A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

by Norman Maclean

From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," to the last, "I am haunted by waters," "A River Runs Through It" is an American classic. Based on Norman Maclean's childhood experiences, "A River Runs Through It" has established itself as one of the most moving stories of our time; it captivates readers with vivid descriptions of life along Montana's Big Blackfoot River and its near magical blend of fly fishing with the troubling affections of the heart.

This handsome edition is designed and illustrated by Barry Moser. There are thirteen two-color wood engravings.

"A masterpiece. . . . This is more than stunning fiction: It is a lyric record of a time and a life, shining with Maclean's special gift for calling the reader's attention to arts of all kinds-- the arts that work in nature, in personality, in social intercourse, in fly-fishing."--Kenneth M. Pierce, "Village Voice"

Norman Maclean (1902-90), woodsman, scholar, teacher, and storyteller, grew up in the Western Rocky Mountains of Montana and worked for many years in logging camps and for the United States Forestry Service before beginning his academic career. He retired from the University of Chicago in 1973.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, Nature, Literature, Historical Fiction, Book Club

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Born in Clarinda, Iowa, on December 23, 1902, Maclean was the son of Clara Davidson (1873-1952) and the Rev. John Maclean (1862-1941), a Scottish Presbyterian minister, who managed much of the education of the young Norman and his brother Paul (1906-1938) until 1913. The family relocated to Missoula, Montana in 1909. The following years were a considerable influence on and inspiration to his writings, appearing prominently in the short story The Woods, Books, and Truant Officers (1977), and semi-autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It (1976).

Too young to enlist in the military during World War I, Maclean worked in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service in what is now the Bitterroot National Forest of northwestern Montana. The novella USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky and the story "Black Ghost" in Young Men and Fire (1992) are semi-fictionalized accounts of these experiences.

Maclean attended Dartmouth College, where he served as editor-in-chief of the humor magazine the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern; the editor-in-chief to follow him was Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. He was also a member of the Sphinx (senior society) and Beta Theta Pi. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1924, and chose to remain in Hanover, New Hampshire, and serve as an instructor until 1926—a time he recalled in "This Quarter I Am Taking McKeon: A Few Remarks on the Art of Teaching." He began graduate studies in English at the University of Chicago in 1928. Three years later he was hired as a professor at University of Chicago, where he received three Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. On 24 September 1931 Maclean married Jessie Burns (died 1968), a red-headed Scots-Irish woman from Wolf Creek, Montana. They later had two children: a daughter Jean (born in 1942), now a lawyer; and a son, John (born in 1943), now a journalist and author of Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire (1999), and two other books, Fire & Ashes (2003) and The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal (2007).

In 1940, Maclean earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago where during World War II he declined a commission in Naval intelligence to serve as Dean of Students. During the war he also served as Director of the Institute on Military Studies, and co-authored Manual of Instruction in Military Maps and Aerial Photographs. At the University of Chicago, Maclean taught Shakespeare and the Romantic poets, and he produced two scholarly articles, "From Action to Image: Theories of the Lyric in the Eighteenth Century" and "Episode, Scene, Speech, and Word: The Madness of Lear." (The latter essay elaborates a theory of tragedy that Maclean would revisit in his later work; the essay is available here.) From approximately 1959 to 1963, Maclean worked on a book about George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn that he never completed, but from which excerpts were recently published. During his last decade on the Chicago faculty, Maclean held an endowed chair as William Rainey Harper Professor of English. After his retirement in 1973, he began, as his children Jean and John had often encouraged him, to write down the stories he liked to tell. His most acclaimed story, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was published in 1976, the first work of original fiction published by the University of Chicago Press. This title was nominated by a selection committee to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Letters in 1977, but the full committee ignored the nomination and did not award a Pulitzer in that category for the year. A River Runs Through It was adapted into a motion picture directed by Robert Redford

Reviews

[Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for the title novella; 3 stars for the other two stories.

It's been over twenty-five years since Robert Redford turned the title story in this collection into a film that starred the young rising actor, Brad Pitt.



The movie also starred the canyons and rivers and fish of Montana:



But I was moved not only by Brad and the scenery, but also the poetic narration, which frequently quoted the title story:

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

I am haunted by waters.

I wasn't at all sure what this quote means (I'm still not at all sure) but I, too, was haunted. Eventually I bought this book as a gift for my husband . . . so I could read it myself, of course.

This volume contains two novellas, "A River Runs Through It" and "The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky," and a short story, "Logging and Pimping and 'Your Pal, Jim.' " These are semi-autobiographical and often very humorous stories from the author's life in the earlier part of the 1900's: one as a 17 year old boy working for the U.S. Forest Service, acting as a fire lookout and getting into fights in town; one as a 25 year old logger, silently battling all summer with his despicable logging partner; and one as a married man in his thirties, fly fishing and trying to better connect with, and help, his family.

Life every now and then becomes literature--not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember.

All three of the stories are full of detailed and occasionally risqué descriptions (the "pimping" in the title of the second story is not simply figurative) of a way of life that's long since passed. They're all interesting, sometimes even fascinating, but occasionally tedious in the telling of the details (hence 4 stars average rather than 5). But it's the title story that transcends mere history and becomes art.

Then [my father] asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, 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."

Haunting.



Content advisory: A couple of F-bombs and some other rough talk; discussions of whores and the men who use them, and the memorable naked sunburn scene, also in the movie.

[Mitch Albom · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took Maclean most of his life to write his first book, and it reads as if he’d been saving every beautiful observation about life, family and fly fishing for one unforgettable burst. I never tire of reading it.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I understand why someone would stand in a freezing cold water to fish without a reel because I read this book.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up, while the rest of my family hated the movie, I have always been inexplicably attracted to its ideas. Whenever it was on the TV, I had to sneak down to the basement to watch it. The film is one of the few out there that can speak to my innermost soul.

I finally read the book a few years ago, and found a profundity that the film barely touched. It is difficult to put into words the reason why this is one of the most significant books in my life. The plot seems common enough, when explained, but the writing is finely crafted yet never pretentious. It speaks to a subterranean level of spirituality that I believe all people possess, but men find nearly impossible to express. The book addresses this yearning and salves the wounds without ever explicitly stating what it does, or how it is effected.

A River Runs Through It is the tale of a family in Montana, overwhelmed by testosterone, and unable to ever fully express the depths of their love for each other, except (perhaps) through their activities. For the mother, this was primarily through her cooking. For the men in the family, it was through fishing - and not just any fishing, but fly-fishing. This autobiography, of sorts, relates how Norman and his wife each have a brother who is conscientiously estranged from them and their respective families. Some of the most beautiful passages emerge from efforts to help these men and acquire a more intimate understanding of them.

