grandfather

Many anglers begin fishing in childhood and the sport is closely bound up with memories of early life. So, just by way of introducing something on memory into the blog, I'm going to quote Gao Xingjian's short story, 'Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather'. The text begins with the narrator walking past a shop and seeing 'a ten-piece fibreglass rod labelled "imported"', which reminds him of his grandfather:

I remember that if [he] heard someone was going to the provincial capital, he would be sure to ask the person to bring back fishing hooks for him, as if fish could only be caught with hooks bought in the big city. I also remember him mumbling that the rods sold in the city had reels. After casting the line, you could relax and have a smoke as you waited for the bell on the rod to tinkle. He wanted one of those so he'd have his hands free to roll his cigarettes.

As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that everything has changed since then and the river where the two of them went to fish is now dry:

I come to the riverbank. The sand underfoot crunches and sounds like my grandmother sighing. [...] This is the river where my grandfather used to take me, but now there is no water even in the gaps between the rocks. In the riverbed there are only big round unmoving rocks, like a flock of dumb sheep huddled close to one another, afraid that people will drive them away.

I'm making the text sound simple - warm memories and a cold present - but it's a strange and subtle story. Its evocation of the past is not sentimental and the image of fishing provides a complex link between the layers of time. Does it function like this among the anglers we know? How does angling mediate the passage of time?