I admire Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler on several counts. But his introductory note to the reader is the gold standard. If you’re a writer and might have to write a note to readers someday, you ought to have a look.
Here are the highlights:
• Walton admits the book has errors but doesn’t drag out the apologies. It was written by a human, after all.
• He says that he wrote it to give pleasure. “I have made a recreation, of a recreation,” he says.
• He says just enough about the controversial subject of advice. My friend Melvyn and I argued the topic for a decade. Melvyn, a teacher of medical students, maintained that people don’t want advice, run from it and accept it only when there is no alternative. I argued that everyone who goes to Paris carries a guidebook, fearing that without some guidance they wouldn’t find a good place to eat. Advice is a touchy subject, full of paradox. Here’s the gist of Walton’s remark: Angling is an art, and no art can be taught by words. To learn an art, you’ve got to love the game, and then you’ve got to go into the field or studio or lab and look for yourself. Then it helps to take counsel with others who are studying the art.
• Finally, he gives the reader a blessing:
… but for this time I have neither a willingness nor leasure to say more, then wish thee a rainy evening to read this book in, and that the east wind may never blow when thou goest a fishing.
Maybe that’s not your cup of tea. But writers put a lot of things into books these days in the name of “added value.” I liked getting a blessing. And I got my rainy evening.
• Source: Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985, p. 20.
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