The Norman Maclean Reader

by Norman Maclean

I didn’t get much farther than the woodpile until yesterday, when I regained enough self-confidence and circulation to try fishing again. Still being plenty subdued, I tried a small stream, probably because of the word “small.” But it was a mistake. I had forgotten how much brush you have to crawl under and how many fallen logs you have to crawl over to fish a “small” mountain stream. It was odd. It was my foot that I had hurt most, but once I was back in business it was my knee that hurt worst, and next my shoulder. Today it’s my foot again that’s worst. I don’t quite understand, except maybe by the time you are 75 you have already learned to hurt all over, if given half a chance.

  But I caught 5, not big of course but half-decent, and threw back about 25. I admired one especially. He was a cut-throat about 11 inches long, the sole occupant of an open quiet hole with nothing on the bottom of it but a water-soaked snag. He knew and I knew he had one chance, and that was to get under that snag and throw a half-hitch over it. It was kind of wonderful to watch all the tricks he had of making you think he was going some other way when he really was going for the snag. I admired him so much I threw him back when I landed him, even though he was as big as any of the five I kept.

  Cautiously, I fished only an hour by prior agreement with myself, but it was real nice to re-establish social communication with fish, even small fish. They know a dead snag when they see one, which is a lot more than you can say about a lot of big men.

  I hope you don’t have to give up fishing for publishing. [. . .]

  This Sabbath morning was the morning I wasn’t going to write this week, but here I have spent all of it writing you. Fortunately, there is enough space left on this sheet to wish you happiness and success in your venture of publishing and continued success and happiness in your writing, teaching, and fishing.

  Sincerely,

  Norman

  Nov. 22, 1978

  Dear Nick:

  I have been asked to speak before the Chairmen of the English Departments in the country on Dec. 28 at the MLA meetings in New York City. I am arriving there the evening of the day before (the 27th) and will leave the day after (the 29th). I suppose I will be very busy at the meetings and seeing old friends and besides I hope to find time to talk to several New York people who have written me about the publication of my next book. Even so, I would like to get a chance to get together with you, if only for 1/2 an hour or an hour before I head back to Chicago. Although I realize the dates over which I have no control fall in the post-Xmas holidays. You have been very good to me and my book and have known only my book.

  I was troubled by your last letters, although I don’t know whether I can say anything that will be of help. I hate to see you being driven in so many directions—teaching, editing, writing and now publishing. What I have seen of your writing is often brilliant and yet moving (naturally I am especially touched by your stories of fishing with your boy and by the brilliance of your reviews), but in the dispersion of your gifts I am afraid that writing is what will suffer most.

  The hell of it is that I don’t know what I can say to help. I let it happen to me. In the “Preface” to my stories I confess in the first paragraph that I was 70 years old before I tried something beyond scholarship and criticism—and I don’t know whether I was ever divided into as many pieces as you are. I don’t know what to tell you, but I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes if you are going to be in the city after Christmas.

  You ask in one of your letters if I have made any commitments about the publication of my next big story. None. I have ducked them. A long story for me is a full-time job, especially when I am about 3/5 through it and can’t yet see the end and can’t quite remember the beginning. At that point in the traffic I feel I should spend my time trying to see a little more light. [. . .] I have friends in the book business who keep advising me that I should look toward Seattle for my next publisher. I know there is a great boom going on there in the writing and publishing of books, and I know A River did better in Seattle than in any other city in the country, except my home town of Missoula, Montana. Have you ever been in Seattle—it is a wonderful and beautiful and powerful city. It’s an idea anyway. Although New York City is not one of my favorite watering-places, it would be a pleasure to see you there this Xmas.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Norman

  March 8, 1979

  Dear Nick:

  Enclosed is one of the earliest copies of the paperback edition of my book of stories. I hope you like the cover—it is a reproduction of a photograph taken for me by a young Forest Service Ranger of the portion of Seeley Lake where my cabin is. My cabin is on the edge of the lake (Seeley Lake) near the left edge of the photograph.

