Fish Story

[ellenkushner]

OK, here's another one: in a new story that is coming out in F&SF shortly (more on this later), a teenage boy (in the Riverside world) is in the country, angling, and catches a fish:

...his opponent lashed the surface of the water. It was a pike, a big one, with a sharp pointed snout, its jaws snapping with the hook. It struggled against the pull of the line, and Crispin struggled with it as it raised white water and then rose into the air – it looked almost as if the fish were trying to wrestle him into its own element, holding him at the end of the nearly-invisible line, coming toward him, going away, dancing on the wind. Finally it spun in, a writhing silver streak of a pike that landed on the grass beside him with a desperate thud, enormous and frantic for air.

The editor queries:

Is the fish "frantic for air" or "frantic from air"? It seems to me the former suggests that it's frantically seeking air, which shouldn't be the case for a fish, should it?

Um.... They breathe with their gills, right? But they get air from the water, so it would be desperate for air, just the processed kind, right? Or should I say "frantic for breath"? which possibly sounds even dumber than "frantic from air"?

And if you know more about fishing and pike than I do, and see any other ghastly missteps there, do let me know. I researched it like crazy, so don't tell me you can't fly-fish for pike.

Just don't trouble to teach me a lot about fishing. I already turned in the story. I just need to know how fish breathe. Who knows what I might need next?

Comments

[mac-stone.livejournal.com]

I gotta say, I wouldn't have even hesitated over the line as originally written.

Frantic for the water, maybe? Although "frantic for breath" doesn't bother me a bit, either.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Yes, all of this.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i'd say "frantic in the air". or "drowning in air".

one native speaker's tuppence :)

[tournevis.livejournal.com]

I agree with drowning in air.

[elorie.livejournal.com]

You already used air in the passage to mean the actual air, so it's confusing.

Fish breathe oxygen (not air as such) from the water by passing water through their mouths and over the capillary-rich tissue in their gills.

[yaoi-in-exile.livejournal.com]

It sounds fine as is, says I. :3 I guess some persnickety types would question that phrase for a second, but the gist is conveyed, that the fish is gasping for *breath*, whatever that may be to it.

*wistful si~iiigh* Why is everything you do so awesome?

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I like "frantic for breath."

And YAY RIVIERSIDE STORY!

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

It's in the air, so "frantic for air" sounds weird. (even though it's air that the fish can't breathe.)

"frantic in air" would work.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Frantic to return to the water? You describe above the fish behaving as if it wanted to lure Crispin into its own element, and that would be water.

[unovis-lj.livejournal.com]

"Frantic for air" would have thrown me right out of the story too -- frantic for oxygen? frantic to breathe?
Simple explanation of how it works is here:
http://www.geocities.com/aquarium_fish/how_fish_breathe.htm

[thorn-and-calyx.livejournal.com]

I would just go with "frantic". The fish is frantic to breathe, certainly, but it'd also be frantically trying to return to its watery environment as well as avoid the scary predator. My half-penny, for what it's worth.

[ckd]

Same here. I think "enormous and frantic" also gives the sentence ending more punch.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

*nods* I'd cut "from air." Or maybe try "gasping," if what you're wanting is that heaving sort of gaping-gills idea.

Will a fish that big be frantic?

...aaaaaand now I've spent way more time than I should have looking at YouTube videos of people landing pike. Which may, apparently, be not so much frantic as vaguely homicidal. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuGRr2XqEJ8&feature=related)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

There are YouTube videos of people landing pike?! Holy cow. Must go look. HIBK.

I wanted a scarey fish.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

There is apparently an entire subgenre of videos not just of people landing pike, but people being attacked by pike. The YouTube comments on these are, um, made of unbounded awesome. People calling each other out on their choice of fish-landing devices, etc. etc.

(I was once writing a short story about sentient platypuses. The ensuing research experience convinced me that there are YouTube videos of people and animals in pretty much any combination you can imagine.)

[temporus.livejournal.com]

If it had not been highlighted, I wouldn't have thought anything out of the ordinary.

Alternates that spring to mind are: frantic to breathe, or frantic for a breath.

[amy34.livejournal.com]

"frantic for air" sounds best to me.

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

You've already got one sentence ending in 'air'. The editor has a point (editors usually do, she said loyally), though I don't know much about fish biology. I'd just end with 'frantic', unless you don't like the way that changes the rhythm.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I think "frantic for breath" sounds better, and won't get the reader tied up in knots about fish lungs--I mean, I think you're right that they get air from the water, except I suppose what they really get is oxygen from the water? "Air" isn't strictly o2 and can mean "the opposite of water" in some contexts. "Gasping" maybe? Although that doesn't sound as good as "frantic for air/breath."

"frantic from air" is not under consideration, I hope :)

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

I vote for "frantic for breath" as well. It would remove the niggling doubt as to what you mean by "air" (the actual atmosphere, or the oxygen in it. Fish don't breathe air as such, though they do need oxygen).

