As mentioned last month, we'd been planning for quite some time to write a column called Trout Fishing in Albania about a book which may, or may not, exist. It stems from a conversation I had with Montreal book dealer Michel Lanteigne around the time I had started this book scouting business. Michel, much younger but more experienced than me, was dealing especially in first edition mysteries, but he had other interests as well, such as children's books, photography monographs, "and anything to do with fishing if it's old or unusual and in decent condition."
"Can you give me an example?"
"Well, if you found, for instance, a book called Trout Fishing in Albania," he chucked, "that would interest me."
"Does such a book exist?"
"I just spun it off the top of my head. But you wanted an example. You never know. If you do find a Trout Fishing in Albania, bring it around before you show it to anyone else."
Over the years, for some bizarre reason, it's become an obsession: Find a Trout Fishing in Albania, or at least something close to it: Trout Fishing in Armenia rather than Albania? Trout Fishing in Upper New York State? (ie., near Albany. Are there trout in the Hudson River?) In Abyssinia? Trout Fishing in Abysmal Ignorance?
The other day I had a customer from Ottawa who collects fishing books. He bought the one interesting angling book in stock, Fishing Around. But we started talking about fishing books and I told him about the quest to find a Trout Fishing in Albania.
"I never saw a book with such a title, but I can officially report there are trout in Albania."
"Oh? How would you know?"
"I was there recently."
"To fish?"
"No. I work for the Department of Foreign Affairs. It was to attend a conference on problems in the Balkansùdesignation of borders, refugees, all that stuff. But the interesting part for a diehard fisherman is that it took place in a resort hotel on Lake Ochrid.
"I had time to look around," he continued, "and talk to people in the village. They told me that there is a species of trout in Lake Ochrid, not unlike brown trout, that are not found anywhere else in the world. They're prized fishermen, especially Germans; many of them poach the rivers feeding the lake; there's a great deal of friction, in fact, between them and the local population."
Which doesn't bring us any closer to finding a book called Trout Fishing in Albania, if such a document exists.
At the usual book sites on the webùabebooks, addall, bookfinderùthere's nothing listed even remotely resembling it. Unfazed, I googled-up Lake Ochrid Trout; here, many of the hits were about a tasty variety of trout found on the Macedonia side of the lake (pastremska, in Macedonian).
On the Albanian side, there are two species of this unique trout, letnica and helvica. We also find out that Ochrid is a breathtakingly beautiful tectonic lake measuring some 349 square kilometers: The lake has been called a Museum of Living Fossils. Of interest to us literary folk, in the 9th century Ochrid was a center of Slavic literary and cultural activity.
The only actual book that could be found that has a mention of Lake Ochrid is Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. A Journey Through Yugoslavia. In her chapter on Macedonia, she writes:
"Did we know Professor So-and-So? Yes, we knew that ornament of the British academic world. He had liked Ochrid Trout, all the world liked Ochrid Trout, we would like Ochrid Trout, but first would we like a risotto of crayfish, such as the professor had also liked?"
That's still a long way from Trout Fishing in Albania. So let's start from scratch. How about just trout Fishing? That idea falls flat on its gills since there are 3,764 abebooks listings of books with "Trout Fishing" in titles. One of the most common is Richard Brautigan's 1960s hip novel Trout Fishing in America. If only the meric in America could be switched to lbani we'd have our Albanian connection. In any case, as a 1962 rejection letter by a Viking editor noted, "Mr. Brautigan submitted a book to us called Trout Fishing in America. I gather from the reports that it is not about trout fishing."
Nor is it about Albania.
Anyway, why does the book that our dealer pal Michel sadistically suggested we find have to be about trout in the first place? How about bass? Or Northern pike? Or sturgeons? Or that ancient relic, the coelacanth? There is a fascinating book on my shelves, A Fish Caught in Time, The Search for the Coelecanth by Samantha Weinberg; I bought a batch of them on sale at Indigo to offer family and friends. But though the fish itself is a relic from the age of dinosaurs, the book published in 1999, thus hardly qualifies as an "Olde Founde Booke".
How about flounder? Yes, that makes sense. Founde Bookes? Nay, Flounder Bookes. And does it have to be a geographical entity, a place? Look, there's kleptomania, bibliomaniaà.Wait, I'm on to something now. Quick, where is that old book, the desert island book of books, not the Bible but Tales of Laughter, edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin and published by Garden City in 1938 (but with a 1908 Doubleday, Page copyright).
A collection of mirth ranging from Chinese Nights entertainments to Grimm to Edward Lear's nonsense tales, it's the book if I may be sentimental and personal, that our late mom used to read to her children as she tucked us in. It' still a giggling fine read. (Back then kids giggled when they went to bed rather than googled). The ripped-up copy I've had since childhood is now with a grandson in Hong Kong, but it's been replaced with a fairly decent copy found for a few bucks online.
Prominently situated on a shelf next to reference books, thus always easy to reach, it contains 67 stories with titles like "The Booby", "Doctor Know-All", "The Nose-Tree". Most references to Tales of Laughter mention "The Story of Little Black Mingo", which some readers regarded as offensive, more because of the title than anything in the content.
But it's the tales where all logic is cast aside that are best. One of the cutest is "Sir Gammer Vans", whose noble jester presence graces the coverù
"Last Sunday morning at six o'clock in the evening, as I was sailing over the tops of the mountains in my little boat, I met two men on horseback riding on one mare: So I asked them: "Could they tell me whether the little woman was dead yet who was hanged last Saturday week for drowning herself in a shower of feathers?" They said they could not inform me positively, but if I went to Sir Gammer Vans he could tell me all about it.
"But how am I to know the house?" said I.
"Ho, 'tis easy enough," said they, "for 'tis a brick house built entirely of flints, standing alone by itself in the middle of sixty or seventy others just like it."
"Oh, nothing in the world is easier," said I.
It pays to be ignorant, sez I.
Floundering through the book, I find the tale that's been floundering through the mind, "The Fisherman and his Wife", which beginsù
"There was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a miserable little hovel close to the sea à.One day, when he was sitting looking deep down into the shining water, he felt something on his lineà"
He hauls up a great flounderù
"I am no common flounder, I am an enchanted prince! What good will it do you to kill me? I shan't be good to eat; put me back into the water, and leave me to swim about."
The fisherman, of course, is more than ready to put back a flounder that can converse with him.
He returns to his miserable hovel and relates the adventure to his wife. "Alas," says she, "isn't it bad enough always to live in this wretched hovel? Thou mightest at least have wished for a nice clean cottage. Go back and call him; tell him I want a pretty cottage; he will surely give us that!"
Reluctantly obeying, he returns to the spot where he had hauled the flounder in, and chantsù

