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Mark Spitzer¿is an associate professor of writing at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of several novels, poems, essays, and literary translations, including¿Season of the Gar: Adventures in Pursuit of America’s Most Misunderstood Fish and Return of the Gar. Spitzer has consulted for Nat Geo’s Monster Fish and appeared on Animal Planet’s River Monsters.
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List of contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction: In Wildness Is the Preservation of the Grotesque and Vice Versa
1. Nature of the American Eel: An Aquatic Phantom in Our Own Back Yard
2. Environmental Lemonade: Dealing with the Creature That Put the “Ish” in “Fish”
3. Urban Sturgeon: A Totally Unique Fishery in Portland, Oregon
4. Snagging in the Ozarks: There’s Nothing Not Weird about Paddlefish
5. Alien Invaders in the West: This Isn’t Kansas Anymore
6. Nebraska, Bowfin, and the $8,000 Bullhead: Or How to Catch a State Record Fish
7. Fear and Noodling in Oklahoma: How I Came in First at the Okie Noodling Tournament Then Saw the Belly of the Beast
8. Muskie Hunting in Minnesota: An Education in “the Fish of Ten Thousand Casts”
9. Vision Questing Gator Gar in the Slick Texas Mud: Garvana Accomplished!
10. Rattlesnakes at the Razorback Roundup: Working with What We’ve Got
11. All Hail the Pikeminnow Bounty: Applying Anamnesis in the Northwest as a Working Model for Fisheries
Conclusion: Grotesques of the West and Beyond
Notes
About the author
Mark Spitzer is an associate professor of writing at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of several novels, poems, essays, and literary translations, including Season of the Gar: Adventures in Pursuit of America’s Most Misunderstood Fish and Return of the Gar. Spitzer has consulted for Nat Geo’s Monster Fish and appeared on Animal Planet’s River Monsters.
Summary
Fisherman Mark Spitzer takes readers on an action-packed investigation of the most fierce and fearsome freshwater grotesques of the American West. Through the lenses of history, folklore, biology, ecology, and politics, Spitzer depicts the environmental destruction plaguing the most maligned creatures in our midst while subtly interweaving his experiences of personal tragedy and self-discovery.