If you allow it, reading this can be a truly transformative experience. I still find myself crying several times per reading, usually unable to fully explain to myself why. I always feel myself a better man after I read the last few paragraphs. Amazing.

"One of life’s quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful."

Postscript: the other stories contained in this anniversary volume are also extremely well written. One can easily tell that Maclean was a lit. professor and was surely beloved by his students

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was a kid, my grandma had this pinched-copper wind-up train. You gave it a couple cranks and the engine would circle the station while the music box churned a mournful tune. For reasons I couldn't explain then, and can only slightly explain now, the train always made me sad.

That's how I felt while reading Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. It's not the obvious tragedy in the first (and most famous) story in the collection that got me feeling this way. Rather, it's the elegiacal tone, the sense of an old man looking back at a time that was gone for him, and to which he could never return.

Norman Maclean spent just about his whole life as an English professor at the University of Chicago. Late in life, his wife of 37 years died, and shortly thereafter, he retired from his job and completed these three stories: A River Runs Through It, Logging and Pimping and "Your Pal, Jim", and USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky. The stories arrived like lightning from the clear blue sky, because this was a guy in his 70s suddenly showing this amazing talent.

It's not really surprising he waited so long, though. I don't think Maclean could have written these stories any earlier. He needed to wait until his wife was gone, and he was approaching his own death, because the subtle mission of these tales is an attempt to understand the people he loved, who were now dead and gone. (Similarly, Maclean's meditation on the young smoke jumpers who died in Mann Gulch can be found in the awesome Young Men and Fire).

A River Runs Through It is about Maclean's brother, Paul, who was murdered in 1938. It is the best piece of the collection and transports you to early 20th century Montana in a way that will make you want to take up fly fishing and find a time machine.

The first lines pull you in: "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." But this isn't a book about fly fishing, it's about a brother that was loved but not understood. This isn't clear at first, and you are lulled into thinking this is a rosy memoir of a couple kids growing up wild, fishing and drinking and fishing and going to church and fishing. It's told with a dry wit, though every so often Maclean turns on the eloquence, as in this description of the art of fly fishing:

Below [Paul:] was the multitudinous river, and, where the rock had parted it around him, big-grained vapor rose. The mini-molecules of water left in the wake of his line made momentary loops of gossamer, disappearing so rapidly in the rising big-grained vapor that they had to be retained in memory to be visualized as loops. The spray emanating from him was finer-grained still and enclosed him in a halo of himself. The halo of himself was always there and always disappearing, as if he were candlelight flickering about three inches from himself.

There's a little of Hemingway in the way Maclean writes. There are pages of fairly terse, on-the-nose storytelling interspersed with these soaring passages that can really give you the shivers (especially if you can imagine, as I was, Robert Redford narrating). The end of the book is powerful, and underlined by one of my favorite passages in all of book-dom.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone...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 a 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.

After this novella, the rest is, to be honest, anticlimax. Reading the next two stories reminded me of a Boy Scout trip I'd taken in my youth. We went to Banff in Alberta, Canada. There, we saw the snow-capped mountains and the turquoise lakes and wondered at the marvel of it all. Then we drove through Saskatchewan. The other two stories included in this collection are Saskatchewan.

Of them, I liked Logging and Pimping the least. It's about a logger named Jim that Maclean meets while working for the Anaconda Company along the Blackfoot River. The tone, which could be called "raunchy" by Maclean standards, feels a little off. (There is actually nothing raunchy at all in the story, other than the implicit acknowledgment that people have sex). Maclean more self-consciously takes on a tougher posture, closely resembling Hemingway's short stories about the Michigan peninsula. The problem is, this is a pose that doesn't really fit Maclean's reflective style.

The last story is a big improvement. I'd liken it to spending a day on the lake drinking beer and fishing. There's no real point to the exercise, but it makes you feel good for some reason or another. This yarn recounts Maclean's days working for the Forest Service. This was back in the days when being in the Forest Service didn't require anything but the willingness to hop on a mule and go camp by yourself in the forest for weeks on end. The fact that this is no longer possible, and I will never get to do this - at least get paid for it - makes me really depressed. I can't think of anything better than throwing some food and a book into my battered frame pack and tromping along a narrow switchback to a valley camp with a view of the mountains and the infinite sky. (Dear wife: it's a guy thing, and not personal).

Maclean is in his element when he is describing, and he falters a bit when he tries to swagger (his use of the f-word is jarring and out-of-place). I got a little bored as he described an endless card game with the titular cook. On the other hand, I was always up for listening to Maclean talk about the mountains.

In the late afternoon...the mountains meant all business for the lookouts. The big winds were veering from the valleys toward the peaks, and smoke from little fires that had been secretly burning for several days might show up for the first time. New fires sprang out of thunder before it sounded. By three-thirty or four, the lightning would be flexing itself on the distant ridges like a fancy prizefighter, skipping sideways, ducking, showing off but not hitting anything. By four-thirty or five, it was another game. You could feel the difference in the air that had become hard to breathe. The lightning now came walking into you, delivering short smashing punches.

Reading Maclean always reignites my smoldering desire to head out for the mountains and find a trail-head that isn't packed with day-trippers who just piled out of their Escalades and motor homes. This is especially true as I write this, with the first breath of spring washing over the land. These stories serve a helpful reminder that there are other places besides the dreary, dingy courthouse where I spend my days.

Maclean's writing is second-best to actually walking the mountain trails, hearing the distant rumble of water through a canyon, and seeing so many stars overhead that you are forced to utter an expletive in wonder at it all.

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot believe the excellence of the writing. I am totally blown over. I thought I would read the first novella, the one referred to in the title, and then put the book aside. This was impossible. I had to have more.

Containing:
* A River Runs Through It--5 stars without a doubt.
*Logging and Pimping and “Your Pal, Jim”--4 stars
*USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky--5 stars

The first and the third are semi-autobiographical novellas.

Norman Maclean (1902-1990) began writing fiction in his seventies. His prose captures what life has taught him—appreciation of the outdoors, the value of friendship and straight talk. The words are not fancy, but they get under the surface and reveal what is important. Relationships between people are laid bare. What one feels out alone in nature is what is drawn, rather than just what one sees. I love this book for its lines which express wisdom, humor and what is important in life.

The author has begun with experiences in his own life, has added a bit here, subtracted a bit there, made alterations and thought about what he wants said. Magically he finds himself “slipping out of life into a story”. These are his words, not mine.

Fly-fishing, life as a lumberjack and as a fire fighter are what the stories are about. Also, the relationship between father and son and brother to brother. Friendship, working in a team and becoming a man. Poker, betting, a cardsharp, cribbage and drinking and brawling come into the picture too. The stories are almost devoid of dialog. We follow the thoughts of each story’s narrator; in the two novellas this is the author, Norman Maclean. The settings are Montana and Idaho. If you find you relate to the author’s way of thinking, the telling flows naturally, as the flow of a river. If you don’t.…..you may view the stories as boring monologues.

