ROD FOSTER


Low quality dribble   August 18, 2003
 2 out of 7 found this review helpful

After reading a gift copy of The River Why I found a first edition hardbound copy for my library. I will read it many times, and I will give copies to friends. I couldn't have been more diappointed in reading this random collection of essays. I guess I should have been warned by the long sub-title, but I don't understand how this collection, which is largely rants and complaints, made it to print. Being personally committed to and heavily involved in water and fishery conservation issues in California, a state which like Montana has huge problems, I share much of Duncan's frustration. In spite of probably being in sync with him on many issues, I found his writing to be unnecessarily strident and preachy. Overall, I found these essays to lack the humor and sparkling prose of his first book. I also purchased The Brothers K and promise to give it the aerial burial if it doesn't, from the very beginning, remind me of Duncan's wonderful first book.


Too Preachy   February 20, 2003
 5 out of 9 found this review helpful

Duncan's style is a little too cynical and preachy for my taste. As a reader, I didn't feel like there was any chance for reciprocity; to accept or reject his way of thinking. As such, he lost me. In my opinion, better enviromental/fly fishing writing can be found in the work of McGuane, David Quammen, and anthologies such as "Wild 'bows & Crippled Duns."


Duncan writes with heart.   July 14, 2002
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

My Story as Told by Water covers a varied terrain ranging from environmental activism to the virtues of fly-fishing without a hired guide. The book is really a collection of essays (many published in other books and periodicals) about rivers in the Northwestern United States. Duncan shares much of his early life growing up in neighborhoods just beyond the growing tentacles of Portland, Oregon. He writes openly about this family, including his bitter confrontation over the war in Vietnam with his dad, and the loss of his brother. Given such a backdrop, it's easy to understand how Duncan turned to the solitude of fishing local streams to deal with the pain of his youth.

Later in the book, Duncan finds his stride writing about the not-so-bright outlook facing wild salmon along the Columbia and Snake Rivers. You can almost feel the tears welling up in his eyes as he describes their near exit from his world. He sums up the disaster of the salmon run on the Snake River this way: "The babble of `salmon management' rhetoric has taken a river of prayful human yearning, diverted it into a thousand word-filled ditches, and run it over alkali. When migratory creatures are prevented from migrating, they are no longer migratory creatures: they're kidnap victims. The name of the living vessel in which wild salmon evolved and still thrive is not `fish bypass system,' `smolt-deflecting diversionary strobe light,' or `barge.' It is River."

Duncan opens his heart to the connections he has to rivers and wild fish. But more importantly, he gives us inspiration for making our own connections to those wild places.


Experience the Sublime Wild and the Thrill of Connection.   April 3, 2002
 6 out of 6 found this review helpful

I love reading and I love books.This is one of the finest books I have ever read...and one of the most important. Duncan's writing brings me right back in touch with my Pacific Northwest roots, and the wild places and creatures I so cherish. He manages to articulate in words the spiritual dimension of wilderness encounters that are so rare in a world that is dominated by modernity and profit-motive. Yet he points a way to recover crucial aspects of dissappearing wild. He captures and articulates in fine detail, that which links the human encounter of the wild with something much greater than humanity alone: the creative Force that results in this whole connected planet Earth.