September 7, 1994

Dear Mr. Boyles,

I have just read your piece about fly fishing in the little magazine that General American sent me.

I admire your writing. More than admire, I ENVY your ability to say what you intend to say, to say it well, and to stop.

I am not a fly fisherman. It is very, very unlikely I shall ever even fish well, much less become a fisher of wary prey.

I want to write. I have been given a chance to write some stuff, whatever I want to write, and to get better at writing. I am discovering to my dismay that this means I must get clearer about many things, in fact, about almost everything. All at once.

I tend to whine that I am shoddy material, that there is no way I can get clear and honest enough to be a good writer. But I so much want to. Not really because I know the writing will last and be important, but because I want to be clear and to know that I have lived.

Now that I am into it, I am not sure why I am writing you. I know that you cannot give me what I want. Tips are probably not easily passed from honest people to those who merely aspire to be honest. Don't demur. I don't have any earthly idea how honest you are.

But you seem not to take yourself too seriously, and that is at least a start on honesty.

Let me, for now, just talk about one thing that you said and that is bugging me, because it seems to be important and I don't know what it means to everybody else and what it means to me.

You mentioned "epiphanies".

I have heard about epiphany in church. The other day I started reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. Shortly before I started reading her, I came across a reference to a book that someone else (a Ph.D. student, I suspect) had written about "epiphany in the writing of Annie Dillard".

Puzzled, I went on and read Dillard, expecting by and by to find out what "epiphany" meant (I have still not done anything so obvious as consulting the dictionary; I would rather meat meet (do you ever misspell and find it difficult to erase the precious sign you have been given?) epiphany and then find out how it is categorized in the great cabinet of human experience).

Well, anyway Dillard blows me away. I want to write the way she does. I want to see life, the world, myself, those around me, with the freshness she does. She talks of the experience of those blinded-from-birth people who, given their sight by some medical procedure, must now learn vision. What they see at first is only blinding, dazzling patches of light and color, without meaning, distressing, bizarre. They are sensible enough to prefer insensibility: blindness. So it is easy enough to understand why it is difficult for those who would be wise and honest to struggle pitifully with the very first step, which is to see all things for the first time--totally afresh.

And then I read that line in your piece which disparages the "bad philosophy and Zen-line empty-headedness that passes for bliss"; suddenly I am shut up, humbled. Is this my much-sought-after epiphany that I have "snagged out of ;the river of life and bludgeoned to death on the bank." I know you did not have such an earnest search as mine in mind when you wrote that line, but still I am pained as I feel the shoe fitting.

I know what it is that makes your piece so readable and credible and that is that it has something of substance to say. It says it is about fly fishing and it is about fly fishing! How satisfying. I may be fooled, but I believe that you have actually been fly fishing and that you really enjoyed being there and that, as a result, you have been there many times, always learning more. You provoke me to ask if I similarly have any genuine experience about which I can write, if not expertly, then certainly credibly.

How should I start? Should I, in fact, start? I know that writing well is a perfectible skill, that good editing, which good writing depends upon, requires rigorous practice and earnest effort. But must there not first be a gift, a talent? How do you know if you have that talent? I know I have the desire and that I have the pleasure when a few apt words fall into place, like found shells gathered in a small child's hand. But right now I feel that maybe I am that small child, splashing in the bathtub, and jabbering about swimming the ocean. Wanting things does not make them so. That is a simple painful lesson that endures from childhood. Have I learned it too well? What of courage? Is courage not just going ahead and doing something, perhaps badly, before you know the outcome, but knowing full well what the embarrassing, perhaps dangerous outcome could be? Can there be courage without fear? Is not fear, fear overcome, or at least fear notwithstanding, what separates courageous effort from recklessness or dabbling?

I would not be so long-winded. I confess that I am trying to talk myself into doing something, rather than just doing it. Except, in this case, I am doing it. I am writing. But what am I writing about?

I would like to write about common experiences, the more common the better. The more familiar, the greater the potential for discovery and surprise. For example, I would like to explore waking and sleeping, dreaming and imagining.

You were able to write about an experience that is not common to me. But you made it understandable by returning again and again to experiences, particularly to images of people and human foibles, that are all too familiar. When I found myself chuckling, I knew you had me where you wanted me.

I had the feeling you and I were at the river; you were fishing, facing away from me, talking to me over your shoulder, fishing while you were talking to me about fishing. I was standing behind you, hands on my hips, watching, grinning, looking around, feeling that I belonged there, but certainly also feeling that I had just arrived, and grateful to have you to tell me how to see and what to look for. Green, I reckon!

You may be a real bastard, personally.

But --DAMN! -- you can write!