Background
Maclean, Norman Fitzroy was born on December 23, 1902 in Clarinda, Iowa, United States. Son of John Norman and Clara (Davidson) Maclean.
( As a chronicler of the American West and the souls and...)
As a chronicler of the American West and the souls and passions of the people who live there, Norman Maclean has no peer. This new boxed set comprises his two great books plus an engaging recording of interviews, readings, and reflections. A River Runs Through It is the lyrical, deeply moving story of Maclean's Montana youth on the Big Blackfoot River, when fly-fishing was the one activity that allowed his family to bridge troubled relationships and make connections, brother with brother, father with son. It was made into an acclaimed film of the same name by director Robert Redford. This unabridged version is masterfully read by Montana novelist Ivan Doig. Young Men & Fire consumed 14 years of Maclean's life and earned a 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award. In unflinching detail, it tells the harrowing story of a 1949 Rocky Mountain forest fire that claimed the lives of 13 young "smokejumpers." Western essayist Gretel Ehrlich called it "extraordinarily wise and lyrical . . . a haunting commentary on birth, sex, death, memory, and rebirth." This unabridged version is read by Norman Maclean's son, John. On the Big Blackfoot contains archival reading by and interviews with Norman Maclean, along with recollections by his son, journalist John Maclean. Publishers Weekly called it "wise, witty, and wonderful."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565114434/?tag=2022091-20
(On August 5, 1949, a crew of 15 Smokejumpers, the U.S. Fo...)
On August 5, 1949, a crew of 15 Smokejumpers, the U.S. Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Less than two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or fatally burned. Exactly what happened in Mann Gulch that day has been obscured by years of grief and controversy. Now a master storyteller finally gives the Mann Gulch fire its due as tragedy.Norman Maclean first saw the Mann Gulch fire as it still burned in mid-August 1949, and even then he knew he would one day become a part of its story. Maclean spent the last 14 years of his life studying and reliving the fire. "Young Men & Fire" is the result, a story of Montana, of the ways of wildfires, firefighters, and fire scientists, and especially of a crew, young and proud, who "hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy." This tale is also Maclean's own, the story of a writer obsessed by a strange and human horror, unable to let the truth die with these young men, searching for the last - and lasting - word. Nature's violence collides with human fallibility in "Young Men & Fire." The Smokejumpers in Mann Gulch are trapped by a "blowup, " a deadly explosion of flame and wind rarely encountered and little understood at the time. Only seconds ahead of the approaching firestorm, the foreman, R. Wagner Dodge, throws himself into the ashes of an "escape fire" - and survives as his confused men run, their last moments obscured by smoke. The parents of the dead cry murder, charging that the foreman's fire killed their boys. Years later, Maclean returns to the scene with two of the survivors and pursuesthe mysteries that Mann Gulch has kept hidden since 1949. From the words of witnesses, the evidence of history, and the research of fire scientists, Maclean at last assembles the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GSWCF4S/?tag=2022091-20
( Just as Norman Maclean writes at the end of "A River Ru...)
Just as Norman Maclean writes at the end of "A River Runs through It" that he is "haunted by waters," so have readers been haunted by his novella. A retired English professor who began writing fiction at the age of 70, Maclean produced what is now recognized as one of the classic American stories of the twentieth century. Originally published in 1976, A River Runs through It and Other Stories now celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, marked by this new edition that includes a foreword by Annie Proulx. Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiencesthe experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, "cats," or four-wheel drives. Populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, and set in the small towns and surrounding trout streams and mountains of western Montana, the stories concern themselves with the complexities of fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, and a father. By turns raunchy, poignant, caustic, and elegiac, these are superb tales which express, in Maclean's own words, "a little of the love I have for the earth as it goes by." A first offering from a 70-year-old writer, the basis of a top-grossing movie, and the first original fiction published by the University of Chicago Press, A River Runs through It and Other Stories has sold more than a million copies. As Proulx writes in her foreword to this new edition, "In 1990 Norman Maclean died in body, but for hundreds of thousands of readers he will live as long as fish swim and books are made." "Altogether beautiful in the power of its feeling. . . . As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway."--Alfred Kazin, Chicago Tribune Book World "It is an enchanted tale. . . . I have read the story three times now, and each time it seems fuller."-- Roger Sale, New York Review of Books "Maclean's book--acerbic, laconic, deadpan--rings out of a rich American tradition that includes Mark Twain, Kin Hubbard, Richard Bissell, Jean Shepherd, and Nelson Algren. I love its sound."--James R. Frakes, New York Times Book Review "The title novella is the prize. . . . Something unique and marvelous: a story that is at once an evocation of nature's miracles and realities and a probing of human mysteries. Wise, witty, wonderful, Maclean spins his tales, casts his flies, fishes the rivers and the woods for what he remembers from his youth in the Rockies."--Publishers Weekly "Ostensibly a 'fishing story,' 'A River Runs through It' is really an autobiographical elegy that captivates readers who have never held a fly rod in their hand. In it the art of casting a fly becomes a ritual of grace, a metaphor for man's attempt to move into nature."--Andrew Rosenheim, The Independent Norman Maclean (1902-1990) was the William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago. His book on Montana's Mann Gulch forest fire of 1949, Young Men and Fire, is also available from the University of Chicago Press.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226500667/?tag=2022091-20
(...tells the story of Norman Maclean, his brother Paul, a...)
...tells the story of Norman Maclean, his brother Paul, and their father, a Scotch Presbyterian minister. Life in Missoula, Montana in 1937 centered around family, fly fishing, and the Big Blackfoot River. A universal story of family love, A River Runs Through It is a lyrical masterpiece, as beautiful as the great trout river of western Montana upon which it is set. The movie of the same name, directed by Robert Redford, was based on Maclean's book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556441266/?tag=2022091-20
author English literature educator
Maclean, Norman Fitzroy was born on December 23, 1902 in Clarinda, Iowa, United States. Son of John Norman and Clara (Davidson) Maclean.
Bachelor of Arts, Dartmouth College, 1924; Doctor of Philosophy, University Chicago, 1940; Little D. (honorary), Montana State University, 1980; Little D. (honorary), University Montana, 1981; Little D. (honorary), Dartmouth College, 1987.
Instructor English, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., 1924-1926; instructor to Professor of English Literature, University of Chicago, 1930-1973; William Rainey Harper Professor of English literature, University of Chicago, 1963-1973. Dean students University of Chicago, 1942-1945, acting director Institute Military Studies, 1943-1945, Chairman of Commission general studies humanities, 1952-1966.
(...tells the story of Norman Maclean, his brother Paul, a...)
( A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men...)
( From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, th...)
(From its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, ther...)
( Just as Norman Maclean writes at the end of "A River Ru...)
( When Norman Maclean sent the manuscript of A River Runs...)
( As a chronicler of the American West and the souls and...)
(Norman Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in ...)
("In our family, was no clear line between religion and fl...)
(On August 5, 1949, a crew of 15 Smokejumpers, the U.S. Fo...)
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(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
(1992 301 pages. Hardbound with very good dust jacket, min...)
(Brand New. Will be shipped from US.)
(Am 5. August 1949 setzt ein Flugzeug über den rauhen Berg...)
Member Modern Language Association, Montana History Society, Beta Theta Pi Clubs: Quadrangle.
Married Jessie Burns, September 24, 1931 (deceased 1968). Children— Jean Burns, John Norman.