Thomas McGuane 's Ninety-two in the Shade is the finest fishing novel ever written, with the possible exception of Moby-Dick. Published in 1973, when the writer was only 34, it was McGuane's third book, and seemed to confirm the promise he had shown with The Sporting Club and The Bushwhacked Piano.
Critics fairly gushed over McGuane's style. How's this for gushing? Jonathan Yardley wrote in The New York Times Book Review: "His sheer writing skill is nothing short of amazing. The preternatural force, grace, and self-control of his prose recall Faulkner."
Not that I think the gushing is undeserved; McGuane can be dazzling and delightful. Every page of Ninety-two in the Shade offers at least one immaculately turned phrase. On page 99 (in the Vintage Contemporaries Edition), he describes a heavy drinker as "spavined in the morals," an exemplary McGuane-ism, as it combines fussy word choice with a winking affection for the liquor-whipped.
Indeed, following this novel's publication — and a car accident from which McGuane emerged intact but temporarily voiceless — McGuane joined their ranks, self-destructing in grand style. Adopting the moniker "Captain Berserko," he journeyed to Hollywoodland, where he wrote screenplays (for example, The Missouri Breaks , which starred Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando) and directed the film version of Ninety-two in the Shade. It is not at all a bad film, and one has to applaud McGuane's courage in undertaking what Variety refers to as the "helming," but what is best known about the movie are the various shenanigans that went on as the cameras rolled. Briefly, having arrived on set accompanied by a wife and a mistress, McGuane abandoned them both for his leading lady, Canada's own Margot Kidder.
You mightn't be surprised when I tell you that McGuane is one of the founding fathers of, well, I refuse to use the term "lad lit," opting instead for the phrase "literature of the a-hole." These are novels, humorous but not lighthearted, often gracefully written, which describe male behaviour that is undeniably a-holeish, and while the books don't applaud the behaviour, neither do they condemn it.
If I were writing a doctoral thesis, I might posit that this subgenre of the modern novel began with James Joyce (Stephen Dedalus is a bit of an a-hole), continued through J.P. Donleavy (he is perhaps the Patron Saint) and found its most elegant expression in Thomas McGuane. (Other practitioners include Nick Hornby and, um, me.)
Thus, we find, in Ninety-two in the Shade, protagonist Thomas Skelton journeying to his hometown of Key West, Fla., as his world collapses under the weight of shameful behaviour. No one writes about squalor like McGuane: "The four people were standing naked in the tub with the lurid fluorescence all over them."
In Key West — although his impulses and instincts conspire against him — Skelton desires to become a functional member of society, and decides to become a fishing guide. This brings him in conflict with Nichol Dance, another guide, one who wants no competition. I can give you some notion of Nichol Dance's character by telling you this: Dance was portrayed in the film by Warren Oates. Oh, yeah. The man is bad news, and the story of the Skelton-Dance relationship, ineluctably tragic, supplies the novel with its backbone.
Ninety-two in the Shade is a beautifully written novel with a compelling narrative, but it is the fishing aspect that brings it near to my heart. This is not fishing as you may be imagining the pastime. These anglers are neither confined to a vessel nor standing streamside. Instead, McGuane is writing about fly fishing on the inter-tidal flats, a rarefied activity, one that I have, since reading the novel, found irresistibly alluring.
Briefly: With the coming of high tide, piscine predators move into areas that are ordinarily too shallow — the flats between widely spaced stands of mangrove, the mouths of the little "creeks" that divide more dense growth, the long white beaches that surround deserted islands. The fish come to feed, and we're talking the prized and esoteric saltwater species, the ones that seem to be constructed of chromium: bonefish, tarpon and permit. The shallowness of the water allows the fish to be spotted (that's the plan, anyway, although their silver lustre is very effective camouflage, reflecting their surroundings and rendering the fish themselves indistinct and ghostly.) The game is spotted — by the guide and subsequently (or not) by the angler — and then cast to, an exacting science that requires great skill. The fish are easily spooked, and a fly must be presented just so; if it lands too near the fish, it (or they, as they usually school) will vanish in a magical trice. If the cast is too far away, the fish will simply go about their business, but the action of picking up the line to recast usually spooks 'em.
More often than not, the cast will annoy your guide. If he is Cuban — and for the past few years my guides have been — he will pull what we call a "Ricky Ricardo" and emit a long string of filthy Spanish words with the yapping insistence of a Chihuahua. Come to think of it, one of the reasons I like Ninety-two in the Shade so much is that, in the novel, a fishing guide — and I won't say which one — finally gets his comeuppance.
Paul Quarrington is a novelist, songwriter and angler whose books include Fishing with My Old Guy. He also plays in the band Porkbelly Futures.
