Les Claypool: Author

I found out today that Les Claypool - Primus bassist, solo artist, fishing fanatic, and all-round goofball – had a book published earlier this year. South of the Pumphouse is a novelization of a screenplay that Claypool wrote but was unable to get made into a film. That the story involves a fishing trip should be no surprise.

In Les Claypool’s first novel, South of the Pumphouse, we’re served a perplexing and twisted fish tale much like the knotted mess of line and lures at the bottom of a tackle box. Once untangled, the novel shows itself to be the classic story of estranged brothers, family secrets and the genetics of fate. Rifted, diametric Ed and Earl Paxton, agree to hook up after the prolonged death of their father for a reunion fishing trip on the San Francisco Bay. Earl, the oldest, still resides in their Bay Area backwater hometown of El Sobrante, loosely translated in Spanish as “the leftovers.” He lives in a house that used to be a Hells Angels hangout, uses an excessive amount of methamphetamine and has a wife that just left him, again. Ed, on the other hand, lives a short drive South down I-80 in the ultra hip city of Berkeley, is self-consciously married to a half Asian, half black woman and uses an excessive amount of hallucinogens. With a rod, a reel and the faith of fisherman Earl and Ed will once again test the waters of their brotherhood.

Has anyone out there read it?