Thursday, September 22, 2011

Manly Thor's Day Special

The Gierach problem
One of my favourite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons shows Calvin sitting in front of a coffee table. He has created a small forest on top of the table by hammering a whole lot of nails partially into the surface. His mother walks in, surveys the scene with horror and says, "Calvin, what have you done to that coffee table?" He looks at the table, then looks back at her and says, "Is that a trick question?"

Like Calvin, John Gierach himself doesn't see any "Gierach problem". It is a problem that other people—including, as he cheerfully acknowledges, a couple of ex-wives—have with him. The problem people have is that they don't like the vocation he has chosen. He sets this vocation out quite succinctly in an essay he wrote called "The Fishing Car" in his book The View from Rat Lake. The "fishing car" in question belonged to his uncle Leonard.
The idea of the fishing car spoke to me of a way of life. It was the thought that you could be a sportsman in the same way you could be a Baptist or a farmer or a blond; that being a fisherman could be as much a part a part of your identity as your fingerprints. And I was at the age where I had just started to puzzle over my identity.
And that identity, if you take the trouble to read two or three of his sixteen books (every single one of which is still in print, by the way, and that is a claim very few writers can make), is a mixture of classic gentleman and social subversion. The classic gentleman may come as a surprise as he makes gestures in the opposite direction but Gierach is very much a classic gentleman and it ought to tell us something that such a writer is so popular with men.

Although Gierach doesn't say so, this combination of gentleman and subversive is an old one with what is, in some ways any, a respectable lineage. Many people will think of the British gentleman who was not only proud of being a hunter but also proud of not having a career but there is also a long association of this sort of life with political subversion. Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches is a an important work of literature but also an important protest against the abuses perpetrated in old Russia. There were also hunter's lodges all across Europe in which radical, liberal and conservative ideas that changed the world were first developed.

Gierach's particular protest is smaller and perhaps less easy to take seriously at first. In the essay about the fishing car, for example, he talks about a last fishing trip he and his Uncle Leonard took before a family wedding. The two of them drive hundreds of miles fishing and talking and not shaving, bathing or changing their clothes very often.

It's a protest against a certain kind of male submission and he doesn't quiet say so in so many words but you know what he means when you read this paragraph:
It wasn't until a few hours before the wedding—not quite the last possible moment—that we strolled in the back door sublimely unconcerned, wearing clothes we'd fished in for a week and carrying armloads of filets. The house was in a uniform state of hysteria: the women were all at a dead run or off in a corner weeping, while the men were looking mounted in suits that had last been worn at funerals. I've since learned to recognize the pained, furtive look they wore as symptomatic of the powerful need for a drink.
 I was out fishing with my best friend of my old age a while ago and we got back to the car and I was wet and I said, "Do you want me to change before we drive back?" And he said, "I hope I never have a car that I care so much about that I wouldn't want to sit in it after wading." If his wife had heard that remark, I'm sure she would have laughed but she might have given us a look that said, "This is a funny but change into dry clothes before you get in the car."

Before going on, we should note that some of the criticism you might want to make of Gierach don't really hold. He not only pays his mortgage, he directly and indirectly creates employment through his writing. He is no leech on society but is contributing more to it than most.

Gierach is the almost inevitable result of a post-feminist age. I can't find it now but there is one of his pieces where Gierach describes being out with friends and one of his friend's dogs. The dog busies itself by clearing the area of small animals by chasing them away. And Gierach comments that dogs love to have a job and that if you don't give them one, they'll make one up for themselves. And it will be fun. And then Gierach tells us there is a lesson in that.

And there is, take away the notion that both men and women have responsibilities and duties towards one another as men or women and that is what they will do. They'll create a sense of duty for themselves. And it will be fun.

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