In his eighty-eight years, Norman Maclean (1902-90) played many
parts: fisherman, logger, firefighter, scholar, teacher. But it was
a role he took up late in life, that of writer, which won him
enduring fame and critical acclaim - as well as the devotion of
readers worldwide. Though the 1976 collection "A River Runs Through
It and Other Stories" was the only book Maclean published in his
lifetime, it was an unexpected success, and the moving family
tragedy of the title novella - based largely on Maclean's memories
of early twentieth-century Montana - has proved to be one of the
most enduring American stories ever written. The posthumous
publication in 1992 of "Young Men and Fire", Maclean's deeply
personal investigative account of a deadly forest fire, only added
to his reputation, reacquainting readers with the power of his
spare, evocative prose.With "The Norman Maclean Reader", the
University of Chicago Press is proud to add a fitting final volume
to Maclean's celebrated oeuvre. Bringing together previously
unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from
his two masterpieces, the Reader will serve as the perfect
introduction for readers new to Maclean, while offering longtime
fans new insight into his life and career.Much of the pleasure of
"The Norman Maclean Reader" lies in the rounded picture it gives of
Maclean the man. A series of witty, perceptive personal essays
present Maclean from a variety of angles: in "This Quarter I Am
Taking McKeon," the master teacher distills the lessons of decades
in the classroom; in "The Pure and the Good: On Baseball and
Backpacking," Maclean the scholar turns his attention to poetic
rhythm and the importance of craft; in "Retrievers Good and Bad,"
we see Maclean the memoirist first beginning to draw on his wealth
of family stories.A generous selection of letters, as well as
excerpts from a 1986 interview, serve to flesh out the Reader's
portrait of Maclean, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances
of his craft, and a man as at home in the recondite atmosphere of
the University of Chicago as in the quiet hills of his beloved
Montana. The letters find Maclean corresponding about fishing with
Nick Lyons, the first significant reviewer of "A River Runs Through
It"; about literature and teaching with Marie Borroff, a former
student who had become a professor of literature at Yale; about the
Mann Gulch fire with Lois Jansson, the widow of one of Maclean's
sources; and about General Custer with historian Robert
Utley.Maclean's writings on Custer comprise the most extensive
unpublished material in the Reader. Fascinated by Custer's tragic
end and posthumous fame, Maclean dedicated years in the late 1950s
to studying the general, and though he was never able to shape his
chapters on the topic into a complete book, to read them now is
revelatory: as he explores the man and myth of Custer, we see
Maclean groping toward the rigorous yet personal hybrid form of
historical storytelling that he would employ to such effect in
"Young Men and Fire".Multifarious and moving, the works collected
in "The Norman Maclean Reader" serve as both a summation and a
celebration, giving readers a chance once again to hear one of
American literature's most distinctive voices.
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