The River Why

by David James Duncan

Paper Book, 2002

Status

Available

Publication

San Francisco : [Berkeley] : Sierra Club Books ; Distributed by University of California Press, 2002.

Description

Fiction. Literature. Humor (Fiction.) HTML:The classic novel of fly fishing and spirituality republished with a new Afterword by the author. Since its publication in 1983, The River Why has become a classic. David James Duncan's sweeping novel is a coming-of-age comedy about love, nature, and the quest for self-discovery, written in a voice as distinct and powerful as any in American letters. Gus Orviston is a young fly fisherman who leaves behind his comically schizoid family to find his own path. Taking refuge in a remote cabin, he sets out in pursuit of the Pacific Northwest's elusive steelhead. But what begins as a physical quarry becomes a spiritual one as his quest for self-knowledge batters him with unforeseeable experiences. Profoundly reflective about our connection to nature and to one another, The River Why is also a comedic rollercoaster. Like Gus, the reader emerges utterly changed, stripped bare by the journey Duncan so expertly navigates.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member VisibleGhost
A fishing classic. Don't be put off by that if fishing bores you to tears. It is so much more. It includes a marriage with one of the most mismatched couples in literature. A prim and proper Englishman with a hardscrabble, tough as nails, coarse, uneducated, no-nonsense American woman raised in the
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boonies of Oregon. A son who grows up in this turbulent household and becomes a fisherman and one that won't have anything to do with fishing. They are all eccentric as hell. There is humor, philosophy, nature, environment, a love story, neighbors, wanderings, ponderings, and a kitchen sink or two. Some folklore, some myth, and some tall tales. One of my favorite reads of the year.
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LibraryThing member gerg
In a style like none other, David James Duncan crafted a book like none other. While this book is a cult favorite of the fly fishing literary world, I have recommended it to several non-fishers and received nothing but happy smiles in return.

The River Why might seem to be about fishing, or love, or
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even just the people and places of the Pacific Northwest, but ultimately, it is about questions. The story is of Gus Orviston, the son of a stuffy, well-known fly fishing author and a backwoods bait-fishing mother, two classic characters who, while serving as a catalyst for Gus setting off on his own quest, play small parts in the book until the very end, when they mirror Gus' own metamorphoses.

Gus wants to fish. That's about it. He's good at it, and it's certainly encouraged by his parents, and after suffering through the discipline of public schools (and the unique insanity of the Orviston household) until he turns 18, he decides that the answer to his discontent is fishing and nothing but fishing.

In a rustic cabin on the banks of a famous (but anonymous) steelhead and salmon river, Gus sets out to live his "ideal schedule," which includes a good part of every single day spent fishing. The rest of each day is spent tying flies, making rods, sleeping or eating. This doesn't turn out to be the panacea he expected.

Feeling more discontented, if not outright disturbed, than ever, Gus begins a transformation. The transformation is no pretty thing, but Gus is lucky to be accompanied by some of the brightest characters I've come across in fiction. A compassionate philosopher and his verbose canine companion, a woman that can only be described as a mermaid, the "what it is" hippie family down the road and the other earthy inhabitants of the river valley, and Gus's own younger brother who's disinterest in the aquatic life is plenty compensated for by his unique spirituality and clear-eyed faith in it.

These characters wake something up in Gus that had been long stricken comatose by his focus on piscine pursuits. But, the journey he embarks on he travels alone, taking only the reader along, though it seems he is eventually joined by another, unworldly, companion.

The River Why is about asking questions. It provides a few answers, but the spirituality that Duncan espouses is for the most part a very individualistic variety. The book isn't about leading you to a specific moral code or a parable by which to judge your decisions (or others'). Reading this book is an inspiration to open your own eyes, love the big questions of life and love and God, and to seek your own answers gleefully and passionately.
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LibraryThing member bookworm12
I wanted to like this one. I loved Duncan’s novel The Brothers K and had been looking forward to reading this one, but it just didn’t work for me. I felt myself dreading it every time I was about to pick it up. It was incredibly hard for me to get into. It’s about fly fishing and philosophy,
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an odd combination in any book, but in this meandering novel neither subject captured my interest.

Gus is a fisherman to his core. His parents are both talented fishers and he was raised on a steady diet of hooks and lines. His father is a prim and proper Englishman and his mother is a redneck hot-tempered woman. Though their personalities clash, their loyalty to each other is unshakeable. The odd pairing, along with their eccentric son Bill Bob, were my favorite elements in the book, but the trio made far too few appearances to keep my interest. Gus’ parents are thrilled when he turns out to have a natural ability for the past time.

