Company of Two: On Writing Summary

Nick is fishing for trout in a stream and loses himself in thought. He first thinks about all of the friends he lost after marrying Helen; he lost them, he thinks, because by marrying Helen, fishing was no longer the most important thing in his life, as it had been when they were friends. He misses his friends and thinks over the times they spent together. He thinks back to time he spent in Spain and bullfights, and how movies ruined bullfights, because movies, or writing, about anything real ruins it. That is why, he says, his philosophy is to never write about anything real. He models his writing after Cezanne, a painter, who discarded all conventional tricks and tried to simply depict things as if they really were. Nick gets an idea for a...