The Wit’s Guide to Abundance

Or, fishful thinking

May 08, 2025

Melancholy Cat with Plenty of Fish, Circle Of Sebastian Stoskopff, c. 1650

The word abundance can mean so many things but if we’re being honest, it means fish. The bestselling book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson barely mentions fish, but no matter. Consider that in Mandarin, the word for fish, yú, is a homophone for abundance, thus making fish lucky. And consider the multiple piscine miracles performed by Jesus H. Christ, who twice filled Peter’s nets with seafood and subsequently asked his disciples to attach fish symbols to the backs of their station wagons. That inspired atheists to create Darwin fish, which begat Truth fish, which begat Evolve fish, and thus: Abundance!

‘Jeeves is a wonder.’
‘A marvel.’
‘What a brain.’
‘Size nine-and-a-quarter, I should say.’
‘He eats a lot of fish.’
— P.G. Wodehouse

Around the turn of the century, idealistic boffins across Canada leapt at the opportunity to enter the “As Prime Minister…” contest sponsored by an auto parts company. One of the runners up in this contest was a young Pierre Poilievre, who would go on to an illustrious career of running up. At the time, I was publishing a highly profitable online magazine that decided to stage a similar contest titled “As Fisheries Minister…”

“There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.”
— J.B. Priestley

“For our money, the tough job in government today is that of the fisheries minister,” we wrote. “No one really knows who the fisheries minister is, nor should they. If you’re the fisheries minister and you’re in the news, that’s a bad thing. It usually means people are yelling at you over salmon. That’s the thinking behind our innovative contest. Just propose what you would do as Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. It needn’t be much, as the position is largely useless and no one will actually read your essay.”

“What is called genius is the abundance of life or health.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Several months later, we received our first, last, only, and winning submission. It was from one Alberto de Borbon y Piedres of Badalona in Cataluna, and contrary to the stated rules, we read it.

“I think I must be the minister of the fishery industry,” Alberto wrote in his cover letter. “My English is poor. Perhaps you will still like it?” Reader, we loved it. Using Babelfish — fish! — which was how people translated things on the Internet back then, we printed his beautifully surreal essay. Tuning — tuna! — it up with ChatGPT, it’s even better.

“I don’t have lunches, dinners, go to plays or movies. I don’t meditate, escalate, deviate or have affairs. So I have plenty of time.”
— Robert A. Gottlieb

“Many years have passed since the great turbot war between my people and the arrogant, selfish, and hideously pale people of Canada,” Alberto wrote. “And now we, in our cozy homes, on the Castilian hills, sunbathing in Andalucía, praying for rain in Extremadura, mating like rabbits in Catalonia, and cleaning up bomb-blasted entrails of government agents in the Basque Country — we have begun to suffer a profound and painful sadness.”

“Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labour equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal superabundance.”
—Sir Arthur Helps

“In our paellas, in our soups, at every lunch, we lack fish. Cod, turbot, halibut, salmon, even Greenland shark—we lack them all. And for this, we weep. We weep tears enough to flood our ancient roads, to seep through the borders of France and Morocco, rushing in torrents toward the North Sea and drowning the world. All for our bottomless love of the noble silver pollock.” To date, Alberto de Borbon y Piedres has not been put in charge of Canada’s fisheries — but with the new cabinet yet to be announced, there’s still time.

“Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination.”
— Christopher Isherwood

If your paellas are full of fish, do you appreciate the cod, the turbot, the halibut, etc? Or do they blur together into a gefilte-like list of fish? Here I summon an insight from Nick Parker: In his memoirs, the magician Derren Brown recalls noticing that in the London aquarium, the plaques next to each tank are also printed in Braille. That leads him to imagine what it’s like to be visually impaired in an aquarium, a quiet, odourless series of glass-walled carpeted rooms featuring only a list of fish.

Parker aptly describes this as “the ultimate sense-check: ask yourself, am I giving people something worthwhile here? Or have I just written a list of fish?”

Behold, this month’s Riposte Card by the Toronto illustrator Sarah Farquhar. She chose to illustrate a classic and very apropos turn of phrase from fellow Torontonian Margaret Atwood, and the elegant if ominous result will be mailed out to my wonderful paid subscribers in the next week or so. Join them!

“Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.”
— A.N. Whitehead

If you ordered abundance and the waiter brought you fish, would you send it back? In other words, are you going to send this email back? I promise the kitchen will get your order right next week.

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Why should it mean that the fish in the sea are all unable to sing? I had Mr. Scruff’s song Fish playing on repeat as I wrote Get Wit Quick Issue No. 306. Two fine trout! The newsletter’s mascot is a magpie named Magnus after the magician in Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy. The title font is Vulf Sans, the official typeface of the band Vulfpeck, which was modelled after IBM Selectric typewriters. The book was Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. No matter how many people tap the ❤️ below, it will always be ready for more tapping.