The Complete Angler: A Connecticut Yankee Follows in the Footsteps of Walton

Prosek (Trout) recounts the adventures he had while fulfilling both his love of fly-fishing and the requirements of his senior college thesis. Traveling on a grant, he roved the English countryside, visiting significant landmarks and streams in the life of Izaak Walton, the 17th-century angler and writer who penned The Compleat Angler, the book considered by many to be the definitive work on the sport. Prosek envisions his own work as ""a popular, not entirely scholarly piece, with hopes that Walton's works may enjoy more readers."" Indeed, there is much careful research into Walton's life. Prosek is particularly interested in the idea that Walton came to think of angling as his religion, much as Prosek does himself, but he realizes that while biography reveals almost as much about the writer as it does about the subject, such a neat comparison could well be romantic and wishful thinking. Prosek points out that Walton, an adherent of the Church of England, wrote his own book after fleeing London during the English Civil War, and one Walton scholar makes a case that Walton's book was really a coded polemic whose proper title was The Compleat Anglican. In any event, Prosek's take could aptly be named The Compleat Anglophile (which Prosek admits to being), and at times the proper tone and borrowed British idioms are pretentious. The book's charm, however, lies in its quiet realism, both in Prosek's honest reflections and in his vivid paintings, which accompany the text. 18 full-color plates. Author tour. (May)