A river rises from the middle (Roman)

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A river rises from the middle (original title A River Runs Through It ) is a semi-autobiographical novel by the American writer Norman Maclean , which was first published in 1976 by the University of Chicago Press . The first version of the novel was published under the title A River Runs Through It and Other Stories and, in addition to the cover story, also contained the two shorter stories Logging and Pimping and 'Your pal, Jim and USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the sky . In Germany, Aus der Mitte ein Fluß was first published in 1991 by S. Fischer Verlagin a translation by Bernd Samland .

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Norman Maclean (left) and his family around 1911

Norman Maclean tells retrospectively from a first-person perspective as an older man. He first describes growing up together with his three years younger brother Paul under the strict and loving upbringing of his parents in rural Montana in the early 20th century. “In our family there was no clear dividing line between religion and fly fishing, ” reads the opening sentence - both are important in the Presbyterian family of the pastor of Scottish descent who goes fishing with his sons on the many rivers and waters of Montana. He explains to his sons that man is a lost existence and that everything beautiful in this world is based on divine grace: brown trout as well as salvation . “Fly fishermen believe they were thought of when the rivers came into being. Fly fishermen have developed something like a 'theory of curiosity'. The theory is that, like humans, fish sometimes jump on things just because they look good, not because they taste good. The mind declines much faster than the body. ”Fly-fishing gives the brothers as many lessons as they do other spiritual subjects.

The main plot of the novel is set in the summer of 1937, when Norman is already married, while Paul lives as a local reporter in the state capital Helena . Norman is asked by his wife Jessie Burns to go on a fishing trip with her brother Neal, who is visiting his old home from the west coast. Norman can't stand his cocky and arrogant brother-in-law and asks Paul if he doesn't want to come too. Paul, whose talent in fly fishing far surpasses his brother's, agrees. One night Norman has to pick up his brother from prison because he had had a fight. Norman had previously registered that Paul was already drinking whiskey in the morning, and now learns from the police that Paul drinks through the nights gambling in greasy clubs and has gambling debts. The officer on duty advises Norman to help his brother and go fishing with him.

On his trips out with Paul, Norman tries to talk about his problems and offers him help, but Paul doesn't seem interested, he remains stubborn and taciturn. The fishing trips are still nice, although Neal is not interested in fishing and is more interested in sleeping, drinking and having sexual experiences with the local occasional prostitute "Old Rawhide". Norman's wife accuses him of not caring enough about the failed tennis player Neal, whom she in turn tries to help. The situation seems to escalate when Neal sleeps with Rawhide in the river bed on a sunny day and gets second-degree burns in the process. But the women in the Burns family express their love and appreciation for Norman.

The next day, Norman goes fishing one last time with his brother and his aged, now retired father. It seems to him that nothing has changed since childhood - except for Paul's throwing style. Norman met his brother in silent admiration and said to himself: “'Paul became an artist.'” - “You think like a trout”, Norman shouted with a laugh, and Paul replied: “Give me three more years.” But this one He does not receive a present, in May of the following year Paul is found beaten to death in a side street.

Map with locations from the book such as the Blackfoot River and the cities of Missoula and Helena

Norman and his father, who cannot overcome the death of their son, try to understand the loved one and his violent death in conversations. In the end, what remains for them is the realization that one can love people completely without understanding them completely - as the Father always preached. Norman is asked by his father to one day tell the story of his family in order to understand what happened and why. The father says: "It is those with whom we live and whom we love and whom we should know who withdraw from us."

Finally the novel ends with the aged Norman, whose beloved, misunderstood people from his youth are almost all dead. On fishing trips to the Big Blackfoot River , he listens to their voices in the arctic half-light of the canyon, being disappears in a being with its memories and soul in the sounds of the river. A river emerges from the middle when all things merge: “The river was created by the great flood of the world, and it flows over rocks from the primeval ground of time. There are timeless raindrops on some rocks. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are with the rocks. I am being pursued by the waters. "

Origin and publication history

After long hesitation, Norman Maclean began to write an autobiographical story about his family and life in Montana in the first half of the 20th century after his retirement. The literary scholar's attempts at writing turned out to be difficult at first, as indicated by the sometimes very different manuscripts in the development process of the novel.

The narrative is largely autobiographical, from the position of fly fishing in his family to most of the characters. According to his own statements, Maclean allowed himself literary and temporal freedom, since "often things in life don't happen quickly enough". Norman Maclean's brother Paul, three years his junior, was a newspaper reporter and was killed in Chicago in May 1938 after struggling with alcohol and gambling debts. The murderers could never be found. The murder of his brother was a major trauma for Maclean. In his second major work Young Men in Fire (published posthumously in 1992) about the deadly man-gulch forest fire , he dealt with the importance of tragedy in human life.

