Search results for ""Author Norman Maclean""

When Norman Maclean sent the manuscript of A River Runs through It to New York publishers, he received a slew of rejections. One editor, so the story goes, replied, "It has trees in it." Forty years later, the title novella is widely recognized as one of the great American tales of the twentieth century, and Maclean as one of the most beloved writers of our time. Maclean's later triumph, Young Men and Fire, has over the decades also established itself as a classic of the American West. And with this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, a fresh audience will be introduced to Maclean's beautiful prose and understated emotional insights. A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, in his last decades Maclean put together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy in Young Men and Fire, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. This twenty-fifth-anniversary edition includes a powerful new foreword by Timothy Egan, author of The Big Burn and The Worst Hard Time. Though he grew up in the first decades of the twentieth century in the western Rockies working summers in logging camps and for the US Forest Service and cultivating a lifelong passion for the dry fly it was only at the age of seventy, as a retired English professor, that Norman Maclean discovered what he was meant to do: write. Moving and profound, Young Men and Fire honors the literary legacy of a man who improbably gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul.

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From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing", to the last, "I am haunted by waters", A River Runs Through It is an American classic. Based on Norman Maclean's childhood experiences, A River Runs Through It has established itself as one of the most moving stories of our time; it captivates readers with vivid descriptions of life along Montana's Big Blackfoot River and its near magical blend of fly fishing with the troubling affections of the heart. This handsome edition is designed and illustrated by Barry Moser. There are thirteen two-color wood engravings. "A masterpiece...This is more than stunning fiction: It is a lyric record of a time and a life, shining with Maclean's special gift for calling the reader's attention to arts of all kinds--the arts that work in nature, in personality, in social intercourse, in fly-fishing."--Kenneth M. Pierce, Village Voice 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 retired from the University of Chicago in 1973.

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When Norman Maclean sent the manuscript of A River Runs through It to New York publishers, he received a slew of rejections. One editor, so the story goes, replied, "It has trees in it." Forty years later, the title novella is recognized as one of the great American tales of the twentieth century, and Maclean as one of the most beloved writers of our time. The finely distilled product of a long life of often surprising rapture for fly fishing, for the woods and their people, and for the interlocked beauty of life and art A River Runs through It has over the decades established itself as a classic of the American West. This new edition will introduce a fresh audience to Maclean's beautiful prose and understated emotional insights. Elegantly redesigned, A River Runs through It includes a new foreword by Robert Redford, whose film adaptation of River turns twenty-five in 2017. Based on Maclean's own experiences as a young man, the two novellas and short story it contains are set in the small towns and mountains of western Montana. It is a world populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, but also one rich in the pleasures of fly fishing, logging, cribbage, and family. By turns raunchy and elegiac, these superb tales express, in Maclean's own words, "a little of the love I have for the earth as it goes by." Though he grew up in the first decades of the twentieth century in the western Rockies working summers in logging camps and for the US Forest Service and cultivating a lifelong passion for the dry fly it was only at the age of seventy, as a retired English professor, that Norman Maclean discovered what he was meant to do: write. Moving and profound, A River Runs through It honors the literary legacy of a man who improbably gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul. "I am haunted by waters," Maclean writes at the close of A River Runs through It. So, now, are we all.

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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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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. 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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