A River Runs Through It

Rating:
Summary: I am haunted...
Review: 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+

Rating:
Summary: Not Only Fly-Fishing
Review: A River Runs Through It is a novella that takes the art of exposition writing a step further by using vivid imagery to describe the scenes in which the main characters spend most of their time: the rivers of Montana.

Due to the amount of exposition writing when first beginning to read this novella I felt as if I may have, mistakenly, picked-up a newer version of Moby Dick, a book I did not enjoy. However, I soon realized that Maclean was not trying to teach the reader how to fly fish as Melville attempted to teach the readers of Moby Dick to hunt whales. Instead, Maclean is simply describing the art and precision that accompanies the sport of fly-fishing, I was able to sit back and let the river run over me.

This novella is a wonderful reminder of the simplicity of another time when families lived close to each other and there was always an outdoor retreat where families could heal their wounds while becoming one with nature. The art of fly-fishing is the sanctuary in which Paul, Norman and their father heal their wounds and bond as men.

Fishing, in the Maclean family, is depicted as having the ability to reunite the family. No matter how long one brother has been absent from the family the River is able to smooth away all those months and years of betrayal. Not only is the River where sibling rivalry plays out, it is also the setting of brotherly love. The characters have an intimate language constructed within their fishing techniques that is obvious from the first images of fishing that Maclean shares with the reader.

The two brothers, Paul and Norman, were raised loving two things outside of family: God and fly-fishing. They grew-up with a love of fly-fishing, which surpassed most other things in the world. Paul, the more advanced fly fisher in the family is graceful and majestic in his technique on the water. He is also the brother who gets into trouble with alcohol and gambling addictions that often land him in serious trouble. His brother, Norman on the other hand is a steady, married man that although he loves fishing, he has realized that growing-up and becoming a man is important, hence he has other responsibilities that do not allow him to fish all his free time away.

This novella is crafted not only around the art of fly fishing, but also around Norman's dead-beat brother-in-law Neal and Neal's hatred of fly-fishing. Neal is a troubled man whose sister and mother are simply trying to get him on the right track. These well-intention women feel that sending Neal out fly-fishing with Paul and Norman would help Neal turn his life around. Although their intentions are noble, these women soon realize that fly-fishing may not be the answer.

I absolutely adore this novella. I have never seen the movie and I prefer to keep it that way. Movies are never as good as the original novel and I would hate to ruin perfection by seeing Hollywood's rendition of fly-fishing in Montana. I encourage you to read and enjoy this novel while attempting to understand the deeper meaning that Norman Maclean is trying to share with you, the reader. ENJOY!

Rating:
Summary: Ten stars. He makes me jealous of his talent
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A book you will read more than once.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful account of the American West in a changing time
Review: A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean is a beautiful recollection of the authors life living in the wilderness of western Montana. Norman's father teaches him and his brother Paul the art of flyfishing. He teaches it as a form of perfection, but Paul cannot extend it into the rest of his life and in the end, nobody could help him. The river brings three extroidinary but different men together. The last sentence "im haunted by waters" is a beautiful yet erie sum of the entire book. A beautiful piece of american literature.

Rating:
Summary: i actualy read it
Review: in this book a river runs thought is about a man who is trying to cope with his brothers death. the back drop of the story is fly-fishing and it is sometimes confused with the real meaning of the story. i think that the real meaning of the story is that life is all about building relationships and keeping them strong.

Rating:
Summary: Young Man on Fire
Review: "A River Runs Through It" is a very enjoyable trio of stories in which the author recalls people and events surrounding his early days in US Forest Service. Many will recall a Robert Redford movie of the same title some years ago. The stories are well-written and it is not surprizing to learn that the author was a University of Chicago English professor. They take place in a time period shortly after WWI when the author was a young man.

The title story tells of the author's recollections of fishing with his brother. Avid fly-fishermen will especially enjoy this piece although there is plenty in it for everyone. His brother was a somewhat rough character (or, at least, he associated with rough characters). We meet a number of "rough" characters in these stories through the eyes of the not-so-rough author. I found this to be an interesting way to become acquainted with these individuals; something like what used to be called "slumming". In all the stories amid all the rough and tumble people and activities, we always get a good sence of the author's respect and appreciation of nature. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether nature is interfering with the action or vice versa.

The second story is about a man the author worked with in the Forest Service. This man saws trees in the summer and pimps in the winter. Again we get an interesting look at the sort of person we're not likely to run into ourselves.

The final story tells of a group of Forest Service employees who work a long summer together and then head into town in the Fall to make a killing at the poker table. They have a system all set up and we watch as the author takes us through a pretty wild night on the town. In the end, the author's mates return to their job and the author heads out in a more civilized direction.

I enjoyed this book as I also enjoyed "Young Men and Fire". The latter books advertized that it was written by the author of "A River Runs Through It". Maybe it was because of the movie. Personally, I think that any future editions of "A River Runs Through It" should be advertized as being written by the author of "Young Men and Fire". The latter was the better book although both are very good. In either book the author takes us to a place that had an important effect on him and gives us a sense of why that was.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite of all time
Review: The prose is elegant. The story is heartbreaking and beautiful. Do yourself a favor and buy it today. Read it again and again.

Rating:
Summary: Hard work, religion, and fly-fishing
Review: This is a collection of three stories (two novellas and a short story) about life in Montana at the beginning of the 20th century. The title story is a wonderful narrative full of the beauties of nature (particularly the river). In the story, Maclean's father is a preacher, and he educates his sons in the two most important matters of life--religion and fly-fishing. Fishing itself takes on a metaphysical, almost religious nature in the book, and acts for the father and his two sons (Norman and Paul) as a sort of spiritual common-ground that religion cannot provide for these three very different individuals.

The other two stories are about logging and the Forest Service, and likewise provide an interesting look into the still-rough-and-tough Montana frontier of the early twentieth century. These stories focus less on the metaphysical character of the land and more on the rugged nature of both the inhabitants and the terrain itself. Both of these stories are pretty good, but neither of them comes close to matching A River Runs Through It in terms of pure, narrative emotion.

Nature readers or fans of Western literature will love this book (which, incidentally, is better than the movie, though the movie does have some beautiful scenery which enriches the story even more). Just reading it will make you want to get out on a river!

Rating:
Summary: Stories of the west and the people who lived there.
Review: This book is the single best nature book I have ever read. While doing the fieldwork for my thesis in Aquatic Ecology along the Salmon River Idaho over 20 years ago, my major Professor suggested I pick this book up. I read it in a few hours that night in a cheap motel and then couldn't forget it during the next week as I spent long days in the River doing my Research. I've read it dozens of times since, and every time I can feel the water running over my waders and hear the wind filtering through pine trees.

The title story tells of the relationship of an extended family and how they interact in a setting of western wilderness and fishing. The passages on fly-fishing and rivers are evocative and haunting, but Maclean clearly uses the setting to tell the story of his lost brother and how the family couldn't save him in spite of common interests and love. The accounts of Maclean's future brother-in-law and his drunken escapades in the wilderness are priceless.

The other stories in this book are also worthwhile and are, unfortunately, skipped over since the movie version. To anyone who has ever worked in the West outdoors, these stories are achingly nostalgic. They remind those of us old enough to remember the west before long-haired climbers and eco-freaks polluted and locked up these lands just how wonderful it was to be young and strong and free in a land of beauty and hardness.

I dare you to read this collection of stories and then find a better similar work.