Maclean offered his manuscript to several publishers in New York in vain. “Nobody fishes in New York” was one of the answers. Ultimately, Maclean's novel was self-published by the University of Chicago, where he had taught for decades. It was the first fictional work ever published by the University of Chicago Press. After the success of the debut novel, Maclean commented that he had lived the “dream of every rejected author”, whose works would suddenly be successful, so that the previously negative publishers now wanted to “kiss the bottom” and publish his works - and then you could safely reject them yourself . Maclean criticized the fact that authors from the rural west of the USA had a much harder time with the large American publishers in New York, even if the quality was good, but also noted that rural authors should not only write about "cattle drives" but should also take up universal topics.

After its publication, Maclean's book gained both a wider readership and critical acclaim. Alfred Kazin attested to the novel, "Here are passages of physical rapture in the presence of an unspoiled primitive America that are as beautiful as anything from Thoreau and Hemingway ." According to Maclean, of the 600 or so reviews he knew of, only one was negative agreed. The Pulitzer Prize jury recommended Maclean's book for the fiction award , but the Pulitzer Prize Board of Directors - who has the final say - declined. Therefore, no Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded in 1977 on the grounds that it had been a "lean year for fiction". Author Pete Dexter criticized the New York jury for having apparently been repulsed by the rural setting or the naturalness of the story. Over the decades, a river rises from the middle to a long-seller and "American cult book", which also received several new editions in Germany.

subjects

A river in Montana

“ Fly fishing, ” wrote Norman Maclean, “is an art that is carried out in a four-beat rhythm.” Fly-fishing takes up a lot of space in the novel, and there are pages of descriptions by Normans and Pauls trying to catch fish. According to an anecdote that Maclean liked to quote, a student once summed up the novel as follows: "The two brothers go fishing, then they go fishing again, then they have a drink, and then they fish again." Maclean agreed with the student, but was pleased he also found out from the fishing experts that his book is structured like a fly-fishing guide. Each new fishing trip in the novel elaborates the art of fly fishing a little further. For Norman's father, fly fishing is not only a redeeming and uplifting activity, but also exercises self-discipline in people who are fallible - such as being on time for a fishing date or using the four-beat rhythm. For a short time, Paul succeeds in transforming fishing into a different and perfect world with his catch, so that for the narrator the “whole world is transformed into water”. The beauty of Paul's fishing skills can, at least for a time, outshine his brother and father's problems.

Maclean's novel begins with the sentence: “In our family there was no clear dividing line between religion and fly fishing.” Norman's father, the pastor, pulled a leather glove over his throwing hand and let a metronome tick on the bank so that the sons keep the beat while throwing internalized. “I never knew if my father thought God was a mathematician, but he certainly believed that God could count and that we could only gain strength and beauty if we absorbed God's rhythm within us.” Diving alongside and with fly fishing religious or transcendental ideas that show Maclean's courage in asking theological questions. Maclean called himself in 1987 a "conventionally religious agnostic ". He did not experience his most beautiful moments in particular in church, but rather in nature or among wonderful people. That was his kind of religion. For Simonson, Maclean shows a “regional consciousness that combines Judeo-Christian and mystical perspectives”, the book thus combines historical-ecclesiastical ideas of a god with more pantheistic ones (for example in the descriptions of earth, vegetation and seasons). The main plot of the book in the summer of 1937 takes place for the most part on six different days, which can be interpreted as an indication of the creation story , in which the earth was also created on six days. According to Simonson, the river forms a place where boredom, cynicism and horror of the world have to give way, at least temporarily, to “transcendental greatness”, and the river flows in the novel as “ symbol and type ” in the direction of striving for such a transcendental greatness.

According to John W. Cawelti ( "the river" are the river ) and "the words" ( the Words ), the two main symbols of the novel, which can be found on both the first and on the last page. Both symbols would be illuminated in their various facets in the course of the story and sometimes conflict with one another. For Cawelti, the flow is the "background of history and is associated with the growth of experience, with nature and also with memories from the past that continuously pour into the present and sometimes try to drown us." They are fundamental constants of the human Existence. The words, on the other hand, stand for people's attempts to understand and control the course of their lives as much as possible. For Maclean, on a personal level, fly fishing and religion were the most important “pieces of equipment” given to him to control and understand his life. Despite their close relationship, Norman cannot find the right words for his troubled brother. Although Maclean's narrative voice is always close to Paul, Paul remains - like the great rivers and lakes in Montana - obscure and mysterious. Paul, on the other hand, is a perfect fly fisherman, but because of this talent he cannot organize and control his life - at the end of the novel, Maclean finally shows the limits of discipline and the fly-fishing idyll. The message therefore does not want to be that of perfect fly fishing and that of sole internalization before God and nature.

