R. Haig-Brown's
Pool & Rapid
THE HAIG-BROWN FLY FISHING ASSOCIATION OF VICTORIA announces the publication of a fine limited edition of the scarce, long out-of-print second novel of Roderick Haig-Brown, Pool and Rapid.
Pool and Rapid was first published in 1932. A second edition appeared in 1936. Roderick Haig-Brown refused to permit any subsequent editions in his lifetime. Now sixty years later, coincidental with the twentieth anniversary of his death and the sixtieth anniversary of "Above Tide", the Haig-Brown house in Campbell River, there will be a new limited edition of the novel authorized by the Haig-Brown family.
Pool and Rapid is unquestionably a young man's book, and there is some truth to Haig-Brown's description of it as "naive and derivative". But it is also his first expression of the question that preoccupied him so intensely for the rest of his life: how was man to live in the world without destroying it?
In Pool and Rapid Roderick Haig-Brown asks the question through the realities of life and work as they were on the west coast, with the knowledge and understanding of the forces in play then available to him, and at a time when some of the harder costs of progress seemed to have more necessity and validity than they do nnow. As a young writer hoping to sell his book he felt obliged to frame his question in the form of a romance, and to provide the answers he soon came to recognize as inadequate, learning that what really mattered was how the question was asked.
The best and lasting thing about Pool and Rapid, unaffected by the natural limitations of his early thinking and understanding, is the expression on every page of Roderick Haig-Brown's youthful and intense love for the New World he set out to know and map in his work as no one else had. For that alone it more than deserves to be back in print.
- ANTHONY ROBERTSON: MARCH, 1966
THE FORWARD TO THIS EDITION is by Valerie Haig-Brown who will autograph each copy. A colour illustration by Pat George will be laid into a die stamped recess in the slipcase of the 220 cloth bound copies and will be tipped into the preliminary pages of the 27 quarter leather bound copies. There are many illustrations throughout the book which have been created by Loucas Raptis. Both artists are members of the Haig-Brown Fly Fishing Association.
THE PRINTING IS BY LETTERPRESS on Carlyle Japan ninety-pound paper with deckle-edge, size 6" x 9". Typeface for the text is Intertype Baskerville with special ligatures, small caps and old style figures. American Typefounders Baskerville is used for the display sizes. Endpaper design is by Pat George. All copies will have the title, author and publisher foil stamped on the spine. The printing and binding will be by Morriss Printing Company Ltd. of Victoria.. Book design is by Beverley Leech.
THE PROCEEDS OF THIS NEW EDITION will distribute $10,400 to the Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek Society toward specific restoration projects in the house. The balance of the funds, approximately $20,000, will distribute to the trust fund of the Haig-Brown Fly Fishing Association of Victoria, to support and commemorate through philanthropy the ideas and principles of the life and work of Roderick Haig-Brown.
This comprises an edition of 220 copies cloth bound in slipcase at $200.00 each; 27 copies quarter leather bound in full leather slipcase at $400.00 each; and 33 copies noted for use as awards by the Haig-Brown Fly Fishing Association of Victoria. The balance of copies are for the printer and will be noted "Not for Sale". One copy of each binding will be placed in the library at "Above Tide".
It is anticipated that the prices will increase after May 31, 1997.
Volumes will be assigned as orders are received. Payment must accompany orders. Distribution is expected by May 31, 1997.
PLEASE SEND ORDERS TO:
HAIG-BROWN FLY FISHING ASSOCIATION
P.O. BOX 6454, DEPOT #1
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA V8P 5M4
"So the River became a real, live, completed thing at last, sweeping majestically down the first long stretch that waited for her as she left the Lake, roaring down her first long rapid; working always to change herself and the things about her; eating away the soft rock from the hard to make points and pinacles here and there, rushing savagely over and among great rounded rocks, chattering on the points of Triangle Rapids, rolling almost sullenly down the smooth stretch and round the great curve of Ned's Canyon; suddenly hurrying from there, slipping faster and faster along till her mad water reached Siwash Rock in a wild raging flurry of white, then boiled and whirled through the Bottle-neck, and flattened out into the mirror stillness of White's Canyon. Then her last great sweep, ever changing with the ebb and flood of the tides, flowing silently and grandly down past Satchem Island, widening and widening all the time, as though eager to embrace the sea from whence she came."
- POOL AND RAPID
© 1996 Interactive Broadcasting Corporation