Edith Iglauer

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It is also the story of John Daly, an impassioned and greatly talented fisherman who was convinced he could “think like a fish”; an amateur philosopher who followed an original set of principles; a mystic who, after forty years of fishing, felt himself to be at one with the sea and the mountains along the British Columbia coast; a scholarly-looking, high-spirited, full-blown eccentric who covered the white walls of his pilothouse with his favorite quotations in bold black letters (“Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke. O.W.Holmes), kept a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam under the mattress of his bunk, listened, between fish, to Mozart on the CBC radio, carried on polite conversations with his stove, and took hundreds of photographs of sunsets at sea, each of which was individually fixed, with place and circumstances in his memory; an outdoorsman who hated and avoided cities and went so far as to have an aversion to architects because they designed buildings; and a man who was known everywhere along the B.C. coast for his integrity and noble character.

Moreover, the book is a love story: an unlikely convergence of two people from different worlds who were able to make a rich and tender life together, and not only to endure each other’s company in alarmingly close quarters but to revel in it...Life aboard the MoreKelp was harsh, primitive, dangerous and exhilarating. All of it was new to Edith Iglauer, and her account is filled with her sense of surprise at what she was witnessing and at what she found herself doing...how she learned to make her way around the slippery deck without falling overboard, how to hang teacups up facing in the same direction so that when the boat rocked they would not collide and break...and everything she observed of what John did - and did with style - when he fished. Such are the minutiae we encounter as we read this lovely book...
(Book jacket copy written by William Shawn, late editor of The New Yorker)

“This superb book could be subtitled “A Study in Serenity.”
“Life with John had its own special ease: spontaneous poetry readings at sunrise, excursions for berry picking, a soak in a wilderness hot spring. And there were always visits and shared stories with fellow fishermen. It is in the precise telling of these anecdotes that Ms. Iglauer reveals her marvelous eye for detail and her unerring ear for the quirky syntax of colloquial speech. Yet she is always able to make the technical aspects of salmon fishing - including the dangers of pollution and overfishing - an integral part of what is otherwise an elegantly understated love story as well as a quiet account of personal metamorphosis.
“Fishing With John is a moving memoir of the years (Iglauer) and Daly spent aboard his 41-foot troller (‘the single most uncomfortable fishing boat in British Columbia’). It is a touching book, yet totally unsentimental, and a fine job of reporting, on a little known part of North America and its beauties, on a harsh but wholesome way of life, on the joys of a late marriage...on the complex, endless labors of commercial fishing"
“...This memoir is more than a fish tale. It is a lyrical tribute to a life of simplicity, honesty and caring, a life that many yearn for but that few dare to try...Reading Iglauer’s book is rejuvenating..”
“Iglauer’s description are often so vivid the reader can almost feel the roll of the ocean...(she) learns the difference between trollers, gillnetters and seiners, and between the five major types of salmon. She learns to turn a cake pan every ten minutes to offset the list of the boat in a drifting sea, and as she does so, the reader comes to appreciate Iglauer’s love of Daly, of fishing, and of fine prose writing.”