The audiobook is narrated by David Manis. I like the narration very much. I felt as though Norman were talking to me. He is telling us his thoughts. I felt his emotions. The reading is clear and easy to follow.

Quotes:

“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.”

“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”

“Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possibly one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting instincts. It will not let us go.”

“Slowly we became silent, and silence itself is an enemy to friendship.”

"Suddenly I realized I had been scared for a long time, because I wasn't scared anymore."

The men at the draw-poker table wore Stetsons. Each had a Stetson whose brim was big, bigger or biggest. “Just like olives, the smallest are always called large."

"It is funny how many non-funny jokes we make to ourselves."

"You know I wasn't very well, while all this was happening."

"As far as I knew, no one ever before had fainted, except women, and then only in books."

Dr. Charles Richie, in a Stetson too, says: "You come to see me late tomorrow morning in my office. You hear?! If you don't come tomorrow, I'll charge you for tonight. If you come tomorrow, I won't charge you for tomorrow or tonight. All I want to know is that you are alright."

This is just the beginning; the tale becomes funnier and funnier as it continues. The last quote is from the third story.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★
"The canyon above the old Clearwater bridge is where the Blackfoot roars loudest. The backbone of a mountain would not break, so the mountain compresses the already powerful river into sound and spray before letting it pass."

OK, I admit this may not strike other readers the way it strikes me. I've never been properly fly fishing, although as a kid, I used to enjoy trying to cast a line and fishing from a rowboat. I know what real fly fishing is, and as with most sports and activities, I appreciate the talent, skill, and artistry required. I understand how people can be mesmerised by it.

Even more, I appreciate being enthralled by those who are able to describe it so that I'm standing in the water, watching the droplets flicking off the line as a fly fishing artist is performing, which is what it really is. Magical.

Norman Maclean wrote these memoir pieces many years after the events, with images so vivid and real, that I was taken back to my youth on horseback, cinching saddles, smelling pine needles underfoot, or in my case, usually sagebrush.

Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx wrote a wonderful foreword, which I'm glad my edition had, because it sets the tone so beautifully.

"On the plane I had started reading Norman Maclean’s novella "A River Runs Through It" for the first time and once at the house decided to read to the end before I went inside. It was an utterly quiet windless golden day, the light softening to peach nectar as I read and ultimately reached the last sentence: 'I am haunted by waters.' I closed the book and looked toward the swamp. Sitting on the stone wall fifteen feet away was a large bobcat who had been watching me read. When our eyes met the cat slipped into the tall grass like a ribbon of water and I watched the grass quiver as it headed down to the woods, to the stream, to the swamp."

Maclean's father was a Presbyterian minister from whom Norman and his younger brother, Paul, learned that fishing and religion and life were inextricably linked.

"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."

Kids take things literally, and at seventy, Maclean still remembers small details about his childhood.

"As a Scot and a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow, I early developed the notion that he had done this by falling from a tree."

Much of their time was taken up with religious and spiritual activities, but having said that, I must stress again that fly fishing was a spiritual activity. The boys listened to plenty of their father's sermons, but many lessons were in the form of teaching fishing skills – all of this in stunning surrounds.

After they grew up, Paul went off the rails and left Montana, but he returned, both clean and sober, and the brothers went back to the river, competing for spots and loving life.

They take their father, now less agile and nimble, to a spot where he can fish or just sit and read, and at the family's insistence, they take their dreadful brother-in-law along, possibly in the hope that fishing can fix everything. (Spoiler - no it doesn't.)

Paul is the artist, the truly brilliant fisherman. And competitive. When Maclean has caught an enormous fish, Paul puts himself at great risk, wobbling on a big rock to outdo his older brother. Maclean sits and watches him.

"Below him was the multitudinous river, and, where the rock had parted it around him, big-grained vapor rose. The mini-molecules of water left in the wake of his line made momentary loops of gossamer, disappearing so rapidly in the rising big-grained vapor that they had to be retained in memory to be visualized as loops. The spray emanating from him was finer-grained still and enclosed him in a halo of himself. The halo of himself was always there and always disappearing, as if he were candlelight flickering about three inches from himself. The images of himself and his line kept disappearing into the rising vapors of the river, which continually circled to the tops of the cliffs where, after becoming a wreath in the wind, they became rays of the sun."

Fishing as a religion? I think so. After a family tragedy and many years later, Maclean is back on the river, also less nimble and agile, but increasingly moved by the experience.

"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 a 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."

The other two stories, "Logging and Pimping and 'Your Pal, Jim' " and "USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky" are about Maclean's late teens when he did incredibly hard physical work (in beautiful forests) with logging crews and later a completely different kind of work with the fire service.

This was immediately after World War I, so everything was done on horseback using packhorses and mules, with discussions of the science of making sure packsaddles were balanced and goods were stowed firmly, not rolling around. Pro tip, wrap toilet paper around cans to help protect labels so you don't mistake beef stew for peaches.

Hard work, and just what he needed.

"I was young and I thought I was tough and I knew it was beautiful and I was a little bit crazy but hadn't noticed it yet. Outside the ranger station there were more mountains in all directions than I was ever to see again—oceans of mountains—"

He saw the world from a unique perspective, which he shares here. I can see why this had such a big impact on so many people. I just loved it.

[Leftbanker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really fucking hate to fish, but. Can you end a sentence with "but?" Did I write that correctly with the quotation marks? Do you see what I'm doing here? I'm using humor to avoid talking about my real feelings.

When I first read this book I was on a cross-country flight. I was just finishing it when we began our descent. I was tearing up, and not because I was glad to see the sprawl of Los Angeles again. That last part when he is out fishing alone and everyone he knew and loved was dead...how can that not just rip you up?

Years later I was watching the movie while I was entertaining friends at home. At the end of the film, my girlfriend at the time asked me if I was crying. Jesus, I thought she was going to kick my ass for that one. I told her I had something in my eye. I AM NOT A SISSY! I lift weights, god damn it!

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What a beautiful world it was once. At least a river of it was."

... and what a joy it turned out to be visiting this world under the guidance of Norman Maclean. The joy doesn't ignore the pain and the sadness at the core of the title novella, but acknowledges the treasures buried in the text: a hard won wisdom and serenity and most of all the satisfaction of a job so well done that it becomes a work of art, regardless if it is the capture of a trout with a Bunyan Bug No. 2 Yellow Stone Fly, a well balanced load on the back of a mule, bringing down a tree with a handsaw, or writing a novella that may haunt me for a long, long time. I will steal a word of praise from Annie Proulx, who says it so much better than me in the Foreword to the 25th anniversary edition:

There are few books that have the power to put the reader in such a deep trance that the real world falls utterly away. [...] Almost no other author's work reads aloud as well as Maclean's, elegiac, haunting and taut.

