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A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition Paperback – Deluxe Edition, October 1, 2001
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"[Maclean] would go to his grave secure in the knowledge that anyone who'd fished with a fly in the Rockies and read his novella on the how and why of it believed it to be the best such manual on the art ever written--a remarkable feat for a piece of prose that also stands as a masterwork in the art of tragic writing."
(Philip Connors Nation)"Altogether beautiful in the power of its feeling. . . . As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway."
(Alfred Kazin Chicago Tribune Book World)"It is an enchanted tale. . . . I have read the story three times now, and each time it seems fuller."
(Roger Sale New York Review of Books)"Maclean's book—acerbic, laconic, deadpan—rings out of a rich American tradition that includes Mark Twain, Kin Hubbard, Richard Bissell, Jean Shepherd, and Nelson Algren. I love its sound."
(James R. Frakes New York Times Book Review)"The title novella is the prize. . . . Something unique and marvelous: a story that is at once an evocation of nature's miracles and realities and a probing of human mysteries. Wise, witty, wonderful, Maclean spins his tales, casts his flies, fishes the rivers and the woods for what he remembers from his youth in the Rockies."
(Publishers Weekly)"Ostensibly a 'fishing story,' 'A River Runs through It' is really an autobiographical elegy that captivates readers who have never held a fly rod in their hand. In it the art of casting a fly becomes a ritual of grace, a metaphor for man's attempt to move into nature."
(Andrew Rosenheim The Independent)
From the Inside Flap
Just as Norman Maclean writes at the end of "A River Runs through It" that he is "haunted by waters," so have readers been haunted by his novella. A retired English professor who began writing fiction at the age of 70, Maclean produced what is now recognized as one of the classic American stories of the twentieth century. Originally published in 1976, A River Runs through It and Other Stories now celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, marked by this new edition that includes a foreword by Annie Proulx. By turns raunchy, poignant, caustic, and elegiac, these are superb tales which express, in Maclean's own words, "a little of the love I have for the earth as it goes by," a love shared by millions of readers. As Proulx writes in her foreword to this new edition, "In 1990 Norman Maclean died in body, but for hundreds of thousands of readers he will live as long as fish swim and books are made."
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151 of 156 people found the following review helpful
By
George G. Kiefer
on April 26, 2004
Format: Hardcover
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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.
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81 of 84 people found the following review helpful
By
P. Riser
on August 9, 2002
Format: Hardcover
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A River Runs Through It is quite simply the single greatest book I have ever read. Maclean's language is as terse and economical as any in Hemingway, but Maclean imparts the type of true feeling and emotion into his simple words that Hemingway himself was incapable of producing. A River Runs Through It is not a story about fishing, but rather a tale of family. The family just happens to share a love of fishing, and Maclean's love of waters has more to do with its close association with his family than with the actual fishing that takes place there. It is the family's tragic loss of Paul, the true master fly-fisherman of the clan, that ties Maclean to waters and inspires the closing lines of the novella. A River Runs Through It delves into interpersonal relationships in a manner which grips the reader and makes him/her reflect on his/her own family. Although I am myself an avid fisherman, I am a more avid reader and I can say that for my part, the fishing element of the story is unimportant except for its association with Maclean's family. Maclean's prose is beautiful to point that his description of a common object or occurence could bring the reader to tears. A River Runs Through It is quite simply the most beautiful thing I have ever read. Period.
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103 of 115 people found the following review helpful
By
Orrin C. Judd
VINE VOICE on July 25, 2001
Format: Hardcover
4 Comments
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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.Read more ›
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.Read more ›
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By
Mollie N. Benzominer
on August 4, 2006
Format: Hardcover
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I have read this collection of three stories about 5 times and The stories just seem to get richer with each read. There are parts I forget or somehow overlooked that are real gems during the next reading of the story. The prose is very fine although told in a "Manly" roughness that only slightly covers an amazing level of sensitivity to the people and the setting. There are very few books that are better.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
By
Charles E. Modica Jr.
on July 17, 2005
Format: Paperback
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"A River Runs Through It" is a remarkable work of art, and, to borrow a turn of phrase from Maclean himself, one of the best examples of "the pure and the good" of American literaturen there is to be fouundn. Maclean's prose is sparse, and in this it is easilly comparable to Hemmingway's. But there is something more, I think, in Maclean's story than is to be found in most of Hemmingway's works. Part of this arises from Maclean's uncanny sense of rhythm; he writes of the rhythm of fly-casting, and his prose has a rhythm just as meticulous as that of the proper casting a rod. The style and sound of Maclean's work is unparalleled.
This allows "A River Runs Through It" to reveal a story of surprising depth and meaning while still remaining, as Maclean writes in his introduction, "Western." There is no mistaking the story as anything but a western piece of literature; the sparse and rhythmical style Maclean uses mirrors the themes and content of his work; the careful simplicity of the prose mirrors and emphasizes the careful simplicity of the story, in a similar fashion to how Fitzgerald's decadent style mirrors and emphasizes his own Jazz-age tales.
But what of the story itself? It is, as others say, more than a 'fly-fishing' story, and it expresses truths so simple and fundamental that they remain elusive despite their qualities. The story has humor and poignancy, and is undeniably powerful.
It is a shame Maclean didn't write complete more writing between the publication of "River" and his death ("Young Men and Fire" being published posthumously and in a somewhat ramshackle shape), but it is also perhaps fitting. A long list of titles does not a great author make. Maclean writes of simple truth with such humanity that even taken alone, "A River Runs Through It" forces one to include Maclean among the great American authors, and stands as a testament to both its truths and its author.
This allows "A River Runs Through It" to reveal a story of surprising depth and meaning while still remaining, as Maclean writes in his introduction, "Western." There is no mistaking the story as anything but a western piece of literature; the sparse and rhythmical style Maclean uses mirrors the themes and content of his work; the careful simplicity of the prose mirrors and emphasizes the careful simplicity of the story, in a similar fashion to how Fitzgerald's decadent style mirrors and emphasizes his own Jazz-age tales.
But what of the story itself? It is, as others say, more than a 'fly-fishing' story, and it expresses truths so simple and fundamental that they remain elusive despite their qualities. The story has humor and poignancy, and is undeniably powerful.
It is a shame Maclean didn't write complete more writing between the publication of "River" and his death ("Young Men and Fire" being published posthumously and in a somewhat ramshackle shape), but it is also perhaps fitting. A long list of titles does not a great author make. Maclean writes of simple truth with such humanity that even taken alone, "A River Runs Through It" forces one to include Maclean among the great American authors, and stands as a testament to both its truths and its author.
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