"Flounder, flounder in the sea,
Prythee, hearken unto me:
My wife, Ilsebil, will have her own way
Whatever I wish, whatever I say."

"Go home," says the flounder, "she has her wish fully.
Their little hovel has been transformed into a magnificent cottage with a full larder and just about everything they would need for a comfortable life; outside, a yard with chickens and ducks and a garden full of vegetables and fruits.
Of course, the wife is not satisfied. She sends her husband back to ask the flounder for a big stone castle; when that wish is granted, she asks to become king, otherwise what use is it to have such a castle? Still not content, next she wants to be emperor.
"Husband, if he can make me emperor, he can make me pope; go back at once. I must be pope this very day."
"Pope she is," the flounder tells the fisherman.
But it's still not enough. Now she wants to be lord of the universe. "Otherwise, I shall never have another happy moment."
Such a storm is raging now when he calls on the flounder that mountains tremble, the sky is pitch black, houses and trees quiver and sway; the sea is a mass of gigantic waves, crested with white foamù
"Now, what does she want?"
"Alas, she wants to be lord of the universe."
"Now she must go back to her old hovel," the flounder tells him, "and there you will find her."
And there they are to this very day!ùthe story ends.
And so your floundering writer, he too returns to his hovel, where he remains to this very day, but hoping with all hope that somebody might drop by with even a worn copy of that elusive volume, Trout Fishing in Albania.
If you do have such a book, or anything remotely close to it, please let me know. I pay good dollars!

Next month: Brown Sugar.

Don Bell is a writer, book scout and owner of the 'Librairie Founde Bookes' secondhand bookshop in Sutton, Quebec. He can be reached by e-mail at:
donthebookman@hotmail.com