Selected works and incidental writings by the celebrated author of A River Runs Through It, plus excerpts from a 1986 interview.
In his eighty-seven years, Norman Maclean played many parts: fisherman, logger, firefighter, scholar, teacher. But it was a role he took up late in life, that of writer, that 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 his childhood home in Montana—has proved to be one of the most enduring American stories ever written.
The Norman Maclean Reader is a wonderful addition to Maclean’s celebrated oeuvre. Bringing together previously unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from his more famous works, the Reader will serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Maclean, while offering longtime fans new insight into his life and career.
In this evocative collection, Maclean as both a writer and a man becomes evident. Perceptive, intimate essays deal with his career as a teacher and a literary scholar, as well as the wealth of family stories for which Maclean is famous. Complete with a generous selection of letters, as well as excerpts from a 1986 interview, The Norman Maclean Reader provides a fully fleshed-out portrait of this much admired author, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances of his craft, and a man as at home in the academic environment of the University of Chicago as in the quiet mountains of his beloved Montana.
Various 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.
Praise for The Norman MacLean Reader
“A solid, satisfying, well-made body of work by a patient craftsman.” —Chicago Tribune
“The Norman Maclean Reader fills out and makes more human the impressions of the restless, inquiring storyteller we saw in previously published works. In his writings, at their best, we too feel the thrusts and strains. He is a writer of great beauty, in his own terms.” —Financial Times
“Weltzien has not only done great service for Norman Maclean’s readers, he has rightly expanded Maclean’s place in American literature . . . . For me, The Norman Maclean reader is discovered treasure.” —Bloomsbury Review
Norman Maclean (1902–90), woodsman, scholar, teacher, and storyteller, grew up in the western Rocky Mountains of Montana and worked for many years in logging camps and for the United States Forestry Service before beginning his academic career. He was the William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago until 1973. O. Alan Weltzien is professor of English at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, Montana. He is the author of A Father and an Island: Reflections on Loss, a memoir; To Kilimanjaro and Back, a book of poems; Exceptional Mountains, a cultural history of Pacific Northwest volcanoes; coeditor of Coming into McPhee Country: John McPhee and the Art of Literary Nonfiction; and editor of The Literary Art and Activism of Rick Bass.
Table of Contents
Introduction by O. Alan Weltzien
THE CUSTER WRITINGS
Edward S. Luce: Commanding General (Retired), Department of the Little Bighorn
From the Unfinished Custer Manuscript Chapter 1: The Hill Chapter 2: The Sioux Chapter 3: The Cheyennes Chapter 4: In Business Last Chapter: Shrine to Defeat
A MACLEAN SAMPLER
"This Quarter I am Taking McKeon": A Few Remarks on the Art of Teaching
"Billiards is a Good Game": Gamesmanship and America's First Nobel Prize Scientist
Retrievers Good and Bad Logging and Pimping and "Your Pal, Jim" An Incident The Woods, Books, and Truant Officers
The Pure and the Good On Baseball and Backpacking
Black Ghost From Young Men and Fire Interview with Norman Maclean
SELECTED LETTERS
Letters to Robert M. Utley, 1955-1979 Letters to Marie Borroff, 1949-1986 Letters to Nick Lyons 1976-1981 Letters to Lois Jansson, 1979-1981
