Gordon Haskell

Excerpt from book

THE IMPERTINENCE OF SALMON

INTRODUCTION

If I chose to submit this book any publisher will demand that I place it into a category. He will ask ‘Is this a children’s book?’
I have begun to pay more attention to words. Words like‘Submit’ and ‘Submissions’.
They suggest to me an order. That I place myself in a subservient position to an organisation claiming to be an authority on any and all subjects. I find that absurd. A virtual impossibility. You are free to find this book absurd. Just as I am free to write it. Other writers are my only guiding lights, along with my conscience.
I have read The Gulag Archipelego. I have read The Bible. I have read Shakespeare, Dickens,Jung, Freud, Nietzsche, Marx and a host of other luminaries. There have been many writers who become world renowned for their remarkable works. They are remarkable because one remarks about them. I don’t doubt they all believed they had good intentions. Some of them made their contribution to the human race in the hope they would make a difference and things could improve for us all. Decade after decade we continue trying to educate ourselves as each and every new generation wrestles with all the thoughts and theories of these marvellous intellects. But the slaughter of mankind continues to break all records. The 20th century succeeded in the murder and torture of, at the very least, 250 million innocent people. That doesn’t sound very educated to me.
A result of Neo-Malthusian Principles perhaps. More armchair philosophy put into practice. Or insanity. I therefore suggest we have a blank canvas.
‘’The Impertinence of Salmon’’ would appear to be nonsense at first glance. Just rubbish. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. It is my contribution. I was obliged to write it down as it flowed through me.. It does not belong to one political group or another. It does advocate good rather than evil and it does suggest a freedom of thought and action. It is the thoughts and the adventures of two individuals, albeit a child and his grand-father, who remain unimpressed with academia and intellectuals. And suspicious perhaps that we’ve all been had. I would describe ‘The Impertinence of Salmon’’ simply as having fun, taking a break from it all, and in support of humanity’s more likeable characteristics.
The title suggests that swimming upstream against the pervading current cannot possibly be sense as we understand ‘sense’, but we do know it works perfectly well for the salmon. It makes me question the very meaning of what constitutes sense in this stupid world of ours. Salmon clearly think for themselves. They have been spared the lecturer. As I have.
Is this a children’s book? I propose it is for everyone. We have a long way to go before we can truly claim to be anything but children stumbling around in a minefield in the dark. Solzhenitsyn has shown us that for which we should be eternally grateful. Whether we are willing to face that fact remains to be seen.

GORDON HASKELL