The Book of Eels, Patrik Svensson [bill gates best books .TXT] 📗

the rod bent like a reed; I took a few steps to the side to find a new angle, tugging so hard on the line the nylon sang. I thought there were only two ways out of this situation and both had its losers, and I cursed under my breath and finally sank onto my knees, clutching the line, peering down into the murky water.

I know it was an eel because I saw it. It slowly slithered up out of the shadows and came toward me. It was large and a pale shade of gray, with black button eyes, and it looked at me as if to make sure I could see it. I let go of the line and saw the hook come out just as the eel reached the surface, then it turned and slid back into the hidden depths.

For a while, I just sat there by the water’s edge. Everything was quiet and the lake completely still; the sun sent a white sheen spreading across the water and everything beneath the surface was hidden, as though behind a mirror. What lay hidden underneath was a secret, but now it was my secret.

Sources

The excerpt from a poem by Seamus Heaney on page v is from “A Lough Neagh Sequence,” from the collection Door into the Dark (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).

3: ARISTOTLE AND THE EEL BORN OF MUD

Aristotle. Historia animalium (The History of Animals). Translated by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.

Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1974.

Lennox, James. “Aristotle’s Biology.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information. Revised January 31, 2016. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/.

Marsh, M. C. “Eels and the Eel Question.” Popular Science Monthly 61 (September 1902).

Prosek, James. Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World’s Most Mysterious Fish. New York: Harper, 2010.

Schweid, Richard. Consider the Eel: A Natural and Gastronomic History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Walton, Izaak. The Compleat Angler. London: 1653.

5: SIGMUND FREUD AND THE EELS OF TRIESTE

Cairncross, David. The Origin of the Silver Eel—With Remarks on Bait & Fly Fishing. London: G. Shiel, 1862.

Eigenmann, Carl H. “The Annual Address of the President—The Solution of the Eel Question.” Transactions of the American Microscopical Society 23 (May 1902).

Freud, Sigmund. The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard Silberstein, 1871–1881. Edited by Walter Boehlich. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1990.

Marsh, M. C. “Eels and the Eel Question.” Popular Science Monthly 61 (September 1902).

Simmons, Laurence. Freud’s Italian Journey. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.

Whitebook, Joel. Freud: An Intellectual Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

7: THE DANE WHO FOUND THE EEL’S BREEDING GROUND

Eigenmann, Carl H. “The Annual Address of the President—The Solution of the Eel Question.” Transactions of the American Microscopical Society 23 (May 1902).

Garstang, Walter. Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses. 1951.

Grassi, Giovanni Battista. “The Reproduction and Metamorphosis of the Common Eel (Anguilla vulgaris).” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, January 1896.

Marsh, M. C. “Eels and the Eel Question.” Popular Science Monthly 61 (September 1902).

Poulsen, Bo. Global Marine Science and Carlsberg: The Golden Connections of Johannes Schmidt (1877–1933). Boston: Brill, 2016.

Schmidt, Johannes. “The Breeding Place of the Eel.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 211 (1923), 179–208.

Tsukamoto, Katsumi, and Mari Kuroki, eds. Eels and Humans. New York: Springer, 2014.

9: THE PEOPLE WHO FISH FOR EEL

www.alarv.se.

www.alakademin.se.

Prosek, James. Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World’s Most Mysterious Fish. New York: Harper, 2010.

Schweid, Richard. Consider the Eel: A Natural and Gastronomic History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Tsukamoto, Katsumi, and Mari Kuroki, eds. Eels and Humans. New York: Springer, 2014.

11: THE UNCANNY EEL

The Bible, Revised Standard Version.

Eco, Umberto, ed. On Ugliness. Translated by Alastair McEwen. New York: Rizzoli, 2007.

Freud, Sigmund. Das Unheimliche. 1919.

Friedman, David M. A Mind of its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis. New York: Free Press, 2001.

Grass, Günter. The Tin Drum. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Pantheon, 1961.

Hoffmann, E. T. A. “The Sandman.” 1816.

Jentsch, Ernst. Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen. Psychiatrisch-Neurologische Wochenschrift: 1906.

Myśliwiec, Karol. The Twilight of Ancient Egypt: First Millennium B.C.E. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Nilsson Piraten, Fritiof. Bombi Bitt och jag. Stockholm: A. Bonnier, 1932.

Swift, Graham. Waterland. New York: Poseidon Press, 1983.

Vian, Boris. The Foam of Days. 1947.

Winslow, Edward, and William Bradford, Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. London: John Bellamie, 1622.

13: UNDER THE SEA

Carson, Rachel. The Sea around Us. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.

          . Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.

          . Under the Sea-Wind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941.

Jabr, Ferris. “The Person in the Ape.” Lapham’s Quarterly 11, no. 1 (Winter 2018).

Lear, Linda. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.

Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (October 1974): 435–50.

15: THE LONG JOURNEY HOME

Carson, Rachel. Under the Sea-Wind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941.

Inoue, Jun G., Masaki Miya, Michael Miller, et al. “Deep-Ocean Origin of the Freshwater Eels.” Biology Letters 6, no. 3 (June 2010): 363–66.

Munk, Peter, Michael M. Hansen, Gregory E. Maes, et al. “Oceanic Fronts in the Sargasso Sea Control the Early Life and Drift of Atlantic Eels.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277 (June 2010): 3593–99.

Prosek, James. Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World’s Most Mysterious Fish. New York: Harper, 2010.

Righton, David, Håkan Westerberg, Eric Feunteun, et al. “Empirical Observations of the Spawning Migration of European Eels: The Long and Dangerous Road to the Sargasso Sea.” Science Advances 2, no. 10 (October 2016): https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1501694.

Schmidt, Johannes. “The Breeding Place of the Eel.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 211 (1923): 179–208.

Swift, Graham. Waterland. New York: Poseidon Press, 1983.

Tesch, Friedrich-Wilhelm. Der Aal: Biologie und Fischerei. Hamburg: P. Parey, 1973.

          . “The Sargasso Sea Eel Expedition 1979.” Helgoländer Meeresuntersuchungen 35, no. 3 (September 1982): 263–77.

16: BECOMING A FOOL

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Jerkert, Jesper. “Slagrutan i folktro och forskning.” Vetenskap eller villfarelse. Edited by Jesper Jerkert and