I believe the explanation of the instant charm these stories have exerted on me can be explained by their long gestation and by the passion for the subject the author has been able to translate into words that flow like his sparkling mountain rivers. Maclean first published these stories in his seventies, but they were born much earlier: in his memories of growing up in Scottish Presbyterian family in Montana, in his first jobs as a logger and as a forest warden, in his years as a teacher of literature, in the stories he told to his children at bedtime or to his coworkers around a campfire. So what we are reading now has been told and retold and polished and distilled down to its essence a long time before it was put down on paper.

Even when the writing was finished and the manuscript sent to the publishers, some complained that there were 'too many trees in the story'. Who would be interested in reading such detailed accounts about fly-fishing or camping out in the wilderness? I have seen some (few) reviewers here on Goodreads who share in the sentiment, but I am in the camp who argues that the story was never about fishing. It is about history, and about nature, about working with your hands, it is about family and about friendship, about death and about passing the flame of love to the next generation. Maclean in his own foreword explains a little about the purpose of the text: " that of letting children know what kind of people their parents are or think they are or hope they are. "

Note the conditional verb to be - to think - to hope. Writing is not a simple act of taking a snapshot of a significant moment in your life. In the retelling, the story gets altered, the facts rearranged to fit around the core ideas, the dialogues streamlined and the revelations explained in a timely manner. Like the good fisherman, the writer chooses his lure carefully, throws the line in the water and then coaxes his catch with a firm hand to the shore (to the moral of the story). Here's the lure, the opening line:

"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing"

And then Maclean proceeds to elaborate on this point, starting with the father - a Scottish Presbyterian minister who first put a fishing rod in his and his brother's hands and then taught them the Cathehism. Later the focus moves on the adult relationship between brothers, about extended families and the disconnect between generations, about the impossibility of full understanding even between the closest of siblings:

You can love completely without complete understanding.

The narrator loves his brother Ken more than anything in the world, yet he is not able to reach across and help him when Ken's wildest part (heavy drinking, brawling and whoring) lands him in trouble. Part of the issue is the stoical, dour Scottish ancestry that claims men should be capable of taking care of themselves without crying out for help, part is the need to allow the other person the freedom to live his own life any way it pleases him.

"Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly."

The outcome of the book is not a secret, and revealing that the story ends in tragedy is not a spoiler. The author looks back to that troubled time and exorcises the demons of the past through his writing, hoping the answers that he found will be of more use to the next people that find themselves at a crossroad. Proulx notes that the novel is a memoir, a requiem, an allegory, pointing out both the autobiographical elements and the metaphysical implications of the text. As I already said, it is not at all a novel about fishing. The sport is just the mirror that reflects and points back at the reader the existential questions each and everyone of us asks himself at one point of his/her life. The solitude, the silences and the beauty of the scenery serve a similar role to the one the desert offered to the early saints who retreated there from the crowded civilized places. The wild rivers of Montana are the haven the Macleans retreat to when the going gets tough and their batteries need recharging. The most important passage in the story is probably the description of the river both in technical fishing terms and as a metaphor for life:

Fishermen also think of the river as having been made with them partly in mind, and they talk of it as if it had been. They speak of the three parts as a unity and call it "a hole", and the fast rapids they call "the head of the hole" and the big turn they call "the deep blue" or "pool" and the quiet, shallow water below they call "the tail of the hole", which they think is shallow and quiet so that they can have a place to wade across and "try the other side".
As the heat mirages on the river in front of me danced with and through each other, I could feel patterns from my own life joining with them. It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet someting that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.

Being able to recognize the patterns of your life in a ray of sunlight reflecting on moving water may be the most valuable lesson I was able to extract from the book, but this just one of the levels at which I was able to enjoy the text. The most immediate recognition came from the setting, as I have always been atracted by mountains and the holiday of choice for many years has been escaping the city with a backpack and climbing to the places where the cars and the noise and the regular tourists can't easily get: When we were silent we could hear the pine needles falling like dry leaves. Making the transition from the feelings of awe and peace of mind the mountains have offered time and time again to the thoughts about religion and the meaning of life comes easily when you remove yourself from the stress of modern life.

Yet another level of reading the text is the accurate historical account and the scientific observation that is an integral part of recreating the moment of the narrator's last trip together with his father and his brother. When he looks at the majestic alpine valley, Maclean sees also the slow dance of glaciers across millenia, the effects of deforestation, the personal histories of the settlers and their economic outlooks.

I know I said the novel was never about fishing, but I come back to my earlier statement and say now that the story is a story about fishing with all the technical details and the moments of joy that the sport offers to the passionate practitioner.

He liked beaver dams and he knew how to fish them. So off he went happily to wade in ooze and to get throttled by brush and to fall through loose piles of sticks called beaver dams and to end up with a wreath of seaweed around his neck and a basketful of fish.

In a larger sense of the word, 'fishing' is a stand-in for whatever activity you love doing so much that you don't call it work, or hobby or pastime. It becomes what you are in the deepest, most precious and valuable core of your being, it is the answer to how you define your life: a builder, a writer, a dancer, a farmer. When a natural aptitude, a talent for your activity of choice is coupled with your passion, the result is Ken, the brother whose right shoulder becomes larger than his left, whose every movement becomes poetry in motion, the artist whose masterpieces are written and gone in a flash of a thin line moving in rhythm from 12 to 2 o'clock. I sometimes think of myself as an aspirant photographer, so the passage that made the story personal is here:

"It was a beautiful stretch of water, either to a fisherman or a photographer, although each would have focused his equipment on a different point."

Here is Maclean in his teacher disguise, a fourth ot fifth way of looking at his writing as a textbook for educating a younger generation in how to search for deeper meaning behind the surface images. ( All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible.) The stories in the collection are all reminiscences of his youth, but the act of writing was completed after many decades as an English professor and literary critic. First his audience were his children, then his fellows at university seminars, and now the world at large. Yet the narrative voice remains unchanged, confident and humorous and lyrical. The poet is the ultimate and probably the most enduring disguise of the author who listens to the voices of the river that becomes the world:

The voices of the subterranean river in the shadows were different from the voices of the sunlit river ahead. In the shadows against the cliff the river was deep and engaged in profundities, circling back on itself now and then to say things over to be sure it had understood itself. But the river ahead came out into the sunny world like a chatterbox, doing its best to be friendly. It bowed to one shore and then to the other so that nothing would feel neglected.