Maclean is also concerned with the perception of home, of family, tradition and memory. The individual recognition of truth, depth and belonging, of all times at the moment when your own time is drawing to a close and you still think you are always at the beginning or again. A lot in Maclean's novel revolves around time and memory , which is also noticeable in the narrative: old Norman, who steals most people of his youth, can be heard prominently as the narrator voice at the beginning and at the end of the book - in the main part of the book but the younger Norman lays over it as the second narrative voice, who speaks of 1937 as “now”. Although he uses only a few direct dates in the book, his story is very clearly set in rural Montana in the 1930s and thrives on this atmosphere. Simonson writes that for Norman the Montana rivers flow through "his head and consciousness, language and life". The hope for something permanent in the flowing water from the "primeval ground of time" is noticeable. For Weltzien, Maclean's work with a “doubting voice” finds its climax “between the longing to believe in redemption and immortality, and their fleetingness from the ultimately incomprehensible - be it a river or a brother”.

filming

Because of the success of the book, there were people interested in a film adaptation early on, but Maclean sometimes brusquely rejected it. In 1981 Maclean complained of pesky Hollywood lawyers and film agents who demanded complete control over his autobiographical story and who apparently had no idea what it was about. Finally, through several personal meetings in the mid-1980s , Robert Redford won Maclean's sympathy and thus also the film rights. Redford appreciated the “beauty of the language” and the “depth of the feelings” of the work, but the adaptation turned out to be a demanding and long-term work, since the power of the story depends very much on “Norman's narrator voice”. Filming began a few months after Maclean's death.

In 1992, Redford's literary film adaptation From the Middle A River came into the cinemas. It won an Oscar and was a career boost for young Brad Pitt . The success of the film led to a tourist boom in Montana, where up to one and a half million people went fishing every year. Ironically, Maclean's narrator criticizes the increasing commercialization of fishing in the course of the 20th century.

The short stories: The Lumberjack and Forest Service 1919

With A River Runs Through It , two shorter stories, also of an autobiographical nature, were published in the original English edition: The short story Logging and Pimping and 'Your pal, Jim (German title: Die Holzfäller ) tells of Maclean's work as a lumberjack on the Blackfoot River in 1928. Here he describes his encounters with Jim Grierson , who was considered the best lumberjack and who spent his time outside of the lumber season with alcohol, prostitutes and books from Carnegie libraries .

The second story USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky (German title: Forstdienst 1919 ) deals with Maclean's service with the United States Forest Service in the year, between Die Holzfäller and Aus der Mitte a river rises 1919, which he provided in a remote area on the border of Montana and Idaho . Here he had to take over lonely fire stations, lay telephone cables, extinguish forest fires and create hiking trails. The book was filmed in 1995 by ABC with Sam Elliott , Jerry O'Connell and Molly Parker under the title The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky .

In Germany, the two short stories were first published in 1993 as a separate book under the title Der Ranger, der Koch und ein Loch im Himmel. Stories. published. As already from the middle of a river rises two years earlier, they were published by Fischer-Verlag after a translation from Samland. Michael Althen wrote on the occasion of the publication in the Süddeutsche Zeitung : “With these stories, Norman MacLean succeeds in 'putting the world in a nutshell' and providing the reader with a few insights that contain a truth as great as this The following: Pathetic pool players can be seen everywhere - they are the ones who always say "Damn it", always rub their cues with chalk and always jerk their heads up when they push - and no chalk can cure that. "

