Customer Reviews

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

5 star:		(112)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Norman Maclean began writing late in life, passing away not long after penning this extraordinary piece, depriving us of his gift just as he arrived. The book is actually three short stories but the focus is clearly on the novella "A River Runs Through It". On the surface, the title story is his recollections of his father, a Presbyterian minister, and his troubled but talented brother, with whom he fished. Set in the Montana of Maclean's youth, he paints exquisitely vivid and beautiful word pictures of a land and water and family now gone. At the core is the frustration of the often-futile attempt of trying to help another or trying to save a loved one from their self-destruction. There are passages here which are as wonderfully written as anything in English. Not a page passes without discovering a superbly crafted gem. "So it is...that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed." "It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us." Throughout the tale, his life, his religion, his family, his fly-fishing are metaphors, each for the other. And the words of each are heard in the waters and stone of the rivers. He is haunted, he tells us, by waters. I am haunted by his words which approach poetry.

A River Runs Through It is quite simply the single greatest book I have ever read. Maclean's language is as terse and economical as any in Hemingway, but Maclean imparts the type of true feeling and emotion into his simple words that Hemingway himself was incapable of producing. A River Runs Through It is not a story about fishing, but rather a tale of family. The family just happens to share a love of fishing, and Maclean's love of waters has more to do with its close association with his family than with the actual fishing that takes place there. It is the family's tragic loss of Paul, the true master fly-fisherman of the clan, that ties Maclean to waters and inspires the closing lines of the novella. A River Runs Through It delves into interpersonal relationships in a manner which grips the reader and makes him/her reflect on his/her own family. Although I am myself an avid fisherman, I am a more avid reader and I can say that for my part, the fishing element of the story is unimportant except for its association with Maclean's family. Maclean's prose is beautiful to point that his description of a common object or occurence could bring the reader to tears. A River Runs Through It is quite simply the most beautiful thing I have ever read. Period.

When, several years ago, I started reading a lot of fishing books, one title kept cropping up in other books. Every author seemed to defer to A River Runs Through It; it was universally acknowledged to be the greatest fishing story ever written. I dutifully sought it out and read it. I'm sure everyone has seen the movie by now, so I won't be giving anything away when I confess that Paul's death upset me so much that, on that first reading, I hated the book. It was like Old Yeller and the MASH where Henry died and Brian's Song all rolled into one. Returning to it better prepared, I simply enjoyed it for the language and for the bittersweet family story it relates and I learned to love it. Then, in 1992, Robert Redford brought the story to the screen and the beauty of the scenery and some terrific performances, combined with the large chunks of narrative taken directly from the book, resulted in one of the better movies of recent years and cemented the book's place in the pantheon of great American stories.

Amazingly, Norman MacLean, who taught English at the University of Chicago for 43 years, did not publish this book until 1976, after retiring from his teaching job in 1973. I don't know whether he had worked on the story throughout his whole life, as was the case with the posthumous book

Young Men and Fire, but the final product has such beautifully sculpted language, that it would not be hard to believe that it is the end result of four decades of effort. Here is the famous opening:

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.

And, of course, after Paul's death, Norman's father urges him:

Why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it? Only then will you understand what happened and why. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.

And the story concludes:

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

And in between these memorable passages, MacLean unfolds a timeless story of fathers and sons and brothers and their often futile attempts to understand one another and the way in which sport can provide a tie, sometimes the only tie, between them. You will be haunted by the affecting story and by MacLean's crystalline prose in this very nearly perfect book.

GRADE: A+

I'm a writer, and occasionally I write a sentence or paragraph - or even several pages, now and then - that I think read quite well. But then, when I read the writing of someone like Normal Maclean, I consider throwing in the towel in recognition of the fact that, no matter how long I try, I'll never write that beautifully.
Of course, the title story in this rather small book, A River Runs Through It, is known to the majority of literate people in the US, and not just because of the marvelous movie made from the novella. But this book has other stories as well. Maclean used his teenage experience working for logging operations and the US Forestry Service as the foundation for a couple of the other loooong stories included in this collection. And, get this: even the Acknowledgments section is worth a careful read; it reads like another essay, in itself.
Normal Maclean, to me, seems to have some of the attributes of E. B. White, specifically the ability to take something concrete and mundane, like fly fishing or packing mules for a 3-day walk into the Montana mountains, and, with the lyricism and beauty and skill of his writing, make it soar into the ethereal world of Universal Truth.
Don't believe me? Read it and see for yourself.

"A River Runs Through It" is a remarkable work of art, and, to borrow a turn of phrase from Maclean himself, one of the best examples of "the pure and the good" of American literaturen there is to be fouundn. Maclean's prose is sparse, and in this it is easilly comparable to Hemmingway's. But there is something more, I think, in Maclean's story than is to be found in most of Hemmingway's works. Part of this arises from Maclean's uncanny sense of rhythm; he writes of the rhythm of fly-casting, and his prose has a rhythm just as meticulous as that of the proper casting a rod. The style and sound of Maclean's work is unparalleled.

This allows "A River Runs Through It" to reveal a story of surprising depth and meaning while still remaining, as Maclean writes in his introduction, "Western." There is no mistaking the story as anything but a western piece of literature; the sparse and rhythmical style Maclean uses mirrors the themes and content of his work; the careful simplicity of the prose mirrors and emphasizes the careful simplicity of the story, in a similar fashion to how Fitzgerald's decadent style mirrors and emphasizes his own Jazz-age tales.

