A River Runs Through It (novel)
First edition cover
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| Author | Norman MacLean |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autobiographical, Novella |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
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Publication date
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May 1976 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 231 pages (hardback edition) 238 pages (paperback edition) |
| ISBN |
(hardback edition) (paperback edition) (paperback movie tie-in edition) (hardback 25th anniversary edition) (paperback 25th anniversary edition) |
| OCLC | 1733412 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.M16345 Ri PS3563.A317993 |
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories is a semi-autobiographical collection of three stories by author Norman Maclean (1902–1990) published in May 1976 by the University of Chicago Press.
It contains:
"A River Runs Through It" is a semi-autobiographical account of Maclean's relationship with his brother Paul and their upbringing in an early 20th-century Montana family in which "there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." In a 1981 profile of Maclean, Esquire magazine described it as:
It is a story about Maclean and his brother, Paul, who was beaten to death with a gun butt in 1942. It is about not understanding what you love, about not being able to help. It is the truest story I ever read; it might be the best written. And to this day it won’t leave me alone.
"I thought for a while it was the writing that kept bringing it around. That’s the way it comes back to me: I hear the sound of the words, then I see them happen. I spent four hours one afternoon picking out three paragraphs to drop into a column I was writing about the book, and in the end they didn’t translate, because except for the first sentence—'In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing'—there isn’t anything in it that doesn’t depend on what comes before it for its meaning.
The novel is noted for using detailed descriptions of fishing and nature to engage with a number of profound metaphysical questions. In a review for the Chicago Tribune, critic Alfred Kazin stated: "There are passages here of physical rapture in the presence of unsullied primitive America that are as beautiful as anything in Thoreau and Hemingway".
"Logging and Pimping and 'Your pal, Jim'", is the story of Norman Maclean during the summer of 1928 (Maclean was 25), while in graduate school, of working as a logger for the Anaconda Company at a logging camp on the Blackfoot River. At the end of previous summer working at the camp (1927), he made an arrangement to work the next summer with the best logger of the camp, Jim Grierson.
Grierson would work the logging season at a camp, then find a town with a nice Carnegie Public Library, get a library card, find a whore, preferably from the South, and spend the off-season reading, drinking, and having a relationship with the prostitute.
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Wikipedia