“What really knocks me out,” Holden Caulfield, the narrator in “The Catcher in the Rye,” says, “is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”
That perfectly sums up how I felt when Roger W. Thompson’s debut book “My Best Friend’s Funeral,” a coming-of-age memoir, came out a dozen years ago.
As luck would have it, the author lives in Ventura and so instead of making a phone call, for I had never met him, I attended one of his book signings and asked if he wanted to get a beer sometime.
To my great luck, he did.
To my greater luck, we hit it off like trout and mountain streams and ever since have enjoyed “Beer Thirty” (to use Roger’s term) happy hours because (to use my late mom’s reasoning about why weddings should commence on the half-hour) time slows down when the minute hand is sweeping uphill.
Roger’s second book, a travel memoir titled “We Stood Upon Stars,” made me fall further in love with his elegant prose that makes time seem to slow down as you savor the rhythm and cadence of his sentences that flow like burbling brooks, with eddies here and gentle riffles there, bends and pools elsewhere and hidden beauty and depth beneath the surface.
The above description of Roger’s writing came to me while reading his brand-new book, “The Wisdom of Rivers: Family, Friendship, and the Fly-Fishing Life,” that once again knocked me out.
I am therefore thrilled to be moderating a public conversation and Q & A with Roger at his book launch signing this Tuesday, September 8, from 6 to 8 p.m., at Iron & Resin at 324 E. Main Street in Downtown Ventura.
Norman Maclean’s masterwork “A River Runs Through It” has long been my favorite fishing-themed book, but it now shares top-shelf billing with “The Wisdom of the River.” With both the former novella and the latter memoir, one need not be a fly fisherman-or-woman to be hooked and enthralled.
More than about fishing, “The Wisdom of the River” is about Friendships, Fatherhood, Love, and Faith — these being the four tributaries this hardback gem forks into. Each section features a handful of themed essays, all of which carry faint echoes of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, and prove the truth of this line by the Muir-bearded Thompson: “In every good fisherman, there is a better storyteller.”
A tall accomplishment considering Roger, a zealous angler since boyhood, has trout streams coursing through his veins.
“Our lives are filled with more important things than fishing,” Roger writes. “Sometimes, it take fishing to figure out what they are.”
“The Wisdom of the River” is filled with important things.
“What began as mine is now ours,” Roger further shares, speaking about teaching his wife, Melissa, and sons, Austin and Hayden, to fly fish. But this Angling Apostle is also talking to all of us who read his poetic prose and vicariously join him on a fishing (and life) journey by turning these pages — “Book Thirty” pages, because they are best read starting on the half-hour so they pass by more slowly.
Yes, what began as Rog’s writing is now ours to relish.
Me, I am doubly blessed because I get to have 16-ounce conversations whenever I feel like it with my terrific friend who wrote this knockout book.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.
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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.