  To me, of course, it is beautiful, and I hope you like its looks, too. My cabin is only about 16 miles from the glaciers. It snows every month.

  I hope also that you will note the first review quoted on the inside of the covers is yours. Thank you again for your kind words which certainly contributed to the book’s success.

  By the way, have you ever heard from that friend of yours who was wondering if he could get permission to publish the fishing story in a fishing series of his? Only yesterday I received a similar request from someone who plans to put out an anthology of fishing stories.

  I hope all goes well with you. We have a long winter.

  Norman

  March 27, 1979

  Dear Nick:

  Thank you for your warm-hearted letter. Don’t apologize if it is a little late. I know you are always living a two-storey life.

  I wish, though, you could find time to write more of your own kind of thing. I am glad that my starting to write in life gives you some kind of comfort. Given good health, you will find time (in the fullness of time) to sit and write in beauty. I myself don’t derive great comfort from that thought, if for no other reason than that you can write in beauty now if you could only find time to sit.

  It might interest you to know that I think I also wrote quite well when I was young. T. S. Eliot made his big early reputation by winning The Dial poetry contest with his Waste Land. In that contest, there were three judges and one of them (Carl Sandburg) selected my entry as number one. So as you can see I have never had much luck in winning contests.

  I don’t look at the past, however, with much regret—or great jubilation. Like most woodsmen I have known, I am a fatalist. I figure it’s all or mostly a matter of having your number called. Of course, you have to be ready, as you will. But, Nick, right now you are a beautiful writer. [. . .]

  Just keep pegging away until you are 73 and try not to ask questions. For the next 3 years after 73 God might take care of you.

  Norman

  August 8, 1980

  Dear Nick:

  The other day I wrote the last sentence of the first draft of the last chapter of my long overdue story on the tragic forest fire. A few hours later I realized it was Aug. 5, the anniversary date of the tragedy (Aug. 5, 1949). This Delphic coincidence, like most omens, can receive opposite interpretations, but I prefer to interpret it as a good omen, indicating that my story is one with the event rather than it is about to go up in smoke.

  Anyway, I am using it as an excuse to myself to take a few days off to answer the pile of letters that have been gathering volcanic dust on them (from Mt. St. Helens—including last night) on the table on my front porch.

  I’ve begun with what’s most important—I am delighted to learn of your promotion to full professor, since I wrote a letter for you—I’m sure I have a copy of it in my files in Chicago and will send you one when I get back home. I remember among other things saying in it that you were a better writer than Izaak Walton, taking a chance that none of those eastern bastards on your promotion committee had ever read A River Runs Through It in which it is quite clear I was brought up in a family of fishermen who thought Izaak Walton was a piss-poor fisherman and writer. Evidently I was right—that’s the way my predications about New Yorkers turn out—usually. It’s od
d, but being a full-professor settles pretty much for good a fair number of life’s problems, and so I am delighted you will be free of these problems and can spend more time fishing and being a better writer than Izaak Walton.

  As for me, I also took a slight step forward academically this spring. I was awarded an honorary doctoral degree (Doctor of Letters) by Montana State University. It leaves a good feeling to be well thought of in the country one loves and thinks he knows.

  As for the future of my new story, Nick, I expect to spend another 3 or 4 months on it before I submit it to a publisher. Then I think I’ll try to avoid wasting some of the year of time I wasted with A River having it rejected by eastern publishers who after keeping it 3 months would return it with the comment it had trees in it or was just like the stuff they received every day. My son-in-law, whose advice I nearly always follow, says I should get an agent, preferably a Jewish woman with motherly instincts. He’s a Jewish boy from Brooklyn, so he sure as hell should know what he is talking about. Who knows? Maybe around the first of the year a Jewish woman who makes good chicken noodle soup might ask you if you would like to read the manuscript of a story about a forest fire entitled, “A Wildfire Runs Through It”?

