Content Warning: The source text discusses racism, violence, sexual violence, anti-Black biases, anti-gay biases, and suicide. It also includes racist and sexist slurs that the guide reproduces only in direct quotations.

Fishing and woodwork are recurrent motifs in the novel; their materiality and objectivity contrast with the ambivalence and complexity of language. At the novel’s opening, Monk introduces himself as a fiction writer and an art lover, but he also claims to be a “fisherman” and “woodworker.” In later sections, the novel shows that Monk puts specific emphasis on the ways fishing and woodwork relate to him and how they coexist with his work as a writer. These practical pursuits provide Monk with a certainty that contrasts with the fluidity of language. For instance, while describing a tree, Monk notes that the “heartwood” offers a “structural support,” and says that this is a characteristic that he often cannot find in sentences (13). While confronting the crises of his family situation and his artistic work, he finds refuge in woodworking. He starts making things out of wood for his mother in an attempt to distract himself from literature and writing. While language sometimes confused him since he could use it in ways that he could not really define, wood obliged him to follow its structure.