Understanding the title of my new novel - The Sum of One Man's Pleasure

 In my interview with Sheila Pratt, I was asked what The Sum of One Man's Pleasure meant, what informed me to create such a title. As a book title has great weight, and a certain mystery behind it, I wanted something compelling, and provocative. But I found the title in an unlikely spot, in one of Roderick Haig-Brown's celebrated books, A River Never Sleeps. Haig-Brown was a magistrate in Campbell River BC., but more recognized for his books on fishing, and for his views on conservation and environmental protection. His writing was one of my greatest early influences.

Haig-Brown wrote eloquently of the rivers he fished, the mood, such as the heavy water of November. The feel of water against his legs, the power of it, the companionship of fellow fishermen, a bright fish, and life along the river. It's smells, and the texture of the woods, the earthy aromas. He called such things fishermen's pleasures.

They are sensory pleasures, something the romantic in me can identify with. There are many such simple pleasures: the sound of rain on the roof of your car, or tent, the smell of woodsmoke, a freshly struck wooden match, ground coffee, the fragrance after the rain following a dry spell, petrichor. A freshly cut Christmas tree. Sunsets, sunrises, and softly falling snow. And, of course, there are the bodily pleasures.

To Finn Kenny, the simple pleasures were part of a cramped life, his reclusive existence in Spencerwood Estate. There we witness the fire crackling in his cabin. We experience the warmth, the solitude, the safety. A drink, a cup of coffee, music, or the wind in the trees. There are manifold simple pleasures that we pause to recognize. As his world begins to broaden, Finn rediscovers the sensual and visual pleasures of relationship.

Finn Kenny's world is buoyed by such simplicity. The sum, we could say. That is all he has left, which allows for so much more.