  Norman

  Oct. 27, 1980

  Dear Nick:

  Your letter says it was written on the 15th of August, so that makes over 2 months since I haven’t answered it—and it’s such a nice, warm-hearted letter, even though you didn’t mention coming to Montana until you were back home in New York. And didn’t tell me you had been promoted to full professor until a lot more than 2 months after you were.

  Anyway, I am delighted that you now are sitting on the top rung of the academic ladder, with what security, if any, goes with the position.

  Still, Nick, I think your department promoted you knowing you pretty damn well and knowing that you weren’t going to play the political or administrative game. In my letter of recommendation I certainly tried to make clear to them that if they expected to get the maximum yardage out of you they had to let you call your own signals. I predict that you will find fulfillment and happiness in your new and permanent academic position.

  I was also glad to hear you also did pretty well fishing in Montana—better, I am sure, than if you had come over to Seeley Lake and I had taken you to the Blackfoot or Swan to fish. I have had a hard time myself believing what I am going to tell you next—I fished only 3 times this summer and was terrible. The fish could see me coming all the way from Chicago. I was worst of all in my sense of timing in setting the hook, and the worse I got the faster I got. I left a wake of gasping trout behind me wondering whether they had been seeing things instead of flies.

  But I did work hard on my forest-fire story. I have worked way too long on it already, and I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t finish it by the end of this coming winter. Never again will I try to write a story that is historically accurate in every detail. It is clear to me now that the universe in its truculence doesn’t permit itself to be that well known. At my age, [I] should have know[n] that, but at my age I no longer have the choice of turning back. I just worked, as remote from my friends as from fish.

  Of course you can see it when I finish it—I would feel a big part of it was missing if you didn’t. But I won’t feel neglected if we both soon realize that it is a very western book and New York is not its Cape Canaveral. As you already know, I start off with a pretty dim view of New York publishers—and they of me. I will omit this opportunity of stating my view of them—five of them turned down A River Runs through It. I can still fish better than that.

  As ever,

  Norman

  June 15, 1981

  Dear Nick:

  I was real sorry to hear that you are through telling fish stories. You are one of the best of all of them, and in fact you hold your present high academic position to a sworn statement that you are better than Izaak Walton. You had better be careful about making public any such change in intention or you may end up marking papers for popular lecturers with classes over 135.

  Oddly, though, I think I can at least partly understand your change of feeling. Maybe I am even worse than you are—I am almost at the point where I have quit fishing (not just writing about it). With me, I think it was mostly a case of coming to a place in life of not being able to do well what I had done fairly well most of my life After I became a chronic heart-patient and several times picked myself out of the sand and didn’t know how I got there I discovered I didn’t like fishing any more. So it seems there comes a time that marks the end of each thing—even of sacred love.

  It hardly seems possible, though, that you should quit telling fishing stories, and it is probably only a passing fancy. But, if the feeling persists, why don’t you quit and see what happens? You have already created a highly informed and loving literature about fishing—full of information and love about the water, and what’s in it and above it but also about your son who went with you. Let be, if that’s what your heart says. I am a great believer in listening to your heart.

  As for me, I have just returned from Montana and two days from now I am going to start out again. Last Sunday I was at the University of Montana (Missoula) where I was awarded an honorary doctoral degree (last year at this time I was awarded an honorary doctoral degree at Montana State University, Bozeman). This coming Sunday I will start with a loaded car to spend the summer at Seeley Lake and, for Christ’s sake, finally finish my story on the Smokejumper tragic forest fire.

  Of course, Nick, you can see it. You are among the few I most want to see it. I haven’t even yet thought much of what I’ll do with it when I finish it—probably turn it over to an agent, but if I do, after informing him of my great admiration for you and your literary judgment and your kindness to me and with the instruction that, no matter what, you are to see it at your leisure.

