“Haunted by Waters”

Word becomes art in Norman Maclean’s

“A River Runs Through it.”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. You can love completely without complete understanding.”

 

One of my favorite books is “A River Runs Through It’, by Norman Maclean. Not only does the plot quickly draw you in, but the prose itself is so beautifully written.

 

Throughout the book, Norman Maclean uses words to paint pictures illustrating his life growing up along the banks of the Big Blackfoot River in early 20^th Century Montana, fly-fishing with his high-spirited brother, Paul and their father, a Presbyterian minister. The story is much more than a précis on trout fishing. It is the story of a young man’s life and how those around him shaped the person he was to become. Eventually, Maclean left Montana to study at Dartmouth and earn advanced degrees from the University of Chicago, where he later had a distinguished career and became Chair of the English Department. After he retired from teaching, Maclean wrote many books, but his most popular was “A River Runs Through It”.  In truth, though Maclean left Montana, Montana never left him. Most of his writing dealt with life there. Maclean died 1990 at 87 years of age.

 

It is true; there is a lot of fly fishing in the book, but to dismiss the story simply as that does it a tremendous injustice. In my opinion, Maclean’s prose is one of the finest examples of modern American literature. It is simply beautiful writing. For example, Maclean’s description of the river paints the perfect picture; “On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late afternoon the shadows of great branches reached from across the river, and the trees took the river in their arms. The shadows continued up the bank, until they included us”. I don’t think anyone could read that and not visualize the scene in their minds perfectly.

 

In a review for the Chicago Tribune, critic Alfred Kazin stated: "There are passages here of physical rapture in the presence of unsullied primitive America that are as beautiful as anything in Thoreau and Hemingway". I quite agree.

 

There is much more to this story than growing up fishing in a Montana river. While large parts of the book are idyllic, much of the book deals with Norman Maclean’s rebellious younger brother, Paul. In what was indeed an achievement for its time, both Maclean boys graduated from college. Paul graduated from the University of Montana and became a crime-beat reporter in Missoula.
 

 

Perhaps in rebellion of his father’s stern, but loving, upbringing, Paul often partook of drinking and gambling. Throughout the book, the task of trying to save Paul from himself often fell on Norman. Near the end of the book, in a sermon, Norman’s father speaks of his family’s frustration, trying in vain to help Paul, “Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”

 

Perhaps no part of the book is written better than the closing paragraph, “Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them. Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” I know that I can relate to this, though I am not nearly the age Maclean was when he wrote that. Still, I know that as we grow older the voices of those we loved who went before us become more distant with each passing season. We can be thankful for their wisdom, probably unappreciated at the time they offered it, but their memory is treasured now.

 

I did not have the pleasure of knowing Norman Maclean, though I feel connected to him through his writing. I can also say that I have the honor of working with several professors whose spirit and pedagogical expertise would no doubt make Maclean proud. I thank all of them for their encouragement and inspiration.

 

 

The Old Man and the Tea

 

Nick watched the old man and his tea across the room at Starbucks. The old man couldn’t sip as he once did when he was young. His hands were bent with age and worn by time and hard work. That was in the days before Starbucks anyway, so what did it matter, really?

Nick ordered his usual; a venti mocha Frappuccino. The young, pretty barista asked him if he wanted whipped cream, which was a needless indulgence, thought Nick. “Nada”, he said.

“Nada?” replied the young barista who Nick thought looked like a woman he’d known in the war, a long time ago.

“Nada”, repeated Nick.

“Nada?”

“Yes, nada, nada, por favor mi amiga.”

“Ok, nada”

Nick found a table by the window and sat down to grade the exams from his class on the works of Ernest Hemingway. He sipped the mocha Frappuccino through the straw. This is a good Frappuccino, he thought. Not too much ice or foam. It reminded him of the Frappuccino he had with Francesca at Harry's Bar and Grill in Florence before she left him for the Count Di Choculati.

This particular test covered “The Sun Also Rises” and he’d asked the students to discuss the allegory of the running of the bulls in Pamplona to Hemingway’s view of life and to what Gertrude Stein called “The Lost Generation”. Nick had a hard time getting the students to connect with this book, so he knew the bull would soon be running all over the pages they had written. He forged on anyway, because even the young and clueless deserved a break in this world and that was more than the young soldiers got in the war, but at least they were brave and died with grace. The first essay he read confirmed what he feared. “I think the protagonist, Jake Barnes, and his friends cared more for the wine in their goat-skin bag than for the lives of the innocent bulls in the ring. As a member of PETA, I was disgusted by this book and therefore, I did not read it.” Nick sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes and looked out the window at the hills like white elephants.

His weary eyes fell on a fly hopelessly buzzing against the glass pane next to him. “I must kill you”, he said to the fly. “I love you as one of God’s creation, but I must kill you.” He thought of the really big flies he’d hunted out in the dumpsters behind the shopping center when the he was young and time spread out before him like a trout stream in Idaho. Now, he thought, I am neither so young nor so eager to hunt those flies. Besides, he didn’t have the big bug zapper that he’d bought from the blind street beggar in Mozambique.

That’s when he saw her. She opened the door and stood for a moment trying to balance the shopping bags and her latte. He was unable to take his eyes off of her. She was bathed in light so radiant it reminded Nick of the surface of the sun, or maybe the thing the ophthalmologist uses to see the back of your eye. Maybe it was just the sun reflecting off the truck delivering ice cream to the Rite-Aid next door. He knew that the woman of his dreams had just walked into this clean, well-lighted place, or was it well lit place? No matter. He had to possess her. He yearned to take her to Paris and share quiche at a café along the Seine as he did with Elaine in the days after the war and all of the brave young soldiers had gone. He wanted to take her to hunt rhino below the snows of Kilimanjaro. He longed to take her fishing big marlin in the Stream and later drink the dark red wine at The Floridita in Habana. He knew none of that would ever happen. She was probably in love with another, someone he knew was not worthy of her. He’d been wounded in the war and he knew he could not satisfy her as he once did the farm girl in Spain he’d met during a lull in the fighting when their passions flamed and burned hot in that barn like two running bulls and he was as brave as Belmonte, yet lacked the bull fighter’s grace.  Still, he was drawn to this amazing visage in the doorway and could not help himself.

“Here, let me help you” he said to this struggling beauty of the Bloomingdales bags.

“Nada”, she said.

“Nada?”

“Si. Nada, senior. Nada. Déjeme sola. Mi corazón pertenece a otro.” (“Leave me alone. My heart belongs to another.”)

With an aching heart, he retreated to his table. He’d been brave and strong, but to no avail. The woman struggled through the door and fell into the embrace of a man in a Mercedes. He knew at that moment that life was nothing more than a bad mojito made with great rum. This was still a damn good Frappuchino.