Anything that comes after the famous final line of the story ("I am haunted by waters.") would feel superfluous, yet there are two more novellas included in the collection. As I felt loath to part ways with the world Maclean has created, I jumped right into them. Both are chronologically earlier set that the title story, and both share the autobiographical elements, the historical angle of describing a world that has been swallowed my Progress, and the central tenet of doing your job so well that it becomes an art. To all those who work come moments of beauty unseen by the rest of the world.

Logging and Pimping and "Your Pal, Jim" describes the logging camps of the early 20th century, when trees where felled by hand with long saws handled by two men. It is a Man's World, of backbreaking work and long months of isolation and harsh humour, a world that toughens you up or destroys you. Like boot camp, it is a rite of passage that equips a young man with the necessary tools to face the larger world, gives him the self-confidence to face up to bullies and the pride in his prowess that would serve later when he moves from physical labour to studying literature. I couldn't help though from being sad at all the forest giants that have been cut down during that period. Replace 'fishing' with 'logging' and we have another iteration of the opening theme, another parable of the talents, another way at looking at life:

Nearly all our talk was about logging, because logging was what loggers talked about. They mixed it into everything. For instance, loggers celebrated the Fourth of July - the only sacred holiday in those times except Christmas - by contests in logrolling, sawing, and swinging the ax. Their work was their world.

"USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky" is dedicated to United States Forest Service, another school of hard knocks that opened up the mind of a young author. Again we have the scenery ( The mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.), the talented man whose hands knows all the secrets of his trade ( Packing is the art of balancing packs and then seeing that they ride evenly - otherwise the animals will have saddle sores in a day or two and be out of business for all or most of the summer. ), the isolation, the campfires, the easy camaraderie, the humorous anecdotes, the melancholic tune of a world gone by.

By the middle of that summer when I was seventeen I had yet to see myself become part of a story. I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature - not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sidewys, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life has been made and not happened.

USFS 1919 is the closest Maclean comes to writing a classic western story, plot driven instead of purely contemplative, as the lone hero embarks on a contest of wills with the Cook, is mentored by the Ranger, mullishly tries to break a record of descending a mountain without drinking any water, picks up a waitress in a bar, and ultimately clears out a town with his buddies in one of the most original and hilarious saloon fights I've ever read. The ruckus is all indirectly described from under a table just by looking at the brawlers' footwear. And when that footwear has inch long steel nails designed for climbing up trees, you know the fighting is bloody serious.

If the first story was about family relations, and the second about a boy becoming a man, this last one is about teamwork and friendship. Of course, being a Maclean story, it is also about the joys of working with your hands and getting satisfaction from a job well done:

We were a pretty good crew and we did what we had to do and loved the woods without thinking we owned them, and each of us liked to do at least one thing especially well - liked to swing a jackhammer and feel the earth overpowered by dynamite, liked to fight, liked to heal the injuries of horses, liked to handle groceries and tools and tie knots. And nearly all of us liked to work. When you think about it, that's a lot to say about a bunch of men.

But the story is also about the Whole in the Sky, the catharsis, the epiphany, the looking beyond appearances, the illumination of your soul that standing on the highest peak after an arduous climb can bring on:

It is surprising how much our souls are alike, at least in the presence of mountains. For all of us, mountains turn into images after a short while and the images turn true.

This is as good a place as any to stop my review, noting, as others have done before me, that the effort of extracting the meaning through only a few separate quotes is unsatisfactory given the elegance of the presentation and the careful construction of the stories where each step is determined by the one that came before it. Looking at only the bend of the river means ignoring the bigger picture that Maclean planned to the last detail, to the last metaphor and comma. Read the whole set of novellas, they are quite short for the wealth of wisdom and emotion they contain, and please don't stay away because you probably never held a fishing rod in your hand. I'll let the author have the last selling pitch:

This, then, in summary, is a collection of Western stories with trees in them for children, experts, scholars, wives of scholars, and scholars who are poets. I hope there are others also who don't mind trees.

[Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fishing, Logging and Fighting
Review of the University of Chicago Press Kindle eBook (May 3, 2017) with an introduction by Robert Redford, of the University of Chicago Press hardcover original (1976)

Maybe it is sacrilege to not give a 5-star rating to what is now considered an iconic fiction of American outdoor experience and adventure. But there were times when the overly detailed descriptions of fly-fishing, the baggage packing of trail horses and the quirks of the early United States Forestry Service slowed my reading to a crawl. There is also a cringe element when a misogynist thread also runs through the earlier stories, with most of the female characters disparaged as whores.

And yet there is terrific writing here with some of the imagery and expressions being classic. Many of the best lines of the title story are repeated in Robert Redford's 1992 film adaptation which only adds to their resonance. Like myself, many will have seen the film first, not having read the book. Often the text can be bizarrely funny, as in these lines from USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky:

The two old men in the outfit told the rest of us that “USFS” stood for “Use ’er Slow and Fuck ’er Fast.” Being young and literal, I put up an argument at first, pointing out that the beginning letters in their motto didn’t exactly fit USFS—that their last word “Fast” didn’t begin with S as “Service” did. ... As far as they were concerned, their motto fitted the United States Forest Service exactly, and by the end of the summer I came to share their opinion.

The book consists of three stories, the title novella being half the length and the 2 earlier written Logging and Pimping and 'Your pal, Jim' and USFS 1919... making up the balance. All three are fictionalized autobiographical stories of the author Norman Maclean's (1902-1990) early life. Each of these centre around one character, the brother Paul, the logger Jim and the USFS Ranger Bill and the impact of their lives and examples on Norman. The title story is especially a lament for the doomed brother whose fate is hinted at throughout, but not confirmed until the end. That one especially gives the sense of being inspired by Hemingway's 'Iceberg Theory' of writing, where the underlying reason for the story lies below the surface and is hardly seen or mentioned, just as the bulk of an iceberg lies underwater.

The earlier stories are more about rustic rough-housing with their anecdotes of logging and forest crews. The characters are memorable though and, even if some of the descriptions of trail-work procedures are tiresome, they stick with you. Perhaps it is a 5-star book after all?

I read A River Runs Through It and Other Stories due to having encountered the Introduction by the author's son John N. Maclean for the recent Big Two-Hearted River: The Centennial Edition (2023) of Ernest Hemingway. John N.'s description of his father's love and analysis of Hemingway's writing intrigued me to seek out the father's book, which I realized I had never previously read.


The Maclean family cabin in Seeley, Montana where much of the writing of the book took place. Photograph by Kurt Wilson. Image sourced from the Billings Gazette. (Note: The article is behind a paywall.)

Trivia and Links
The title story A River Runs Through It was adapted for film in 1992 with director Robert Redford, and starred Tom Skerritt as the father Rev. Maclean, Brad Pitt as son Paul and Craig Sheffer as son Norman. A trailer for the film can be seen here.

