Trout: An Illustrated History (association copy)

Knopf, 1996. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Tenth printing, association copy, inscribed to National Book Award-winning novelist Robert Stone: "For Robert Stone, Good fishing in Idaho and Andros. All best, James Prosek." With a little sketch of a fly after his signature. Prosek has been described as the Audubon of fish, and he took a writing workshop with Robert Stone as an undergraduate at Yale. Stone wrote about fly-fishing in novels such as The Dog Soldiers and Outerbridge Reach, but apparently not with total accuracy, since in the case of the former he may have confused a gila trout for a steelhead. Yet he was a dedicated fisher. Writer Robert Richardson (Annie Dillard s husband) recalls their time angling together in both the places that Prosek mentions in his inscription: "He loved to go fishing. We went fishing for big Spanish mackerel with his grandson out in the Gulf Stream off Key West; we went fishing for yellowtail another time off Cottrell Key. And on a trip to the Bahamas in February 1997, we went fishing out of Moxey s Bonefishing Lodge on the Middle Bight of Andros with a local boatbuilder and fishing guide named Ralph Moxey. And then there was a river-rafting trip down the Salmon River in Idaho in the early 1990s. The trip was put together by Cort Conley, a river guide, writer, and godfather to anything literary in or about Idaho. The river was high, the rapids frequent and full. Some of us had inflatable kayaks. But seated close together on the center thwart of the big raft in the middle of the river was Robert Stone, with Marilynne Robinson on one side of him and Annie Dillard on the other. The three friends, all wearing life jackets, talked theology as the sun blazed down and the raft bucked and leaped, taking on water, spinning wildly in the currents, rocking from side to side, roaring down rapids, Stone and friends and the river all in full spate cascading merrily between stony banks and silent trees. The frantically busy boatman, Conley, who fully understood that he had modern American literature in his keeping that day, pushed and shoved on long polelike oars, as the three writers rose to the task of settling the hash of the universe, and fishing for answers." What a trip! A nice association for the angling inclined. Fine in a near fine jacket. Please inquire for photos.