Take a photo of a barcode or cover
ifpoetshadmerch 's review for:
A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories
by Norman Maclean
I picked this one up hoping for some knockout nature imagery, and I was pretty disappointed. There were a couple lines that bordered on lyrical, but for the most part these stories were filled with ultra long lines packed with too many words. I suppose I must also admit that I was turned off by the tone in which the narrator describes some of the characters, though I suppose the stories are set in the 1930’s-ish. But treating women like objects and lumping Native Americans together as a conglomerate of “Indians” just doesn’t sit well with me, what can I say.
Despite the fact that MacLean’s average sentence length far exceeds that of Hemingway, I couldn’t help but think of good ‘ol Ernie while reading this. Maybe this is simply due to a purely basic similarity in their preoccupation with fishing, but there were a few other things that made me link the two together. Firstly, they feature this “manly” character who always is itching to prove his masculinity: dreaming of fistfights, longing for a fishing rod, falling in love with any woman who shows him a sliver of kindness, wanting to prove himself against anyone or anything who threatens him physically or intellectually, etc. Secondly, they both like to write around a problem or issue without ever putting a precise word to it. Maybe I’m just bad at reading between the lines, but for these stories, I felt like I was circling around something. Or to put it in some Montana metaphors: like I was making a large, swooping cast over the gurgling waters, straining my ears for an answer, only to have the rod slip from my hands and the line disappear fast and hard into the sunlight.
Despite the fact that MacLean’s average sentence length far exceeds that of Hemingway, I couldn’t help but think of good ‘ol Ernie while reading this. Maybe this is simply due to a purely basic similarity in their preoccupation with fishing, but there were a few other things that made me link the two together. Firstly, they feature this “manly” character who always is itching to prove his masculinity: dreaming of fistfights, longing for a fishing rod, falling in love with any woman who shows him a sliver of kindness, wanting to prove himself against anyone or anything who threatens him physically or intellectually, etc. Secondly, they both like to write around a problem or issue without ever putting a precise word to it. Maybe I’m just bad at reading between the lines, but for these stories, I felt like I was circling around something. Or to put it in some Montana metaphors: like I was making a large, swooping cast over the gurgling waters, straining my ears for an answer, only to have the rod slip from my hands and the line disappear fast and hard into the sunlight.