Norman Maclean: A Life of Letters and Rivers

by Rebecca McCarthy

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories turned Norman Maclean into a late-in-life literary phenomenon and then a household name after the success of the Hollywood film based on the title story. Yet fewer know of Maclean's lifelong struggles to reconcile very different parts of the revered teacher and writer in the intellectual hub of Chicago and the Montana man compelled by the wildness and traumas of his home state and family, including the tragic Mann Gulch fire and the murder of his brother.

Rebecca McCarthy's intimate portrait of Maclean draws on her long friendship with the author from the time she became a student at the University of Chicago through the rest of his life. Irrepressible as a teacher, Maclean shared guidance, advice, campus and city rambles, and loyal friendship with generations of students. Behind the scenes, he honed an art as meditative and patient as his approach to fly fishing. McCarthy's experiences intertwine with stories from friends, family, colleagues, and others to detail an incredibly rich life that seemed destined to remain divided-until the creation of his classic American story.

A vivid evocation of an iconic figure, Norman Maclean reveals the forces and events that shaped the author-educator and formed the bedrock of his beloved stories.

Genres: Memoir

272 pages, Hardcover

Published May 14, 2024

Reviews

[Drew Norwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Norman Maclean deserves a proper biography. This is not it. The book is as much about Rebecca McCarthy as it is about Norman Maclean. McCarthy’s personal reflections didn’t add anything of value to the main subject (Maclean) and, in fact, actually detracted from it. And, aside from this, the focus on Maclean is disorganized and half-baked.

[Bryan Head · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fans of Norman Maclean and/or "A River Runs Through It And Other Stories," this book is a wonderful glimpse into the life of a great American writer, and how his work came to be.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. The parts where the author talks about the true story behind Maclean’s relationship with his brother are electric and tragic. Similarly the discussion about how he viewed A River Runs Through It and the juxtaposition of his literary life and success with his soul-crushing depression is fascinating. In the in-between of middle age is the pablum of real-life mixed with tragedy like the early death of Paul and later his wife and the loss of the rugged Montana of his youth. I wish there would have been more exposition about how he crafted his stories but overall worth the read.

[Jeff Zell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read A River Runs Through It in the late 1990's. I was mesmerized by the language and the story. How much of this was true? Was this story autobiographical? These questions are among several that McCarthy addresses in the course of her biography.

One answer is that, yes, Maclean had a brother who gambled and was killed and his killers were never brought to justice. The fuller answer is that Paul died in Chicago and he was there to make a fresh start. No one knows whether he started gambling in Chicago and no one knows why he was killed. Could have been a robbery gone bad, but no conclusions were made by the police.

In the course of biography McCarthy explains how she came to know Maclean and the nature of their relationship. He proved to be a remarkable mentor for her at the University of Chicago. She also introduces the reader to his family of origin and the impact of his parents' faith and Montana on Maclean.

Maclean's enduring question and theme throughout his life is "who the hell am I, anyway?"

I enjoyed every page of this biography. I come away knowing much more about this favorite author of mine. I think successfully answers that question for Maclean. And recognizes where he came to his own self-understanding.

I also appreciated McCarthy's literary criticism of Maclean's writings. As for A River Runs Through It and the two others stories in that book, she says this. "Norman created a new genre with his little blue book: a fictional, poetic collection of stories with elements of autobiography, history, memoir, tall tale, and myth. His emotions moved him from one to another." I take her point.

[Brian R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebecca McCarthy’s biography of Norman Maclean is a laudable achievement. It captures not only the Norman Maclean I knew as a grad student in 1970 but the much larger picture of the man in all of his complexities. Rebecca knew him long and well, I only briefly, as a student of Wordsworth in understandable awe of his craggy presence and exceptional intellect — exceptional even at the University of Chicago, where exceptional was the norm. There’s a great deal in this book that I didn’t know, of course, and I am grateful for the broader and deeper view. It turns out that he was in fact a mortal being, who swore and drank, drove a Volvo and used a crockpot. I believe Maclean would applaud this book’s honesty and comprehension of the whole man and the whole story.

