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A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition

by Norman Maclean

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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. Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiencesthe experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, "cats," or four-wheel drives. Populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, and set in the small towns and surrounding trout streams and mountains of western Montana, the stories concern themselves with the complexities of fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, and a father.

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 first offering from a 70-year-old writer, the basis of a top-grossing movie, and the first original fiction published by the University of Chicago Press, A River Runs through It and Other Stories has sold more than a million copies. 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."

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

Review:

"Altogether beautiful in the power of its feelings....As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway." Chicago Tribune Book World

Review:

"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." New York Times Book Review

Review:

"It is an enchanted tale....I have read the story three times now and each time it seems fuller." The New York Review of Books

Review:

"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." The Independent

Synopsis:

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."

Synopsis:

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.

Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiencesthe experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, "cats," or four-wheel drives. Populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, and set in the small towns and surrounding trout streams and mountains of western Montana, the stories concern themselves with the complexities of fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, and a father.

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 first offering from a 70-year-old writer, the basis of a top-grossing movie, and the first original fiction published by the University of Chicago Press, A River Runs through It and Other Stories has sold more than a million copies. 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."

"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 bookacerbic, laconic, deadpanrings 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

About the Author

Norman Maclean (1902-1990) was the William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago. His book on Montana's Mann Gulch forest fire of 1949, Young Men and Fire, is also available from the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
A River Runs through It
Logging and Pimping and "Your Pal, Jim"
USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Linda Filer, October 4, 2006 (view all comments by Linda Filer)
I'm almost 65 years old, a book junkie: I read it all. Recommended to me by my bridegroom, a publisher, in all my eight or so years a Powell's subscriber, I've never before been moved to write one of these. Some of the most elegant writing I've experienced and they're cowboy stories, to boot! Beautiful, moving, funny, real stories. I'm impressed. Don't let the popularity of the Hollywood movie discourage you from reading this book.
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(13 of 18 readers found this comment helpful)

Product Details

ISBN:
9780226500669
Author:
MacLean, Norman
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Author:
MacLean, Norman
Location:
Chicago
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Montana
Subject:
Fathers and sons
Subject:
Brothers
Subject:
Fly fishing
Subject:
Bildungsromans
Edition Number:
25
Edition Description:
1
Series Volume:
no. 99-31
Publication Date:
October 2001
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
239
Dimensions:
8.20x5.38x.64 in. .58 lbs.

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