The Norman Maclean Reader. Essays, Letters, and Other Writing by the Author of A River Runs through It. Edited by O. Alan Weltzien. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008. Cloth: $27.50, 260 Pages.

As he proved with two books both written in his old age, A River Runs through It (1976) and Young Men and Fire (1992), Norman Maclean is one of the masters of the American language.  National Book Award winner Pete Dexter spoke for a generation when he said of Maclean’s first and only book of fiction that the title story “filled holes inside” him “that had been so long in the making that I’d stopped noticing they were there.” 

And Dexter doesn’t even fish.

Few other first lines in all of American literature are as famous as the words that introduced Maclean to the literary world: “In our family there was no clear line between fishing and religion.”

And, of course, there wasn’t, either.

The only other first line of American fiction that might actually compete with Maclean’s for easy recognition in the collective mind of the general public came from another American writer, who opened his fishing story by writing, “Call me Ishmael.”  That writer was a guy named Herman Melville, and the book was Moby Dick.  The question that haunts Maclean’s readers is basically the one this new book tries to answer: Why did such a fine writer write so little and so late—as his son, John, a bestselling author, once put the matter.

It should surprise nobody, then, that when he died in August of 1990, Maclean left behind parts of another masterpiece-in-the-making: an unfinished book on the most famous battle in American military history: Custer’s defeat in the valley of the Little Big Horn. Maclean’s treatment of the battle, especially of the northern Cheyennes, calls to mind Evan S. Connell’s brilliant prose documentary, Son of the Morning Star, as well as September 11, 2001.

Had Maclean finished the book, who knows what might have happened? Instead, Norman Maclean did what his father, the Rev Maclean, had taught him to do as a boy whenever he wrote anything:  now throw it away. And he threw it away. Even as an amanuensis taking orders from beyond the grave, I’m unsure what Maclean would think about seeing parts of his unfinished manuscript in print. Not much, probably.

Regardless, Maclean was generally reported by his students at the University of Chicago to have known more than anyone else about two historic figures: Aristotle and General George Armstrong Custer. He also taught Shakespeare once a year just to remind himself “what great writing is like.” Of these three figures in Maclean’s personal pantheon, The Norman Maclean Reader deals only with Custer.

Among dozens to whom he regularly wrote, Maclean’s correspondents are limited to four people: (1) historian Robert Utley, whom Maclean mentored by mail; (2) Marie Boroff, his former student and now professor emeritus at Yale; (3) Nick Lyons, probably the single most important writer about flyfishing in the United States next to Maclean; and (4) Lois Jansson, the widow of Forest Service Ranger Bob Jansson, whose district included Mann Gulch and the fire that Maclean immortalized in his second book.  As beautiful and haunting as parts of the unfinished Custer manuscript are, because the book is incomplete these excerpts tease, entertain, and educate but never wholly satisfy. Still, these chapters alone, along with the letters, are worth the cost of the book.

Because fly fishers are generally more curious about the world, and have written more about their art than the practitioners of all other “sports,” they should find plenty to like and even to love here in this collection of the Old Man’s ephemera. However, it’s still a shame that more sides of Maclean’s character—fly fisherman, logger, firefighter, scholar, teacher, husband, father, son—are not more fully represented. He was a master, for instance, of personal invective, and his great 1981 letter to Charles Elliott at Alfred A. Knopf Publishers ranks right up there with the best f--k-you prose of all time. 

Having included that letter or Maclean’s essay on the madness of King Lear may or may not have fit the editorial scheme for the volume, but it would have been the kind of symbolic gesture best in keeping with Maclean’s complex personality, the kind of daring stylistic move that he often made on his own without any help from an editor. When his old friend, Bud Moore, asked him once why he always included a whore in his fictional stories, Maclean answered that he wanted his stories to sell.   

Certainly, including Maclean’s essay on the madness of King Lear or his masterpiece written on behalf of all rejected authors might have put off or offended some readers, but it also might have sold a lot more books.  As it is, only a ghost runs through this one.

