My friend Paul Quarrington has written two of the best, and funniest non-fiction books about fishing ever (Fishing With My Old Guy, From the Far Side of the River: Chest-Deep in Little Fish and Big Ideas )… along with a bunch of novels that have earned him well-deserved comparisons to John Irving and Robertson Davies. He’s got a new novel coming out, prompting Canada’s Globe And Mail to devote some serious column inches to his wit and wisdom. Here are some of his choice quotes…
His preferred pastime is, famously, fly fishing. He has travelled the world to indulge it, and keeps on a nearby bookshelf Ernest Schwiebert’s two-volume work entitled Trout. The heavy tomes are, exclusively, about every variety and possible permutation of trout fishing. “I have always thought,” Quarrington says with studied neutrality, gazing on them, “that there is room for a novel about the struggle between dry and wet fly fishing. That would be a thoughtful novel.”
“For a long time I thought of myself more as a musician than a writer,” he says. With the Queen Street Toronto band called the Continental Drift, he toured across Canada. “It’s a great life for a writer. You’re on tour in cities where you stay in 25-cent hotel rooms where the main item of furniture is an ashtray. And you’ve got nothing to do. So what you do is write.”
You can hear Paul read from his new book GALVESTON here.