Sic Semper Tyrannis

Whatcha' Readin'?

I just finished Howell Raines' The One That Got Away, a fishing memoir by a former editor for The New York Times. I don't know exactly why I wanted to read this book. I've been fishing a grand total of one time in my thirty years. That was when I was a cub scout. I think I might have seen the author on The Colbert Report.

The most interesting part of Raines' story for this non-piscatory, (a cool word I learned while reading this), reader is the re-telling of the Jayson Blair scandal which occurred under Raines' watch. If you don't recall, Blair was the writer who got busted for inaccuracy and just plain "making stuff up" during the coverage of the D.C sniper story a few years ago.

But aside from that, I didn't get much out of this book. You can tell in many places that he is trying to elucidate the details of what he obviously loves about the act of fishing, the scenery of exotic locales, the metphor that it all represents, etc. But for a reader with no direct experience of these tings, it's really hard not to just see this all as a retelling of the life of leisure of a highly-paid, elite, east-coast cosmopolitan. Our worlds are just too different.

posted by Mike @ 4:19 PM