expenditure

  • A River Runs Through It A River Runs Through It and Other Stories . University of Chicago Press, 1976. (New editions 1989 and 2001, among others).
  • A river rises from the middle . S. Fischer Verlag, 1991. Translated by Bernd Samland. (New editions 2003 and 2018).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George H. Jensen, Heidi Skurat Harris: Variations of Time. The Crafting of Norman Maclean's “A River Runs through It”. In: Western American Literature, Volume 55, No. 1, Spring 2020. p. 34.
  2. ^ Norman Maclean, O. Alan Weltzien (Editor): The Norman Maclean Reader. University of Chicago Press, 2008. p. 174
  3. ↑ Paul Davidson Maclean (1905-1938) - Find A Grave ... Retrieved April 7, 2018 .
  4. ↑ MARTIN J. KIDSTON Lee Montana Newspapers: The other Maclean . In: missoulian.com . ( missoulian.com [accessed April 7, 2018]).
  5. ↑ a b John G. Cawelti: Norman Maclean: Of Scholars, Fishing, and the River. Retrieved August 20, 2020 .
  6. ^ Norman Maclean, O. Alan Weltzien (Editor): The Norman Maclean Reader. University of Chicago Press, 2008. p. 178.
  7. ↑ a b c Stefan Willeke : Show me the cast of shadows (Die Zeit 19–2004). Accessed August 21, 2020 .
  8. ↑ James Janega: ALLEN FITCHEN: 1936-2009. Retrieved August 20, 2020 (American English).
  9. ^ Norman Maclean, O. Alan Weltzien (Editor): The Norman Maclean Reader. University of Chicago Press, 2008. pp. 177-178.
  10. ^ Alfred Kazin : Frontiers of True Feeling. Retrieved August 18, 2020 (American English).
  11. ^ Norman Maclean, O. Alan Weltzien (Editor): The Norman Maclean Reader. University of Chicago Press, 2008. pp. 178-179.
  12. ^ Edwin McDowell: Publishing: Pulitzer Controversies . In: The New York Times . May 11, 1984, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed August 18, 2020]).
  13. ↑ a b Pete Dexter: The Old Man and the River | Esquire | JUNE 1981. Retrieved August 20, 2020 (American English).
  14. ^ Norman Maclean, O. Alan Weltzien (Editor): The Norman Maclean Reader . University of Chicago Press, 2008. pp. Xx.
  15. ↑ Harold P. Simonson: Beyond the Frontier. Writers, Western Regionalism and a Sense of Place . Texas University Press, Fort Worth, 1989. p. 162.
  16. ↑ Harold P. Simonson: Beyond the Frontier. Writers, Western Regionalism and a Sense of Place . Texas University Press, Fort Worth, 1989. p. 169.
  17. ↑ Walter Hesford: Fishing for the Words of Life: Norman Mac Lean's "A River Runs through It" . In: Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter, 1980), p. 38.
  18. ↑ Harold P. Simonson: Beyond the Frontier. Writers, Western Regionalism and a Sense of Place . Texas University Press, Fort Worth 1989, p. 165.
  19. ^ Norman Maclean, O. Alan Weltzien (Editor): The Norman Maclean Reader . University of Chicago Press, 2008. pp. 179-180.
  20. ↑ Harold P. Simonson: Beyond the Frontier. Writers, Western Regionalism and a Sense of Place . Texas University Press, Fort Worth 1989. p. 162.
  21. ↑ George H. Jensen, Heidi Skurat Harris: Variations of Time. The Crafting of Norman Maclean's “A River Runs through It” . In: Western American Literature, Volume 55, No. 1, Spring 2020, pp. 45–47.
  22. ↑ Harold P. Simonson: Beyond the Frontier. Writers, Western Regionalism and a Sense of Place . Texas University Press, Fort Worth, 1989, p. 162.
  23. ↑ Harold P. Simonson: Beyond the Frontier. Writers, Western Regionalism and a Sense of Place . Texas University Press, Fort Worth 1989, p. 166.
  24. ↑ gerhard midding: the grace of fly fishing . In: The daily newspaper: taz . May 6, 1993, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 14 ( taz.de [accessed on August 20, 2020]).
  25. ↑ George H. Jensen, Heidi Skurat Harris: Variations of Time. The Crafting of Norman Maclean's “A River Runs through It” . In: Western American Literature, Volume 55, No. 1, Spring 2020, pp. 42–43.
  26. ^ Norman Maclean, O. Alan Weltzien (Editor): The Norman Maclean Reader . University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. Xx.
  27. ↑ Harold P. Simonson: Beyond the Frontier. Writers, Western Regionalism and a Sense of Place . Texas University Press, Fort Worth 1989, p. 169.
  28. ^ Norman Maclean, O. Alan Weltzien (Editor): The Norman Maclean Reader . University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. Xx-xxi.
  29. ↑ Norman Maclean: A river springs from the middle. With a foreword by Robert Redford. Fischer Klassik, 2018. pp. 8–9.
  30. ↑ Norman Maclean: A river springs from the middle. With a foreword by Robert Redford. Fischer Klassik, 2018. p. 9.
  31. ↑ Gretchen Kelly: A River Still Runs Through Montana. Retrieved August 20, 2020 .
  32. ^ Internet Movie Database: "The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky". Retrieved August 19, 2020 .
  33. ↑ Michael Althen : The ranger, the cook and a hole in the sky. Retrieved August 18, 2020 .