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Summary: Duncan's "Water" runs deep.
Review: "I am haunted by water" (p. 132), David James Duncan writes in this collection of 21 essays. I discovered Duncan when two of his essays included here, "Who Owns the West?" and "god," appeared in The Sun magazine. It is no surprise that this book is a finalist for the National Book Award. Part memoir, part contemplative, wilderness love story, Duncan's STORY AS TOLD BY WATER runs deep. For Duncan, "trees and mountains are holy. Rain and rivers are holy. Salmon are holy. For this reason alone I will fight with all my might to keep them alive" (p. 107).Duncan suspected, as a boy, "that rivers and mountains are myself turned inside out. I'd heard at church that the kingdom of heaven is within us and thought, Yeah, sure. But the first time I walked up a trout stream, fly rod in hand, I didn't feel I was 'outside' at all; I was traveling further and further in." The wonders of his boyhood world, he writes, "the things that filled me at first sight with awe and yearning--were, in order of preference, (1) Rivers, (2) Mountains, (3) Ancient Forest, (4) the Ocean, and (5) Cute Girls (p. 9). In these essays, Duncan follows his "interior coho compass" (p. 13) through countless river walks, from Portland to Montana. Along the way, he discovers rivers are his "prayer wheels," and his "true home is wilderness" (p. 93). "Capitalist fundamentalism," he believes, "is the perfect Techno-Industrial religion, its goal being a planet upon which we've nothing left to worship, worry about, read, eat or love but dollar bills and Bibles" (p. 8). This is a book that moves with spiritual, passionate, insightful, and humorous currents, pulling its reader through calm, reflective moments to thrilling, white-water rants along the way. Duncan writes with the colors and sounds of nature. His STORY AS TOLD BY WATER is a story that will not only move you, it just might baptise you. G. Merritt
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Summary: Buy this book now, you'll read it more than once.
Review: David James Duncan is one of those rare writers that leaves you forever changed after encountering their work. I know I will gratefully never be the same after reading this book. I walked into it one person, and upon completing it, was another. His perceptions of the world are so rare that the fact he can write them down with such fathomless talent, passion and care, verges on unbelievable. I only come across writing this powerful once every five to ten years and count it a true blessing when it happens.
The portion titled "A Prayer for the Salmon's Second Coming" should be read by every single American period. In another chapter called "When Birdwatching Is a Blood Sport" he writes, "When wild elk, to remain alive, are forced to wipe out wild salmon, it is time, in my book, to get sad".
This book woke me up to many things I'd slept through. If you are more fortunate than I, and already awake, the words in this book will make your own words even more powerful. Buy it, read it, treasure it, share it. You'll never regret it.
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Summary: Poetic Prose that Make You Pause
Review: David James Duncan's book My Story as Told By Water captures the essence and insight of a true river soldier. The book befriend's the pilgrim disillusioned with rigid church structure and rigid political legislation, both of which threaten to kill the soul of the country. His prose is poetic, causing a pause every now and then to sit back and take in his modern genius for writing that transmits the peace of the waters, as well as the urgency to save these waters, through the pages.
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Summary: Low quality dribble
Review: 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."
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Summary: Stereotypical, obvious, pompus
Review: Duncan's textbook rants are so predictable I found myself mouthing the next sentence before I read it. As someone who's work and life is submerged in environmental, water use, and preservation issues I find this type of stereotypical ranting more detrimental to the issues that concern me than most G.W. policies. Duncan preaches to the choir, but his preaching is so over the top it is a turn-off. While I agree with virtually every theme and policy he promotes, his pompus diatribes push me in the other direction. If this book were written 40 years ago it might strike a radical tone and inspire action. In these times it is merely a rehash of the new-age mumbo-jumbo that is so easy for the opposition to tear down. This book will apeal to two audiences: new-age sheep, and right-wingers looking to bash environmentalists. The rest will find it harder to wade through than Columbia.
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Summary: Henry Bugbee
Review: For those who are interested in the life and teaching of Henry Bugbee, Duncan's account of Henry's last days makes this book worth reading.
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Summary: My Story As Told By Water
Review: I LIKE DAVID'S USE OF FICTION BETTER TO PROMOTE HIS ENVIRONMENTALIST IDEAS AND ALTHOUGH THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK I MUST SAY I PREFER HIS FICTION....THANKS DAVID FOR A GREAT BOOK AND ENLIGHTENING ME ON THE TROUBLES OF SALMON....ONCE AGAIN I LOVE YOUR WRITING STYLE... ROD FOSTER
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Summary: Experience the Sublime Wild and the Thrill of Connection.
Review: 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.
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Summary: Duncan writes with heart.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Duncan writes with heart.
Review: 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.
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