The story USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky was adapted for the television movie The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky in 1995 with director John Kent Harrison, and starred Sam Elliott as Ranger Bill Bell, Jerry O’Connell as Mac (the Norman Maclean character) and magician Ricky Jay as the cook/cardsharp. A very brief trailer for the film can be seen here.

[James Thane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite of all books, best known for the novella that opens the book and provides its title. It may be a book that could only have been written by someone in his seventies, as Maclean was when he began it. On the surface, it's a story about Maclean, his gifted but fundamentally flawed brother, their father, the land that they loved and the religion of fly fishing that bound them together. But it's also a book that has a great deal to say about the bonds that tie family members together and about the heartache that can result when one of those family members desperately needs help that none of the others is able to give.

Most of all, it's about the memories and relationships that one forges during the course of a long and interesting life as told from the bittersweet perspective of the last survivor. It's a beautifully written book, spare and lean, with passages on virtually every page that will dazzle and haunt a reader long after he or she has finished reading it.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nope.

There are three stories in here and “A River Runs Through It” remains – by far – the best of the three. It’s also the first one in the collection and the only one with credible interior lives depicted. By the time you’re done with this story, you might be under the familiar impression that you’re okay with dated tales of old-school masculinity, which can be touching when viewed under an appropriate light. You’ve read other ones before. But that’s not taking into account what is to follow. Past the famous fly fishing story, what follows is a mess. If Maclean’s experience as a forest ranger and his familiarity with logging and ranging camps come through, that’s about all that comes through.

Over the years, I’ve read about mining crews, logging crews, cowboys, fishermen, soldiers and a variety of other stereotypically masculine environments. Some authors revere the corresponding eras or settings and give literary wings to images of rugged men meeting hardships head on. Others revere the exact same tropes but stop right there in their tracks. No wings. No depth, or very little of it. No soup for you.

It’s only a few weeks ago that I read Butcher's Crossing by John Williams. For a novel about buffalo hunting, it felt amazing. It was written with insight and inspiration yet lost nothing of its manliness. It’s not as if it can’t be done: one does not preclude the other.

By comparison, this here felt a lot closer to Mickey Spillane. No detectives, but all the machismo a short story can possibly pack, without much support in terms of lyrical writing. In the last story, “USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky”, the deplorable protagonist doesn’t even bother to make any sense at all. But oh, does he ever go on. He goes on for a hundred pages. The fact that he is seventeen excuses it to an extent, I guess, except that I found myself not caring for his nonsense. The more he went on, the less I cared.

All these were important matters, and you can be sure I’d thought about them. You just weren’t a crew if you didn’t “clean out the town” as your final act of the season. I don’t know why, but it always happens if you’re any good—and even if you’re not much good—that when you work outside a town for a couple of months you get feeling a lot better than the town and very hostile toward it. The town doesn’t even know about you, but you think and talk a lot about it. Old Mr. Smith would take another drink of that alcohol and other debris from the canned heat, and say, “We’ll take that God damn town apart.” Then with his dignity lost he would have to run for the toilet, yelling as he ran that we had to show them there were no guys as tough as those who worked for the USFS.”

Yes, because bringing mayhem to small towns in the middle of nowhere and spending the summer dreaming about barroom brawls and objectified whores is where the good old days are at. That’s where they begin and that’s where they end. Nothing to elevate a story much higher, no characters to redeem or transfigure themselves, no motivations to explore further other than proving your manhood over and over. And over. And over again. Nothing beyond a great big emotional void. And lots of pride.

But, as Bill said, we were a pretty good crew, and we did what we had to do and loved the woods without thinking we owned them, and each of us liked to do at least one thing especially well—liked to swing a jackhammer and feel the earth overpowered by dynamite, liked to fight, liked to heal the injuries of horses, liked to handle groceries and tools and tie knots. And nearly all of us liked to work. When you think about it, that’s a lot to say about a bunch of men.

That last passage wasn’t so bad, right? Problem is, these are few and far between once you’re past the fly fishing story.

Goodnight, grandpa. Off the top of my head, not only John Williams but also Larry McMurtry, Kent Haruf, Alistair MacLeod and Annie Proulx all wrote about some of these testosterone-fueled situations and muted feelings better.

“A River Runs Through It” is still a lovely story, though.

[Kinga · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book features one novella and a couple of short stories and they are mostly about fly-fishing, logging (before the invention of a chainsaw), and the early days of United States Forest Service. It goes into fine details of casting line (which apparently is "an art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two o'clock"), finding a good sawing partner and ideal sawing rhythm, and the methods of extinguishing wildfires in the early twentieth century; generally the sort of thing every 21st century girl cares a good deal about.

Norman Maclean grew up in the old times, before they invented a metrosexual man and taught him how to communicate his feelings, so the men in 'A River Runs Through It' express their emotions the best they know how - by fishing, logging, playing cards or putting out a forest fire. I often found myself a little lost in this peculiar semantics but then suddenly the meaning would reveal itself and go straight for my stomach punching me there and bypassing my brain. And I suppose it felt like when you finally catch that son of a bitch trout that has been evading you all morning.

Trust me when I tell you, this book is beautiful. I have highlighted half of it, even the bits about fishing and flies like this one:

"Blundering and soft-bellied, they had been born before they had brains. They had spent a year under water on legs, had crawled out on a rock, had become flies and copulated with the ninth and tenth segments of their abdomens, and then had died as the first light wind blew them into the water where the fish circled excitedly. They were a fish's dream come true—stupid, succulent, and exhausted from copulation. Still, it would be hard to know what gigantic portion of human life is spent in this same ratio of years under water on legs to one premature, exhausted moment on wings."

Apart from being beautiful, it is also funny.

"I was afraid to look at my lower quarters to see what was still with me. Instead, I studied the snags of those branches to see which of my private parts were to hang there forever and slowly turn to stone. Finally, I could tell by the total distribution of pain that all of me was still on the same nervous system."

Maclean says that "It's no trouble at all to be tragic when you're tired and alone, but to be funny you have to be fresh and you have to have time on your hands and you have to have an audience—and you have to be funny. And, however much you may love the woods, you can't claim it is full of natural wits.".

Obviously Maclean was fresh, had time on his hands and an audience, which altogether makes 'A River Runs Through It' highly recommendable.

And if you don't feel strong enough to take this book on, they also made a film with Brad Pitt and a 9 year old Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who is the second cutest thing after baby pandas).

I want to move to Montana.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

A near perfect novella, carved into a near perfect book; a beautiful thing. That is all I have to say about that. Well, perhaps a literary/geologic inequality as a postscript:

Prose + Structure > Time + Ablation

[Tim Null · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love both the book and the movie, but I never would have found the book without the movie.