BOTTOM LINE: I definitely seem to be in the minority here, but I just couldn’t get into it. There were some beautifully written sections and a few really unique supporting characters, but in the end it wasn’t enough. The rest of it fell flat for me. It’s not good when your favorite part of the book is finishing it so you don’t ever have to pick it up again.

“… because of fishing I grew up osprey-silent and trout-shy and developed early on an ability to slide through the Public School System as river water slides by the logjams, rockslides and dams that bar its seaward journey.”

“Perhaps not to know him is to know him well. He has a height and weight, face, voice, hair, the usual number of limbs – all the accoutrements of a brother. Yet there is an impregnability about him that thwarts easy intimacy.”
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LibraryThing member Debielk
Hilarious tale of a fishing
LibraryThing member rmay525
Definitely on my list of top ten books I have ever read. Despite the fact that I don't fish, and I'm not nor ever have been a teenage boy (the protagonist), this book spoke to me. Plus, it is laugh out loud funny.
LibraryThing member graduum
David James Duncan's The River Why is in my top 3 list of books most often reread. I encountered it for the first time in 1985, and have returned to it at least 6 times since then.

Its central idea--that the search for self and the search for God are one and the same thing--is an idea as old as
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Augustine's Confessions (not for nothing is Gus, the book's protagonist and narrator, in possession of the full name "Augustine").

Duncan's exuberant prose style delights the reader, as does his sense of wonder at the natural world, and his sadness at what harm humans can do to that world.

IF you like this book, I would suggest you read Duncan's recent nonfiction work God Laughs and Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right
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LibraryThing member jlizzy
A coming of age story about an exceptionally talented fly-fisherman.
LibraryThing member Lenaphoenix
This novel tells the story of young fishing prodigy Gus Orviston and his madcap, fishing-obsessed family. After graduating from high school, Gus leaves home so he can be free of distractions and devote himself entirely to fishing. In the process and despite himself, Gus comes to discover the joys
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of community, romantic love, and eventually, God.

It’s hard for me to express just how much I love this book. One of the biggest reasons why is because it’s laugh-out-loud hysterical. There are just not very many books dealing with spiritual matters that are so fantastically funny. But this one probably makes up for the lack of many others. Go. Read it now. You’ll thank me, I swear.
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LibraryThing member hombredemaderas
Most likely my favourite book of all. Great take of a boy coming-of-age while discovering his personal spirituality, philosophy, and place in the world all wrapped around a fishing story. So much more than just fishing, the idea of "drefrees," the character of Antoine Chapeau, and the brilliance of
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how Gus first came into being all make this a book for the ages.
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LibraryThing member kambrogi
This coming of age story features Gus, who graduates from high school and leaves home to do the only thing that interests him: full-time fly fishing. On the banks of a river, he finds the answers to questions he never even knew how to ask, questions about family, community, love, wisdom, education
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and finally God. It is a hymn to the natural world and to humanity’s place in it, told in language as schizophrenic as that of any confused youngster: alternately ignorant, academic, metaphoric, euphoric, witty, convoluted and humorous – but language that evolves with the boy.

I did not enjoy it as much as Duncan’s The Brothers K, but I admire its complex conceit and its plucky honesty. I especially enjoyed Duncan’s new afterward in this 20th Anniversary edition published in 2003 by Sierra Club books, which puts the book into an historical context that gives it more inspiring significance, to my mind.
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LibraryThing member barnestorm2004
It's about life. It's about fishing. No, it's about the life of a born fisherman. Not being a seasoned reviewer, I have not the words to adequately describe, let alone critique this book. I can say it's one of those books passed on to me by both, not just one, of my well read and eclectic brothers.
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One of those "you need to read this" things. I passed it around. it kept on going, never returning. I bought it again. same thing happened. My daughter bought for me for christmas. I'm keeping this one.
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LibraryThing member Cygnus555
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, was drawn in with the beautiful imagery and philosophy so like my own. So much of it was insightful and thought provoking, clever and well written. I was on a trajectory to give it a 5. When I love a book through and through and leave it slowly, savoring every last
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page... regretably leaving it with a sigh... that is a 5. I was heading that way... just waiting for the story to hit it's crescendo - and it didn't.

huh? what the hell kind of ending is THAT? I mean I'm down to the last few pages and ... huh?

I HIGHLY recommend this book. Very very well done. He is a masterful writer. I just don't get the end. Just seemed like a right turn into a field when the finish line was right there....
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LibraryThing member co_coyote
I guess I've read this book every six or seven years since I've owned it, which--to look at it--is at least twenty-five years ago. The cover is falling off, several pages are ripped. The back page has words (prasad, sacerdotal) that I wrote there when I still traveled everywhere with a dictionary,
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or wrote words down when I was momentarily without one. I remember the first time I read it, on an airplane, fellow travelers looking at me strangely as I guffawed out loud and couldn't stop laughing.

