This is the 13th year I've fished Hopatcong in the fall. I especially looked forward to fishing with Jorge, because I knew I could discuss my book with him, but yesterday as closing time came at the supermarket, I felt those primal desires for big fish all of us feel.
But not all of us want to read the kind of book mine as it is at present, the version I've already put on external drives for future safe keeping, while also keeping a copy I'll divide into various essays for literary magazines and material for a possible memoir I may write 10 years from now. The remainder is how-to, especially for microlight salmon-egging stocked trout. The way I seamlessly connect how-to together with material from my life at the shore--when I treaded clams for a living while studying hundreds of books of literature, philosophy, mysticism, and psychology, when I documented innumerable spiritual experiences in many dozens of notebooks--the way I do it clearly seems to work because it shows, especially while I'm stuck in the working class with like associates at the supermarket who also fish stockers, the likes of us not as privileged as traveling fly anglers...it shows how the fishing keeps me connected to the spirituality I achieved during my shore adventure. Best of all, it gives the reader something to believe in, if he will go deep into his own experience.
Some Baby Boomers might be interested in the parallels the book lines up with lead singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison. I show how my book could never be the American Prayer it is--every chapter is headed by a quote from an American president--without Jim Morrison's album, An American Prayer., preceding it. I go a step further than to believe the album is really cynicism from the sewer.
But that's what the book seems to be--a prayer. As grounded in fact, experience, realism, and practicality as it is, who will come along for the adventure of its 156 pages? Many would say today that America needs a prayer, but many would seem to say so...and not really care. Besides, I wrote the book for the individual reader, for the man who will actually find on the pages something to believe. I know one of you would read it, but like Jim Morrison, who failed at taking his audience as far as he desired to go with them, my book also fails. By all I can gather, it is an utter impossibility to publish it in today's market. I have been reading heavily on the publishing business. The book is certainly worth keeping on solid state drives. In another 150 years, someone may come upon it and feel interested that Bruce Edward Litton actually wrote it during our dark time.
I may take Jorge's advice. Give readers the meat and potatoes. Write about how to do it. I do wonder why we do it, but right there, I seem to lose 99.9 percent or more of an audience, not because my sentences don't lead one into the next, but because the reader must choose to read them, not to mention connect the logic. Most people who fish stocked trout will not be so serious about the pursuit. Not even to appreciate a story about someone who is.
Or let's be blunt. They may be damn serious about fishin'--but not very bright.
Even a meat and potatoes book on spinning for trout--it's especially about microlight spinning, the book is a specialty in either form--is likely to draw no interest from publishers. They seem to feel only fly fishermen are book readers, by and large. The rest of us dumb asses who use a spinning rod do read articles about spinning for trout, but by and large, we don't read books. Not any sort of books.
And since the publishing business is all about money, the very few who would gain by my book, they won't read it, because the majority who would never read it represent the lack of money needed to interest a publisher. They vote the better reader out, in effect. My writing mentor, Ed Minus, whose novel, Kite, was published by Penguin Press, told me, "Americans have an insatiable appetite for shit."
If you think I'm telling you about a form of censorship, get rid of that notion, because I could self-publish. It's just that I think the book as is wouldn't sell, so what's the use? I would do it for a very few, if I could afford it. Maybe I can. Electronically. I haven't got as far in my reading about the business yet. But here's how obsessed the publishing business is with money. By what I've gathered, I would have to purchase an ISBN. That means the sales would collect a track record. I have hope to write literary works that may indeed attract publishers. But if they look at my track record and see I published a book that sold 13 copies, I might be in trouble. Why is that their damn business? Well, money makes it their damn business.
Regardless of qualms felt after some three years of writing the book--I did take long hiatus's for other projects--only to save it for some distant future when I'm dead, I get out and fish. Jorge and I were on the lake before dawn, going forward with handheld running lights. As you can see in the photos, we caught some fish. None of them very big.
I'll finish this post by saying that as utterly ridiculous as it seems in an age that has utterly abandoned any spirituality, I believe in the reward of heaven. I can promise you I will suffer more bouts yet of the severe depression accompanying me, ever since I began reading on getting published. But was all of my sincere effort in writing the book in vain? You bet, I feel that. But I don't really think that.
I don't believe everyone achieves the reward of heaven. That doesn't make me elitist. I don't believe in the Elect. It makes me a realist. A favorite move of mine is Danial Kaluuya's Get Out. About "the dark place." A good reason to abandon "the real world" and go fishing.
Jorge and I enjoyed a bite that lasted about an hour-and-a-half. Several white perch took our large herring, some yellow perch did, too, but the two hybrid stripers were better, and I caught the same walleye twice. (See photo of the weird flare-up on its cheek.)
Here's the walleye I caught twice from 30 feet of water.
That lesion or whatever it is on its cheek is the proof.
We caught three crappies about a foot long each that took large herring 30 feet down.
After fog cleared (you can see sun on Jorge's face), the bite had died. We began jigging Binsky bladebaits.
Caught this rock bass with interesting coloration on a Binsky. We tried two long-edged drops jigging.
