The Surgeon

There's a chapter called The Surgeon about 2/3 through the book. The narrator is fishing and talking with a young surgeon who is bitter and frustrated and struggling to find happiness. He is moving around the country, searching for the ideal place to hunt & fish because he is tired of working. He's looking for a place to match the picture in his head and he becomes more and more disillusioned every time reality falls short of the ideal.

I think that's really what Trout Fishing in America is all about - RB's idea of America, how it clashes with reality as he experiences it, and how they, rarely but sometimes, line up perfectly.

The chapter ends like this:

"I talked to the surgeon a little while longer and then said good-bye. We were leaving in the afternoon for lake Josephus, located at the edge of the Idaho wilderness, and he was leaving for America, often only a place in the mind."


ALSO

Sturgeon is a fish and that's close to Surgeon, so...

ALSO

If you look at the word "surgeon" for too long it starts to look like it's spelled wrong even though it's not and I know because I checked.