A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

They say write what you know, and that’s exactly what Maclean did when he turned 70. He staged his first collection of short stories, which included a novella, in his childhood’s region and era. He captured the western Rocky Mountains’ culture, character, color, nonculture, characters and characteristics during the 20th century’s early decades.

This fictional account remains such a revered classic that it feels redundant to recommend it. Naturally, everyone should read it. It set the standards for elegant, authentic, precise storytelling. I’m unsure why it took me decades to get to it. Now that I’ve read it—the novella, in… show more.

It’s funny, for one thing, but not merely funny.

“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us,” Maclean writes, and here brotherhood, religion, and fly-fishing bleed into one another to comprise the river flowing through this stunning novella.

Wild Paul and his measured older brother Norman seem more friends than family, mostly because they choose one another. Meditative asides abound and delight, but the tender stuff concerns memory and acceptance and forgiveness, affirming Emily Dickinson’s adage: “The soul selects her own society.”

Norman Maclean’s semi-autobiographical A River Runs Through It is an American classic set in Missoula, Montana, about forty miles from my home. The book inspired a film by the same name, directed by Robert Redford and starring Brad Pitt.

The author, a retired English professor, was 70 years old when he wrote A River Runs Through It. He began with what is probably the best first paragraph I have ever read: "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… show more.