I had been wrestling barbed wire alone all morning near camp—putting in corner braces, splicing broken strands, pounding staples, that sort of thing.  Gordon had long since driven off to chase blondes at the A-Bar or The Lodge—women whose hands his wife, Wanda, always referred to as “back-scratchers” because of their long, painted nails. I knew one of the blondes fairly well, and knowing what little I knew about her, I was pretty sure Gordon would never return to camp in his pickup until the next morning, if then, to “check” on my “progress.”   Of course, to get the pack rod (a four piece fiberglass Fenwick) that I always kept tied behind the saddle seat, I had to catch my horse, and that task took maybe twenty minutes, although I did get to see plenty of country on foot.

Judging by the size of the little feeder creek running through the sagebrush toward the reservoir, I figured I’d need at least half a dozen fish to make a proper lunch. It was still June and I had no allusions about scaring up anything with weight and girth. In fact, I felt happy just about the thought of fishing for the first time in two or three days.

As quickly as I could, I burned a hot alder fire down to coals while heating the brine in the big soup kettle to a simmer, tending the fire long enough to finally bring the water/vinegar solution to a rolling bubble and then at the last minute adding the carrot I’d been saving for the horse.  Next, I strung the rod together, seated the Medalist, rigged up, tied on a Trude, walked a short distance, and cast the Trude to the most likely-looking spot in the gulley below the fenceline: a dark pool given shallow but shadowy depth by a single log dam around which the creek moved without managing to spill itself over the log.

The cast went a bit long and landed on the log, but the instant I pulled the fly into the eggnog foam, a head appeared and ate the Trude. The fish turned out to be a ripe female spawner from the reservoir, full of  eggs, of course, but weighing maybe a pound and a half. Astonished by her size and hungry as hell for her soul and her flesh, I unhooked her and worked my way back to the fire by holding my rod in one hand and her, writhing and squirming, through the gills with the index finger of my other hand.

Then I dumped her tail-first into the scalding water of the kettle. The boiling brew almost immediately consumed her life. I watched the process until her body curled into itself and the simmering brine transformed her silver and scarlet sides to a fine shade of grey and turned the dark green-spotted skin on her back to a deep blue the shade of the sky.

I’m sure some way exists to disembowel a poached rainbow trout for presentation on a plate, paper or ceramic, without ruining all that delicate flesh that melts on the tongue. Better, I found, to forget about trying and run a blade down the back and just flip and strip the fillets on each side free from the carcass, tossing the entrails, bones, head, and tail to the buzzards.

In those salad days, of course, I considered myself too proud to learn anything about trout roe or sashimi or broth. Today, I’d save the roe and prepare it for toast points and vodka, but I guess this dispatch ought to be enough for now.

I have a son, Myrlin, in Tempe about the same age I was back then. He thinks the huge carp and bass in the Arizona State Research Pond not far from his place are beneath testing his skills as an angler.  I tried eating Columbia River Carp when I lived in Inchelium on the Colville Reservation, but that, as the writers say, is another story.

Myrlin wants me to send him his rods, reels, and flies so he can fish Arizona tail waters and eat rainbows. So in between being water-boarded nearly to death by drowning from grading freshman essays, I’ve been three weeks trying to tie a dozen Wooly Buggers and Pheasant Tail nymphs for him to cast to those carp in that pond for me.  I guess I’d best quit now and send him those flies and his gear. I’m sure he’ll appreciate them—if he isn’t off chasing blondes.

P.S.  Old Man Trude, my boss Gordon’s grandfather, only fished with the fly named after him, which, incidentally, is reputed to be the forerunner of all hair-wing flies. Actually, Carter H. Harrison, a former mayor of Chicago and former Collector of Internal Revenue Taxes, tied the first one in 1901 in A.S. Trude’s library at the ranch. Harrison tied the original from the clipped hair from the flank of Trude’s red spaniel dog and a strand of red worsted yarn in the library’s rug before later modifying the pattern as follows:

Body: Red yarn wrapped with silver tinsel
Wing: Red squirrel hair tied long to show the dark band
Hackle: Red rooster

Not long ago, using a bead-headed nymph version of Harrison’s original, I caught, killed, and ate fish in the same creek where I first prepared Truite au Bleu.