The only book I've read as often over the years is Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley. I guess you could say it is on my top 10 books of all time list.

One of my Christmas traditions is to peruse my book shelves and find books I think my children will like to read and give them as gifts. It confirms my reputation as a skinflint and gives me a great deal of pleasure as I think about what they might like. When my oldest son announced he was thinking about reading some novels (what!?), this book became the obvious choice. In the end, though, I couldn't part with the battered thing and I wanted to read it again. I ended up buying him his own copy.

There have been a handful of books in my life that have been life-changing for me. This book is among them. Read it. I think you will love it.
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LibraryThing member smokhaus
The passage on the Shadow World is one of the most magical 10 pages I've ever read.
LibraryThing member stretch
The River Why follows Gus, the main character as strikes out on his own to fish the majestic rivers of western Oregon. At first the freedom from his obsessive family members is refreshing, but soon finds the isolation and “prefect fishing schedule” to be frustrating and not as satisfying as he
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imagined. After discovering a dead fisherman in a dense fog and after suffering a serious bout sickness, Gus opens up to new opportunities and begins the long journey of self-discovery.

This book encompassed everything I love in a novel, biting wit and charm, fantastically simple writing that is often beautiful, and intellectually dense concepts. Every character stood out as incredibly interesting individuals, each with their own strange little quirks that make them very human and readable. Deep spiritual and environmental values blend beautifully next to all the other humdrums of life. And then, three quarters of the way through the book I'm surprised by a love story; one that didn't even need the whole book for me to get attached to.

While I think that this is one of those books that I will return to again and again as one of my personal favorites and found to be really profound, I have to say that it’s one of those books you have to read at the right time and place in you life. Too late the philosophy and self discovery will seem simplistic, too early and the subtly insights will be lost.
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LibraryThing member nmele
I know beans about fly-fishing, and as a kid I grew to hate fishing because of early morning forays with my father and one of his brothers wherein I worked at cutting bait, cleaning fish, and other cold, unpleasant tasks. This is a great novel even though it looks like it's about fishing. It's a
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love story, a story of the struggle with God, and a conservationist story. Read it, read it, read it!
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LibraryThing member FolkeB
This Duncan book is about growing up and fly fishing. And yes for me the fly fishing was what attracted me to this book. But it is really about discovering faith in all of its various guises.
LibraryThing member MoriahJovan
This is guylit and has a special place in my heart. I read it at the behest of a firefighter I was chatting with online, whom I subsequently met and...nothin' happened. Which was fine, because he was in his world and I was in mine and, well, this book is more about our relationship than the
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book.

But it was a very good book.
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LibraryThing member joeydag
I read this a long time ago. I think the author is caught between his mother and father, both fishers but one is a fly fisher and the other uses worms(?) which is a source/symptom of marital woes. I remember enjoying the peaceful reflects the author includes.
LibraryThing member anglophile65
This is one book that I've bought over and over again and given to friends. I just loved it. It would be fun to read this again - it has been years - and see if I love it as much as I did originally. I recall the writing to be very witty and clever.
LibraryThing member zmagic69
The author can certainly write, but the story-and I am not sure you can call it a story, just didn't work for me. Quirky characters, but not very interesting ones, and a lot of musing on fishing, with some additional musing on life. Maybe if I was into fishing it would have helped, but I have read
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a number of books where a sport I don't practice has been a main focal point, and still enjoyed the story.
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LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri
I was so drawn in by the first half of the book that I had to slow down so I didn't finish it too fast. The second half was more of a bag of bits and pieces and the religiosity when it came, came as a bit of an unwelcome surprise. So not a perfect polished gem of a book - but perhaps that was a
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good thing - the eclectic mix lets you enjoy what you want and pass by what you don't want. The book is philosophy, not fishing, and absorbing, stimulating and fun.
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LibraryThing member carolfoisset
Did enjoy parts of the book, but some of the rambling parts were hard to get through.
LibraryThing member DrFuriosa
This was an eclectic and dense book, with a heavy emphasis on philosophy, naturalism, and spirituality. It fits well with the renaissance of naturalism in the 1970s, but it's dated in that regard, as well. I get the sense that your enjoyment of this book will depend on how you approach reading.
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This was not my cuppa, but there were definitely interesting ideas to consider, once you get past the glacial beginning.
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LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri
I was so drawn in by the first half of the book that I had to slow down so I didn't finish it too fast. The second half was more of a bag of bits and pieces and the religiosity when it came, came as a bit of an unwelcome surprise. So not a perfect polished gem of a book - but perhaps that was a
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good thing - the eclectic mix lets you enjoy what you want and pass by what you don't want. The book is philosophy, not fishing, and absorbing, stimulating and fun.
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