“Coming late to fiction writing, Maclean (1902–90) wrote his first book, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, at age 70, after he had retired from a 45-year teaching career at the University of Chicago. That book, consisting of two novellas and a short story, brought rave reviews and even more acclaim after Robert Redford’s film adaptation. This book introduces readers to Maclean’s life and writing, collecting previously unpublished essays, stories, letters, and selections from his two books. Rooted in his native Montana, where he returned every summer to the cabin he had helped his father build, the man who emerges from these pages is funny, irreverent, and thoughtful. He was homeschooled until he was 11 and absorbed his father’s lessons in writing lean, penetrating prose. Of particular interest are Maclean’s letters, which give careful, insightful writing advice to friends and former students. This book will appeal to those who love fly-fishing, hunting, the Forest Service, and, above all, good writing.”—Library Journal
"Maclean (1902-1990), an English professor at the University of Chicago, did not establish himself as a writer until late in his life, but quickly gained national acclaim in 1989 [sic] for A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. His posthumous nonfiction account of doomed firefighters, Young Men and Fire, was also praised by critics. Excerpts from both of these works are in this anthology, skillfully edited by Weltzien, to provide a broad and chronological selection from nearly four decades of Maclean's writing. The book includes six previously unpublished pieces, five of them chapters from his uncompleted book on Custer, written between 1959 and 1963. Another standout piece is a 1986 interview in which Maclean ranges widely from the rhythms of prose, his own influences and his native state of Montana to creative writing, fly-fishing, and publishers who rejected A River Runs Through It. Readers of the two earlier books will find, as Weltzien prhases it, 'new biographical insights into one of the most remarkable and unexpected careers in American letters.'"—Publishers Weekly
“Smartly edited . . . the book brings together manuscripts and letters found among Maclean’s papers after his death in 1990, as well as hard-to-find essays, lectures and interviews. Maclean did not draw a distinction between his life and his fiction, and the material in the Reader, much of it available for the first time, burnishes his achievement.”—Wall Street Journal
“Bringing together letters, essays, speeches, and five draft chapters from his unfinished first book, the collection shows a man worrying through the mechanics of putting a story together. All writers may be self-obsessed, but in the case of Maclean, the rough and unfinished works, the drama of his revisions and deliberations lead us back to a central dynamic of his most finished work. Maclean’s stories are precisely about the difficulties and obstructions of storytelling. As such, he is a more difficult but more rewarding writer than one known simply for old-time tales of a lost American west. . . . 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.” —Daniel Swift, Financial Times
"A solid, satisfying, well-made body of work by a patient craftsman."
"Fans will find a fleshed-out picture of the author's approach to writing, teaching, art and life. New readers will be introduced to one of our most accomplished storytellers, plying his craft across a range of genres. . . . The addition of The Norman Maclean Reader to the author's two slim published books is a windfall."—Tim Nulty, Seattle 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."—Tom Wylie, Bloomsbury Review
"[Maclean's] message is certainly tough . . . but it comes garlanded in a prose style very near to unsurpassed in the rhythms of its rolling anapests, its bright flashes of remembrance, its whispers out of time."
"On every page . . . we hear Maclean's voice—a voice that tells us . . . that our well-ordered loves reside at the intersection of people we know and the places we share with them."—Todd C. Ream, Books & Culture
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
Acknowledgements
Suggestions for Further Reading
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