[Mike W · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest failures of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was the prize committee's decision not to award any prize in 1977. A jury of writers had read the year's best fiction and had presented Maclean's novella to the prize committee (the committee who votes on every prize) as their winner. The prize committee was unable to come to a majority decision and when this happens they simply don't award the prize that year. It's happened a few times, the most recent in 2013, but it's that 1977 decision that most baffles me as Maclean's story is brilliant and beautiful. I have read every Pulitzer fiction winner and finalist from 2000 to the present, and of those years (generally a year has 3 finalists one of which is the winner) A River Runs Through It not only belongs but still manages to stand out.

The novella is a nostalgic look back at Maclean's youth and young adulthood in early 20th century Montana, and while you'll often hear this book described as one about fly fishing, this is not so. Yes, you'll read about fly fishing, but it is simply the vehicle Maclean uses to tie his family and their experiences together. The sons of a minister, Norman and his brother Paul learn to fly fish from their strict but loving father and he instructs them in such a way that they spend memorable time with their father and each other. Both become excellent fishermen and in their 20's, about the only time they spend together is fly fishing with Norman being married and Paul having moved about 40 miles away.

Maclean has a rare talent for story telling and is a brilliant observer. These observations color his stories and he is able to describe a scene so vividly that at times this book feels photographic. I read to feel. I don't necessarily care about plot or action or twists, though I have nothing against those things, they're important. I can feel what Maclean writes almost as if I were experiencing it myself. His prose is at times transcendent, and though he may simply be relating an anecdote about his wife being angry with him, they'll have a two sentence exchange that thoroughly transmits the feel of a good and happy marriage, so apt based on my own experiences that I sense his message at my core. A simple sit down next to his father yields a brief conversation that strikes at the very heart of a father's love for his son and a son's for his father. Though on the surface they appear to be speaking of fishing, Maclean has essentially used his novella to construct a Rosetta Stone for the language of the soul and much deeper meanings are intuited.

Perhaps what I find most meaningful about A River Runs Through It is its recognition that though the universe may seem callous and cruel, life is still often beautiful and that the people that make it worth living are also often the ones at the center of our hard times. Maclean also recognizes the renewing power of nature and its ability to help us find focus and purpose. Yes, I read to feel, and I stand in awe of a talent like Maclean whose ability to almost secretly convey such depths of human emotion in the relating of seemingly simple anecdotes has few peers.

[boxer_dogs_dance · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title story earns five stars for me. It thoughtfully describes human interaction and beautiful wild parts of the country. Now I need to watch the film.

the other two stories, your mileage may vary.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was actually wooed into reading this book by a glowing review. I wish my experience had come even a little bit close to how that reader felt about the book, because I wouldn't have ended up feeling like my time had been wasted.

And honestly, this was a huge slog. Not caring much about fly-fishing or lumberjacking, I didn't start out primed to enjoy the content. But some authors are still able to pull me in with strength of characters or an interesting story, even with settings or scenarios I am not immediately won over by. In this case, that just didn't happen.

There are three stories in this book, although two are more like novellas. A River Runs Through It is best known, also because there is a film based on it (which I know for sure I don't care to see). It has a very poetic ending with a tone that I wish had run through more of the story:

"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."

It is the infrequent moments of poetic reverence of nature that I connect with the most. In the story USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky is a concept of mountains moving, and how watching them do so can be calming, centering. I liked the image of a little boy looking out his window waiting to recover from an illness, watching the mountains.

And a quote to use in my storytelling class:

"It is almost impossible... to quit a story once you have become a character in it."

Even though I didn't really like this book, in my quest to read a book set in every state, this was probably a good pick for Montana. The stories feel like big-sky stories, and people more connected to the landscape of that area of the country might resonate with them more. I'll be happy to pass the book on to someone who might enjoy it.

[Rebecca Russavage · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most beautiful book I’ve ever read . Clearly writing is a craft, and Norman Maclean is a craftsman. But he’s also honest. And sometimes it is actually true that a person can tell a true story, beautifully, and make the world a better place to see. I kept holding my breath for the moment when the story would turn sour, when something awful or small or dirty would happen that would make the sunlight shining on the Blackfoot River a little less bright. Instead, it turns out that in this honest and true story the world can handle a few small dark things, and they just make the real people stronger.

The other stories in this book have hesitantly reconciled me to the genre of Western writing, something I never thought would happen after Lonesome Dove.

[Karina · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, I liked him even less than Paul did, and it's no pleasure to see your wife's face on somebody you don't like. (PG 10)

This isn't just one short novel but three short novels the author wrote when he was seventy years old. RIP and kudos to this man.

All three stories are set in Missoula, Montana, USA in the early 20th century.

I do not care about fly fishing or fishing in general. I think it's because I don't have the patience and my mind can't stay relaxed enough to enjoy the quietness of nature. Reading about so much fly fishing gave me boredom and indifference to the author's writing. But lo and behold it wasn't about fly fishing anymore. It was about everything we hold dear and near to our hearts: family. Norman McClean recounts his time fly fishing with his brother and what led up to his unsolved murder. There were rumors of his brother gambling debts and fraternizing with the local sex workers but not much is known to his demise.

The second book was about working as a logger and his experience with one of the better guys. It was creepy and funny. McClean was a hard worker and the way he tells it is hilarious and enjoyable.

The third book focuses on 1919 when he was seventeen years old and worked for the new government department known as the Forest Service. He doesn't get along with the cook and the men he works for want to win a big gambling game. It turns into a hilarious mess.

Highly recommend. Great reading about the early part of the 20th century and the writing is fantastic and witty and sad and humble.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know exactly nothing about fly fishing and I have never been to Montana, but boy did this book make me want to learn! Maclean talks with such a passion in the eponymous story that the mood is infections. The prose is languid and beautiful as is the story of passing generations and their passion for nature. The other two stories are more humorous and still great reading. A well-deserved, light-hearted Pulitzer for 1978.

[Amanda NEVER MANDY · Rating 3 out of 5]

“That evening I learned never to quit hating a guy just because I hadn’t seen him for a while.”

Gruff men are a favorite of mine. First off, you have the crunchy exterior hidden treasure thing going on. Some of them have a soft interior and some of them are straight up assholes through and through. If the man you are talking to is the latter, you move on with nothing lost. If he is the former, you have landed gold. Secondly, the way they speak is fascinating. If the man you are talking to is the latter, you will pick up some cool new insults to add to your collection. If he is the former, talking to him will reveal so much in so few words and some of it can be quite deep.

This author read like a gruff man and his characters did too. That was my favorite part of the reading experience. I liked how the author told his stories, but not the stories he told. That second bit was my least favorite part of the reading experience. There were fragments of each story that I enjoyed, but not the entire story. It was quite frustrating to experience it. To have this tiny bit of the big picture be so shiny and perfect, and to know it would not last.

