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
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
And the story concludes: Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand
when I was young are dead, but I still reach
Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman,
and some friends think I shouldn't. Like
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river
runs through it. The river was cut by the world's
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. (Reviewed:) Grade: (A+) Tweet Websites:See also:Sports (Hunting & Fishing)Brothers Judd Top 100 of the 20th Century: Novels Mr. Doggett's Suggested Summer Reading for Students -REVIEW ESSAY: The River Runs On: Norman Maclean's Christian Tragedies (Timothy P. SchillingJanuary 13, 2016, Commonweal) -ESSAY: Norman Maclean and Me: Advice for living and drinking from the author of A River Runs Through It (Rebecca McCarthy, December 2, 2019, American Scholar) Book-related and General Links: -ESSAY: The high cost of Hollywood nostalgia: Thirty years after its release, ‘A River Runs Through It’ stands out as a rarity: a film that finds meaning in the past without yearning to restore it. (Tom Joudrey, September 24, 2022, Boston Globe) - Other recommended books by Norman MacLean:
WEBSITES:
YOUNG MEN AND FIRE :
|
Copyright 1998-2015 Orrin Judd