  But, Nick, I am sure that, after you see it, you will recognize the story and I are even more western than you thought we were. There won’t be that kind of one-to-one relation there was between A River, you, and me because of fishing. This is a Smokejumpers story—at all times a story about forest fires and firefighting and at times almost a manual of these subjects. I think it would be the part of caution to assume that we were not made to go firefighting together—we might waste a lot of each other’s time trying to help each other. But read it and see for yourself.

  I think it will be good.

  Norman

  Letters to Lois Jansson, 1979–1981

  Maclean’s letters to Lois Jansson show him deeply at work on what became Young Men and Fire and his sensitivity to the survivors of the Mann Gulch tragedy even as he probes their memories and pain. Lois Jansson, who died in 2005, was the widow of Robert (Bob) Jansson, the USFS ranger whose district in 1949 included Mann Gulch (about twenty-five miles northeast of Helena, Montana). Maclean believed that Jansson acted heroically during and after the fire; his letters and the book reflect his respect for the man. Lois Jansson became a trusted Montana friend and source of information, and the letters demonstrate Maclean’s scrupulous care in his research and rewriting. In them we see him rehearsing pieces of his quest for the truth of what happened in the Mann Gulch blowup. The correspondence ends in 1981 with Maclean reporting to Mrs. Jansson that he has finished a first draft of his Mann Gulch book. In fact, he would never complete the manuscript to his satisfaction and died in 1990 without submitting it to a publisher.

  Sept. 2, 1979

  Dear Mrs. Jansson:

  Your letter to me, sent first to the University of Chicago, has finally reached me here at my summer cabin at Seeley Lake, and I am grateful for it and very touched by it. Through my study of the documents relating to the Mann Gulch fire, I have become a great admirer of your husband. Of all the many statements made about the fire, I regard his as the most accurate and humanly moving. He probably would not consider himself a remarkably fine writer, and perhaps stylistically he wasn’t, but, because of his power to see
vividly and compassionately, he is a moving writer. In the story I am writing of the fire, he is certainly one of the leading characters. As an historian, I cannot write with the major aim of pleasing wives and blood relatives, but I think that you will feel proud of your man as I portray him.

  The fact is that I am thinking of doing a short character sketch of him in October when I speak in Missoula before a conference of leading experts in the Rockies on fire management (called the Intermountain Fire Research Council—500 or 600 of them, I understand). If ultimately I follow my present outline, I will send you some copies (it is to be published).1

  So you have written to a family friend.

  As to your questions about the documentary bases of the knowledge I have of him, it is based, I think, on all the official documents of his that you mention—I have not only read them, but I possess them.

  I have copies of and know pretty much by heart:

  1. The 1949 Report of the Board of Review (and Pete Hanson’s report on the fire prior to the Board’s report).2

  2. A verbatim transcript of the testimony at the Board of Review (before which your husband appeared twice).

  3. Of all your husband’s own statements I have: (1) J. R. Jansson Statement, August 23, 1949; (2) Jansson Ground Check Statement, August 31, 1949; (3) Ranger Jansson’s Rescue Statement, 8/3/49; (4) Another “Statement” dated Sept. 7, 1951; (5) somewhere around, although I have misplaced it just now, his fine record (for insurance purposes) of his last day in Mann Gulch with Gisborne; (6) and letters from him to Dodge after the fire.3 I think I have even other things of his around that are out-of-place or misplaced for the moment.

  Documents on matters that you allude to but I am not sure about, however, are as follows:

  (1) You allude to his unpublished notes and statements about the fire. Do you know whether these contain any important information or opinions about the fire not in his published reports referred to above? If he had to hold back anything important, naturally I would be anxious to know what it was if it could be revealed. I am familiar, of course, with his theory that “the blowup” was caused by firewhirls, and, with some shifting of particulars, I agree with it. I know, especially from his later letters to Dodge, that he thought Dodge “acted as he would have.” These are the big theories—the cause of the fire and the conduct of the crew.