Maclean told us not to come into his classroom if we weren’t prepared to teach HIM something. That gave us to understand that this place was a community of scholars and we had mutual responsibility to respect a high bar. It was, as he told the young Rebecca, the big league.

Rebecca McCarthy has captured all that brilliantly.

[Eric Hollen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine book that combines memoir and biography to gleam a closer look at the late great Norman Maclean. Some of the details I found to be very intimate (how he addresses young women as “darling” and his love for L.L. bean and his hatred for another brand, etc.) Overall, there were a few “dead spots” (notably some of the stuff on the history of English departments in Chicago); the book is interestingly structured, starting from the personal before working its way into the greater spheres, and end, of Maclean’s life, and I think it’s a tricky dance to pull off. There were times where it felt like a momentum had been established at the beginning that ground to its tracks when having to switch to the “history” aspect. All in all, though, I think it synthesizes nicely, and as a resident of Montana and a fan of Macleans work, I think it does him justice and brings me a little closer to a legend.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book part memoir, part biography. I have recently found Norman Maclean, the author, not the movie character. As a biography this book lacks some depth, possibly due to a lack of primary material, but it sheds insight into a thoughtful writer. In reading advice from writers you often hear two things you have to just write and you have to read. I, however, think that although both of those are true, Norman Maclean proves that it is in the living that the writer is forged.

“I was trying to write a kind of tragedy that would occur to many of us, with life’s problems and joys and recessions and seemingly permissions and probably with nothing really all to serious until almost the end all the permissions and excesses and incompletions have piled up and tragedy is inevitable and when you look back just before the end or soon after, you see it was all inevitable.”

[Phoebe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, with its compelling cover photo and popular subject; however pretty quickly into the text one realizes that McCarthy has not written a biography, nor a critique; this is a book about her personal experiences with Maclean as a young college student; describing the doors his patronage opened for her, and the slightly creepy relationship the two shared. It seems to me that college students gravitate towards their peers, have a social life that revolves around campus life, but McCarthy appeared anxious for any crumb of attention from her hero. To be honest I am not sure what the point of this book is, and also to be honest I skipped around a bit. Disappointing. Adult.

[Linda Gaines · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I wasn't liking this biography so much; it seemed to be more about the author than about Mclean. By the middle of the book, McCarthy wrote about what I was interested in. I taught high school in Missoula back in 1965-6 and worshipped at First Presbyterian Church there. When A River Runs Through It came out I read it and wanted to know more about Norman Mclean and his family. This gave some interesting information although some about the Presbyterian system didn't seem accurate.
It was interesting to hear a little bit about the movie finally made. I have to admit that I liked the movie better than the novella. The beauty of Montana (an of course Brad Pitt) needed to be shown rather than only described.

[Ralph Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca McCarthy has a unique vantage point on Norman Maclean, author of "A River Runs Through It." As a teenager, she became his friend, thanks to her brother being a Forest Service employee near Maclean's summer home in Montana, and then a student of his at the University of Chicago. They were friends when Maclean stopped teaching and launched finished the beloved book about fly fishing, family, the passage of time, and his home state of Montana. The difficult but charismatic English professor turned himself into a famous writer and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Like many literary biographies, this one is too long for me and has more details than insights. But if you’re a fan of his books—or fly fishing—you’ll want to read it.

[Elizabeth Lyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebecca McCarthy's beautifully-written and well-researched book has so many thoughtful layers. It's a portrait of the forces that shaped Maclean, including his family and friendships, the Montana rivers and forests, and his scholarly life at the University of Chicago. It's also a series of intimate vignettes about his struggles, his tenacity, and his generosity of spirit, which draw from the author's long friendship with Maclean. Ultimately, it's the very moving story of how Maclean became an extraordinary writer late-in-life in his quest "to know just who the hell I am."

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good writing, good mood for something to read over family Thanksgiving. I may have enjoyed this book more because of my U of C connection/soft spot for Hyde Park. Still, good opportunity to reflect on how we continue to grow, struggle, and achieve as we age.

[Olga Vannucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

When he wrote that a river runs through it,
He'd been legend for decades with students.

[Charles Bookman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A literary appreciation of a remarkable son of the West and American man of letters.
Read more at https://bookmanreader.blogspot.com/20... .