[ninstorage.livejournal.com]

My vote is for "frantic for breath" as well. It's the most sensible option to me because the rhythm of "frantic for air" is sustained, and fishes breathe in different ways from us mammals ;)

[krismcd59.livejournal.com]

I vote for just "frantic" too - it's unlikely to be frantic for anything besides air. Or "frantic, its gills gaping"?

[kortirion.livejournal.com]

Fish 'drown' in air, maybe play with something like 'frantic for water'...?

[twistedchick]

Frantic and twisting on the line?

Pike, btw, are big tough guys, and likely to bite through a line and anything else in their way. Not for the casual fisherman.

[pamola.livejournal.com]

I'ld go with "frantic for breath" to be concise and precise and stay with the idea of "frantic for air". I understand both in relation to fish.

[writegirl23.livejournal.com]

Another vote for simply frantic. I like the way it sounds and I think readers would have no trouble assuming that it was frantic for water. However, if you kept 'frantic for air,' it wouldn't bring me out of the story.

Maybe if you post more of the story, we all could make a better informed guess? :)

[shelly-rae.livejournal.com]

I'd go with something more like frantically trying to get off the hook. Or spit out the barb, or gasping in the air. Fish like that struggle hard and then one usually hits them hard with a mallet, rock, or some such blunt instrument. My brother is a fisherman in Alaska and he uses an old baseball bat to club fish that are writhing on the deck. They can knock over a man, and many of them bite.
Good luck!
Anon

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I wonder if I have time to work in the mallet? It's much better than what I have instead - and fits the theme of violence that comes next. Drat.

[shelly-rae.livejournal.com]

Well if you're looking for violence. Often the fish, especially largish ones or sharks, have to be clubbed several times before they stop frantically flipping around and even then, they might not be dead. Then there's the whole gutting, filleting, and such. Gulls gather, like tidy vultures, behind any fishing boat heading into the marina--or swoop near the places that people clean fish. There they fight over the offal, heads, fins, and such. So all in all it's a rather violent messy business.

I always wince at the sound of mallet hitting flesh but that doesn't stop me from enjoying what I've caught.
Anon

[rojomojo.livejournal.com]

frantic for air. and being a fisherdude, pike are not silver but a geen mottled colorations. with big, sharp teeth. want to get bloody, grab a pike by the mouth. OW!

rojo

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oh, bless you for being a fisherdude. I knew someone must be. I looked up pike & photos of pike, but can believe they were misleading. However, I think either your note contained typos, or it's fishergeek to me: what is "a geen mottled colorations"?

[northern]

Frantic for oxygen?

Um, a good fish keeping book generally has a section on fish biology

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

Google caught me a good description about fly fishing for pike on the Colorado River. If the guy is fishing for trout and gets a pike on the line instead, the tippet's going to give.

Fish that aren't anabantoids or lung fish or a couple of other fish adapted to breathe air by sucking it into their guts breathe exclusively through gill membranes (the ones that are supposed to be bright red if the fish is fresh). Oxygen diffuses from the water across the cell walls of the gill membranes (take a good look at the next dead fish you see in the market, lift the gill covers and then notice how frilly the gill membranes are). If the gill membranes are kept moist, the fish can survive for a while out of water (a lot longer than we can survive in it). Fish can go anaerobic fighting being caught so a lot of the frantic gill cover movement is about trying to re-oxygenate the muscles. (People who do catch and release hold the fish in the water facing the current so the fish can recover before they let it go).

A lot of fish will gape at the surface if the water is low in oxygen -- I'm not sure how many can get oxygen from gut absorption (gold fish and carp seem particularly adapted for this).

More than you wanted to know about fish?

I used to breed killiefish and small cichlids for sale until I saturated the killie market in southwest Virginia.

Re: Um, a good fish keeping book generally has a section on fish biology

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Awesome and of an awesomeness. Many thanks!

[dryfoo.livejournal.com]

It's always fun to see what completely random topics I'll trip over in my daily stroll around the virtual block.

I think mouseworks gets to the nub of it, in a technical kinda way. The fish isn't panicking for lack of air/oxygen, but from being dragged into a sudden glaring desiccating nothingness. It's so much brighter out of the water, his eyes and gills are parching, and the lifelong surrounding heft of the water is _gone_.

I can't suggest the single word that finishes "frantic for X" either.

Most people don't appreciate how a writer will sometimes struggle for the mot goddam juste.

[anthromama.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

If I had been editing that, I probably wouldn't have questioned it (though I'm sure you could get technical and say the fish needed oxygen, not "air", since there's not really any air in water). But my first thought would be "gasping frantically" or "gaping frantically".

[handworn.livejournal.com]

"Frantic for oxygen"?

But "breath" sounds fine to me. Wouldn't throw me out of the reader's reverie, I think. Who are we to say that "breath" can refer only to our kind of respiration?