But what of the story itself? It is, as others say, more than a 'fly-fishing' story, and it expresses truths so simple and fundamental that they remain elusive despite their qualities. The story has humor and poignancy, and is undeniably powerful.

It is a shame Maclean didn't write complete more writing between the publication of "River" and his death ("Young Men and Fire" being published posthumously and in a somewhat ramshackle shape), but it is also perhaps fitting. A long list of titles does not a great author make. Maclean writes of simple truth with such humanity that even taken alone, "A River Runs Through It" forces one to include Maclean among the great American authors, and stands as a testament to both its truths and its author.

Norman Maclean's beautifully written autobiographical tale has become one of the classics of American literature. Some of the many powerful themes running through the story include the struggle for grace represented by the art of fly fishing, the ebb and flow of time, and the idea of family.

It is the examination of family that is perhaps strongest. While the relationships between father and son, mother and son, and husband and wife are all dealt with, it is the filial duties and relationships that are ultimately the centerpiece of the story. It is Maclean's haunting by what happens to his brother that makes the novel what it is.

Barry Moser's illustrations are superb and are a compelling reason to own the hardcover addition. The movie version was well done and did justice to the novel.

This tale of two brothers, their family and their passion forfly fishing and the Montana outdoors, causes me to have conflictingemotions: on the one hand, it inspires me to try to create my own work of fiction, while on the other hand, it causes me to despair of such an undertaking, as any attempts I might make will be clumsy and lackluster compared to McLean's novella. A friend, who was an English major in college and actually buys large quantities of those slightly oversized, artsy paperback works of fiction that sell for $14, recommended this book to me. She is an exceptionally bright, well-read individual, who has never had a thought in her life of taking up fishing as a hobby, yet her description of this book is 100% accurate. She told me that A River Runs Through It was the most beautifully written piece of literature that has ever graced the English language. I could not agree more.

After finishing this work, I can only wonder with amazement why this short book was not required reading for any of my various English classes in my past. We read Hemingway as an example of powerful, concise writing, yet compared to McLain, our good friend Ernest appears effete, odd and uninteresting. Read some of the other reviews (discounting the several obviously juvenile ones, every single discriminating adult gave this novella five stars) and the adjective that is used most frequently, and most appropriately, is "beautiful." McLean achieved perfection in this work. Read it and you will feel enriched.

Do not ignore this book simply because you may not have an interest in fishing. This 104 page story does consecrate a considerable number of pages to starkly poetic descriptions of fly fishing (lovely, haunting descriptions of men standing in Montana's Big Blackfoot River, attempting to achieve something great in the half-light of a rocky canyon), but this story is not about fishing. It is about two brothers who vaguely understand that--much like a river--life takes its own twists and turns and cannot be stopped by man. Life cannot always be understood in an intellectual sense, but sometimes it can be appreciated in a visceral one, and perhaps we can pull moments of brillance from it, just as a fisherman might pull a beautiful trout from a river. Maclean gives us his life and his heart in this story, and it is impossible not to be touched by his emotions. Everytime I read this book I learn something new, and as I plan on reading this book many more times to come, I suppose I still have a lot of learning to do.

I have read this collection of three stories about 5 times and The stories just seem to get richer with each read. There are parts I forget or somehow overlooked that are real gems during the next reading of the story. The prose is very fine although told in a "Manly" roughness that only slightly covers an amazing level of sensitivity to the people and the setting. There are very few books that are better.

I've been so disappointed in recent times hearing those who've gotten "too caught up in the fly fishing details" of A River Runs Through It, to appreciate the novel. There are two reasons for this. The first is that few authors are ever able to take their own unique worldview-their own social context, value structures, etc.-and to so aptly apply them as a metaphor for looking at the world. The second, (having nothing to do with any knowledge of fly fishing on my part), is the grace with which Norman Maclean relays such a personal, pertinent piece of his life to the reader.

The book is certainly not about fly fishing. It is a bittersweet and awe-inspiring look at a family so thick with love and pride that they are made unable to help one another when their help is needed most.

Within the body of the novel, Norman, (both author and narrator), seems to systematically explicate every relationship he has. The traditions handed down by his mother and father to he and his brother are obvious. Norman is certainly less inclined to fill the traditional man's role than is his brother. Both Norman and his father are set apart from Paul in this regard.

Paul, of course, is an example of the artist: the beautiful, raw, unrefined master of his domain. One of the largest recurring themes in the book-the idea of man's fall from grace, along with ensuing human suffering-echoes mournfully throughout the novel. Both Norman and his father seem to watch the artist, Paul, as though they were all-knowing spectators in life. They can both tell where things are going, and can see the artistry and skill of the movement from afar, but are helpless to change the momentum of the game. Paul is beautiful, perfect in humanity perhaps, but beyond the aid of his family, and, in that sense, doomed.

This idea of continual admiration followed by resignation to a sort of pre-ordained destiny is reiterated throughout the book. It is tied to religion, fly fishing, nature and art-all of which are seemingly inextricably woven as one defining social reality. Because of the roles women play within Norman's world, along with the inadequacies of those individuals who might otherwise be able to connect with Paul, it becomes clear that all responsibility rests on Norman's shoulders.

In the end, this book is about regret, but further about resignation. Resignation to beauty, art, the natural progression of the world and to the inevitability of human nature. All of us live in a world both as romantic and clandestine as Norman Maclean's in some way. We must praise him, however, for capturing his so well, and for so faithfully observing the truth of a world he will never give himself credit for knowing mastering. If A River Runs Through It is Maclean's tribute to the brother he was never quite able to reach, perhaps by reaching us, his regret might be reconciled.