Norman Fitzroy Maclean (December 23, 1902August 2, 1990) was an American professor at the University of Chicago who, following his retirement, became a major figure in American literature. Maclean is known for his collection of novellas A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (1976), and the creative nonfiction book Young Men and Fire (1992).McCarthy, Rebecca. Norman Maclean: A Life of Letters and Rivers. 2024. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Family origins In his novella, A River Runs Through It, Maclean wrote that his paternal ancestors were from the Isle of Mull, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland.Norman Maclean (1976), A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, pages 27-28. According to his son, however, their paternal ancestors were Gaelic speaking Presbyterians and from the Isle of Coll, which is "located about seven miles west of the Clan Maclean stronghold, the Isle of Mull".John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, page 52.
Maclean's great-grandfather, Laughlan Maclean, was a carpenter who, accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Campbell, emigrated to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in 1821, before they settled on a homestead in Pictou County.
Maclean's father, Rev. John Norman Maclean, was born on July 28, 1862, to Laughlan's son Norman and his wife Mary MacDonald on the family farm in Marshy Hope, Pictou County, Nova Scotia where much of the community spoke Canadian Gaelic. John Maclean showed signs of academic promise and trained for the ministry first at Pictou Academy, where academic records refer to him as "J.N. Mclean of Glenbard",John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, page 53. Maclean's father completed his education at Dalhousie College in Halifax and at Manitoba College in Winnipeg. MacLean's parents met while his father was riding circuit in the summers among the many small Presbyterian congregations in the pioneer communities of the Pembina Valley Region of Manitoba. His mother, Clara Davidson was a schoolmarm.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, page 52-54. Maclean's maternal grandfather, John Davidson, was a Presbyterian immigrant from Northern England who had first settled near Argenteuil, Laurentides, Quebec, where his daughter Clara was born. Finding the farmland there poor, John Davidson and his family moved west by oxcart and settled on a homestead at New Haven near Manitou, Manitoba. During their courtship, Clara often accompanied John Maclean while he was riding circuit. In 1893, John Maclean completed advanced studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California, and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. John Maclean and Clara were married in Pembina, Manitoba, on August 1, 1893.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, page 54-55.
Biography Early life Maclean was born at Clarinda, Iowa, on December 23, 1902, and was the son of Clara Evelyn (; 1873–1952) and the Rev. John Norman Maclean (1862–1941). Maclean and his younger brother, Paul Davidson MacLean (1906–1938) were homeschooled by their father until 1913. Maclean recalled about being homeschooled by his father, "I think the most important thing is that he read aloud to us. He was a minister, and every morning after breakfast we had what was called family worship. We'd all sit with our breakfast chairs pulled back from the table and he would read to us from the Bible or from some religious poet. He was a very good reader... that was very good for me because in doing that, he would bring out the rhythms of the Bible. That reading instilled in me this great love of rhythm in language."The Norman Maclean Reader, page 172. His father also passed on to both of his sons a passion for fly fishing which he had begun and developed in Clarinda. As a child, Maclean also often witnessed his father, whose first language was the distinctive Nova Scotia dialect of the Scottish Gaelic language, working hard to hide all traces of a foreign accent by learning proper diction and elocution.
In 1909, his family relocated to Missoula, Montana, at the invitation of its Presbyterian church elders. The following years considerably influenced and inspired Maclean's writings, appearing prominently in the short story The Woods, Books, and Truant Officers (1977) and the semi-autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (1976).
Forest Service When Maclean was 14 years old, he found work with the United States Forest Service in the Bitterroot National Forest of northwestern Montana. The novella USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky and the story "Black Ghost" in Young Men and Fire (1992) are semi-fictionalized accounts of these experiences.
Dartmouth
Maclean later attended Dartmouth College, where he served as editor-in-chief of the humor magazine the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern. His successor as editor-in-chief was Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, whom Maclean described as "the craziest guy I ever met." He was also a member of the Sphinx and Beta Theta Pi.
