A recipe for carp bait

 The commonplace on The Compleat Angler is that everyone knows about it, but nobody has read it.

I took my time getting to it. I read an excerpt in college. I read it cover to cover at 70.

It’s a strange and wonderful book, especially for someone like me — a person who is interested in the sense of place and who is prone to say that wild places, natural places, are better than the places you find in town.

Izaak Walton believed that was true. After reading The Compleat Angler, I am having second thoughts, which is another way of saying I have recognized the need for better thoughts about wild places.

The book passed a critical test for me: It provoked some thoughts of my own.

But I don’t know what I’d say if someone asked if it belonged in the canon of Great Books or the Almost Great Books. Should everybody read it?

I think I’d reply that in the chapter on carp, there’s a recipe for a paste that you can use as bait. You mix up a goop, roll it into little balls and put them on your hook. The recipe begins:

 

Take the flesh of a Rabet or Cat cut smal …

 

I’m not competent to say about what an educated person should read. But The Compleat Angler is not for everyone.

• Source: Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985, p. 91.