The book contains three stories, with the first being the one that most people know of. (It was made into a movie.)

“A River Runs through It”

“Logging and Pimping and ‘Your Pal, Jim’”

“USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky”

I liked the first one the most and the last one the least. The middle story did make me laugh with how the lead character saw things, but it needed more sauce to rival the first story.

GRUFF MAN QUOTES:

“We stood looking at each other, not liking anything that was happening but watching that we didn’t go too far in disagreeing.”

“That’s how you know when you have thought too much—when you become a dialogue between You’ll probably lose and You’re sure to lose. ”

“It is a strange and wonderful and somewhat embarrassing feeling to hold someone in your arms who is trying to detach you from the earth and you aren’t good enough to follow her.”

“Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn’t think so. At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“Tell me, why is it that people who want help do better without it—at least, no worse. Actually, that’s what it is, no worse. They take all the help they can get, and are just the same as they always have been.”

“…but you can love completely without complete understanding.”

“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”

“Until this time I hadn’t been old enough to realize that you can’t hate a guy without expecting him to return the compliment. Up to now, I thought you could hate somebody as if it were your own business.”

“I was scared because I had to lose something I wanted to be like and yet wanted to keep when the trouble was over.”

“Everything that was to happen had happened and everything that was to be seen had gone.”

[Chandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel that this book has a target audience: people who like fly fishing, and that's it. I mean, I get that there are family aspects and even some stuff about religion. But it's buried under so much crap about fly fishing that by the time it gets to anything else, you don't really care, because you know the book is going to go right back to freaking fly fishing. I mean, the book even kind of sums up if a person is "beautiful" or "a bastard" due to how much the like fly fishing. And I must say, fly fishing? Seriously?
You know what? Some people really don't warrant autobiographies. I am one of them, and so is Norman Maclean. And the unwarranted autobiographies shouldn't be written, and I think that was the first major mistake in writing this book, the second major mistake being in telling us ALL. ABOUT. FLY FISHING.
I mean, DAMN.
Also, did anyone else start laughing out loud when Norman was telling us about fish thinking about eggnog? What the hell? How would a fish even know what eggnog was? What would a fish care about eggnog? I mean, that thought just came out of the blue!

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never having seen the film version, I really didn’t know what to expect from this autobiographical work. What I found was a philosophical treatise on familial love, self-destructiveness and the frustration at being unable to help a beloved brother — all with the river and flyfishing as metaphors. It sounds twee, but I found it riveting and adored it. Author Norman Maclean was cheated when he did not get the Pulitzer Prize for this book in 1977.

[britt_brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”

I absolutely loved these stories, especially A River Runs Through It. It’s breathtaking. I knew I loved the film, but it’s been many years since I’ve seen it, so the story really felt fresh. All of the stories are pretty fantastic. I highly recommend this on audio. Superb narration.

[Bucko · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You like to tell true stories, don't you?" he asked, and I answered, " Yes, I like to tell stories that are true."
Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it."
"Only then will you understand what happened and why."

Many people think that this book is a memoir, but it is not. Norman Maclean did have a brother named Paul, and that brother was murdered in 1938, but this is a work of fiction. I've been having a lot of conversations about this book recently, and I keep coming back to this quote.

Fiction is an amazing thing, and what it teaches me is that things don't have to be "fact" to be "true". "The Gift of the Magi" is a true story, as is Gone with the Wind and Where the Wild Things Are, because when we read those books, we recognize the truth in what the author says. "A River Runs Through It" reminds me why I love to read, because when I read this book, I know I'm reading a true story, even if it's a made up one.


Favorite Quotes:
"Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn't think so. At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear."

"Many of us probably would be better fisherman if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to be perfect."

"'Do you think you should help him?'
'Yes,' he said, 'I thought we were going to.'
'How,' I asked.
'By taking him fishing with us.'
'I've just told you,' I said, 'he doesn't like to fish.'
'Maybe so,' my brother replied. 'But maybe what he likes is somebody trying to help him.'"

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

🐟 You’ve seen the movie which is brilliant. But the poetry of the words the author employs in the novel is even more brilliant. You’ll know that from the direct quotes Redford used in the film.

“I am haunted by waters.”

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is one of those books my mother has been telling me to read for what feels like my whole life. the opening sentence, about jesus' disciples being fly fisherman and john, the favorite, being a dry-fly fisherman, was quoted and referred to on the screen porch in the afternoon, at the dinner table in the evening, and in the morning on the way to church. naturally, i have fought reading it tooth and nail.

but mama was right. it is unbelievable. the title story is beautiful and heartbreaking, and the writing itself has the controlled and confident power that maclean describes in his brother's cast. maclean wrote this barely-fictional story of life as a child and young man when he was in his 70s; its concentrated grace is a forceful argument in favor of patience in writing, of telling no tale before its time.

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is so endearing. There's also something very special about reading a story and knowing exactly where every town and city is. I also live in Darby, and the man (John Foust) who is on the movie poster of the movie based on this book was also a Darbarian. I met him in the 90's when we first moved to Montana, and he was an absolutely wonderful person to talk to and fish with!

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1992 my wife and I and my parents saw a new movie directed by Robert Redford. A River Runs Through It had masterful and beautiful cinematography and starred a young and not-yet-famous Brad Pitt. An early scene in the movie depicts a young child of about 5 or 6 who stubbornly refuses to eat his oatmeal -- spending an entire night sitting in his chair with his cold oatmeal on the table before him. This boy grows up to be the character portrayed by Brad Pitt who continues in his head-strong and self-destructive ways until his unfortunate, but inevitable, demise -- despite all the loving attempts by his parents and his older brother to help him.

After watching the movie my mother commented to me that the young boy very much reminded her of my second young son who was about that same age. The resemblance was not just in his physical appearance but also in his stubborn and headstrong ways. To this comment my wife immediately responded with, "Well I sure hope his future life doesn't follow the same path."

Now 23 years later my son does seem destined to follow a similar pattern of self destruction as that displayed by Paul, the Brad Pitt character. And like the loving members of the movie family, my family, my son's own family, is unable to help him.

Essentially, this short semi-autobiographical novella turns on the theme that even though we may fully and completely love someone, we may be completely incapable of understanding or helping them.

It is those we live with and love who elude us.

This is one of my all-time favorite books, which is why I have now read it four times. For me, for the reasons stated above, it hits so close to home that I easily project myself into the role of the father, and my two oldest sons into the roles of the two brothers, Norman and Paul. The fact that we all like to fish makes the comparison even more real to me.

So much of this book describes art and beauty. Fish are beautiful. Rivers are beautiful. Paul was beautiful. Paul's mastery and artistry in fly fishing were beautiful. And, befitting this theme of beauty, the language and wording and message of this book are likewise so very beautiful.

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