Reviewed by: Chris O’Byrne
I write about life. Even when I write how-to-fly fish pieces, my overarching subject, is life. I aspire one day to be half as good as Norman MacLean. His landmark novella, A River Runs Through It is an example for me to aspire toward.
River is a fictionalized memoir, focusing on Maclean’s younger brother who was a master angler (and good writer) but chose a rough path in life. The attractiveness of the story goes deeper than a display of our human condition, Maclean was a master at the art of writing.
You will be drawn into the story immediately, but pay attention to details in the first five pages where Maclean skillfully lays breadcrumbs that leaven into important facts later on. Don’t bother dogearing your copy, it is so quotable that nearly every page has resonated passages. As I was re-reading the novella to write this review, I had to stop many times to record passages for FeatherWater.com’s Quotations About Fishing slide shows.
After working as a wildland firefighter and logger, the author spent 49 years teaching in colleges. He earned a Ph.D. in English, and a professorship. He did not begin to publish his stories until relatively late in life, but wrote scholarly articles about literature, a manual on maps for the Army, and an analysis of the Mann Gulch fire. Even outside of fly fishing, he is best known for River, which was made into The Movie that popularized fly fishing more than the flies did.
You will appreciate this short book, even if you’d rather be fishing than reading. The fishing is informative and described well. And it includes super-fisher-man scenes. While there is more in the story about relationships than fishing, the sappy stuff doesn’t overwhelm the good stuff. For any angler, there is a lot of source material for quotes, and stories to “borrow.” New anglers will also find interest in the instructive casting and fishing explanations. I know of non-anglers who have enjoyed it too. One reviewer didn’t even get the references to red Hills Bros. coffee cans, but liked the book. Readers who travel will take the descriptions of western geography as motivation to visit Montana. This is a good gift to give to folks who aren’t big readers. Even with two other adventure stories included, the book A River Runs Through It and Other Stories is not intimidating.
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Norman Maclean, The University of Chicago Press, 1976, ISBN: 0-226-50057-8, 104 pages, 217 pages total
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