central move is that Duncan treats obsession seriously. Gus is fishing obsessively, and the obsession is presented neither as a character flaw nor as a joke. It is presented as a genuine spiritual discipline that just happens to use fish as the material. Which is what obsession actually is for most people who have one. It is not a hobby turned cancerous. It is the narrow door that a certain kind of person finds on their way to the thing they are actually looking for. Duncan gets that right.
I bring this book up at the river when somebody is trying to explain to a non-river-person why they keep disappearing downstream for weeks at a time. The River Why is the book that does the explaining. Duncan has Gus work through the question of why rivers — specifically, not just water generally, specifically rivers — do what they do to certain people. The answer is long and not tidy, but it is the most honest version of the answer I have seen in print. If you have spent a decade of weekends figuring out one piece of water, Duncan is writing about you.
The prose is specific to the Pacific Northwest. The rivers are Oregon rivers. The rain is Oregon rain. The philosophy is the specific kind of counterculture mysticism that came out of Oregon in the seventies and eighties, which may or may not be your register. If it works for you, the book is going to feel like a particular friend speaking directly. If it doesn't work for you, the book is going to read as self-consciously lyrical in places, and the plot will not quite carry you through. Both responses are legitimate.
Read it in winter when you cannot get to the water. Duncan's book is a good substitute for actual river time — not a replacement, but a kind of maintenance dose for the obsession, keeping the practice alive in your head until the season opens and you can return to doing the real thing.
