Post-election epistle: Why Izaak Walton's "The Compleat Angler" is a balm for the soul

     Politics, we could say, is America’s religion. Many Americans, sadly, seem to have lost their capacity to see beyond it, if they ever could. With the election over, some have asked if I would comment on it and what I believe the future might have in store. I’m not a seer or clairvoyant, however, and this Substack page – thank God – has another purpose altogether than to discuss current affairs or politics. That said, this post will touch briefly on these things, but only as they set the stage for what I really wish to discuss, which I present as a balm for those of you who may suffer from frayed nerves. My post of November 5^th, offering as it did a smattering of quotes from Augustine’s City of God, encapsulated my thoughts about government in general, whatever administration occupies office at any given time. Not to sound too cynical about the matter, I tend to think that our politics – more often than not – has operated without a sound sense of justice for the better part of its existence – and without justice, as Augustine says, the government of a nation or empire is merely a large-scale, self-legitimizing form of gangsterism (or a great band of robbers, to translate the phrase he uses in Book IV, 4 a bit more literally). If I were to add a supplementary text to Augustine’s, it might be Thoreau’s seminal essay on “Civil Disobedience,” which provides some basics for both right action and non-action in the face of government-sponsored iniquities. Like Thoreau, I can’t sign on to be a loyal member of any party for reasons of justice. I am firmly pro-life, for instance, and that basic principle compels me to stand up for human life, whether the subject is the child in the womb (certainly, the very “least” of “the least of these” – who comes into the world “hungry, thirsty, naked, and a stranger”), or the warfare state, or the prisoner on death row, or the immigrant seeking sanctuary among us – and so forth. If actual events (not threats or fears) demand action or a voice on behalf of justice, then I’ll endeavor to do what I can. But this post is about something else — something we might need if we are election-weary and just plain world-weary, which I certainly am. In addition, I’m also technology-weary, media-weary, and smartphone-weary; I’ve gotten irritable with hearing expressions both of political hype and hopelessness, irritable with others’ anger and sourness, and irritable about my own uncharitable irritation at their irritation. In periods such as these, when it all gets to be rather much for a “contemplative man,” one of the many consoling and least demanding works one might turn to is a particular little classic that is ostensibly about going fishing. I say “ostensibly,” because it’s so much more than that. I refer to Izaak Walton’s little book, The Compleat Angler or: the Contemplative Man’s Recreation. It has been reprinted more often than any other English book except the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and Pilgrim’s Progress. It may not be concerned with the dizzying heights of mysticism, and certainly, it hasn’t much to do with the rigors of asceticism. The type of contemplation it acclaims is homely and never very far away from friendship, food, and a pint of ale; but as Thomas McGuane wrote in The Longest Silence – another celebrated book on the subject of fishing – The Compleat Angler “is not about how to fish, but about how to be.”