During a 1986 interview, Maclean described the "privilege" he felt having taken creative writing classes at Dartmouth by the poet Robert Frost.The Norman Maclean Reader, page 179. In the same interview, Maclean recalled that Ernest Hemingway "was an idol of mine for a while. . . . I don't see how you could be a real American writer unless you knew Hemingway well, and had learned a great deal from him."
Maclean received his Bachelor of Arts in 1924 and chose to remain in Hanover, New Hampshire, to serve as an instructor until 1926, a time he recalled in "This Quarter I Am Taking McKeon: A Few Remarks on the Art of Teaching".
Personal life
Maclean met his future wife, Jessie Burns, during a December party in the Helena valley. They were returning home after the party with another couple in Jessie's car, when a blizzard descended and the car's radiator froze. He tried pouring water in, only to have the water freeze as well. He then started hiking through the blizzard to seek help but soon found that the car had caught up with him, as the cold had prevented the engine from overheating. He felt foolish, but Jessie always considered him the hero of the blizzard.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, page 49. He and Burns married on September 24, 1931, and had two children: daughter Jean Maclean Snyder (1942–2025), who was an attorney, and son John Norman Maclean (born in 1943), who became a journalist and author.
Following their marriage, Jessie handled the family's finances and wrote all the checks.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, page 136. Jessie's "open personality" made her a lot of friends at the University of Chicago. It was often said of her in later years, "She was the only one who'd talk to the young faculty wives."John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, page 150. During a 1986 interview, Maclean recalled, "I love Chicago. My wife was very wonderful in helping me come to feel that. I was very provincial in a lot of ways. She was gay and loved life wherever she lived. She really worked me over in our early years in Chicago. I was insolent and provincial about that city. She made me see how beautiful it was, made me see the geometric and industrial and architectural beauty."The Norman Maclean Reader, page 176. Dr. Sidney Schulman later said of Jessie's role at the university, "Jessie knew what was to be said. She said less than she knew, but what she said was enough and she said it with humor, with literary allusions and with simplicity. She came to be a sort of housemother. In being this, she was unaware of it - no self-satisfied awareness that what she was doing was noble. She was not playacting. It was part of her existence."John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, page 51. Jessie died in 1968, of emphysema and cancer of the esophagus, the result of decades of chain smoking.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, pages 50-51.
Maclean's family always led two lives, according to his son. One life was during the summers at the log cabin built by Maclean's father near Seeley Lake, Montana. The other life took place in Chicago during the academic year.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, pages 30-31.
Maclean gave up typing and wrote almost everything, including his books, "in a cramped longhand that generations of typists at the University and elsewhere prided themselves on learning to decipher."
Murder of Paul Maclean Maclean's younger brother, Paul Davidson Maclean, similarly graduated from Dartmouth and became well known as an investigative journalist who exposed political corruption in the state capital of Helena, Montana, by politicians linked to the powerful Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Paul later worked alongside Maclean and his wife at the University of Chicago during the Jazz Age and the Depression era. Paul had talents in writing and fly fishing but became an alcoholic, addicted gambler, notorious brawler, and a womanizer. Maclean suggested these behaviors had a long generational history and could be traced to the Maclean family's earliest origins among the Gaels of the Inner Hebrides of Scotland.
On the early morning of May 2, 1938, Paul was attacked and brutally beaten at 63rd Street and Drexel Avenue in Chicago. According to the testimony of an eyewitness, two men drove away from the scene in a car. Paul was taken to nearby Woodlawn Hospital where he never regained consciousness and died at 1:20 pm the same day.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, pages 151-153. According to Maclean and statements made to the press by Detective Sergeant Ignatius Sheehan, evidence indicated Paul fought back against his assailants, so much so that the medical examiner found nearly all the bones in his right hand to have been broken. Following a homicide investigation led by Sheehan, Chicago Police Department Captain Mark Boyle testified at the Cook County Coroner's inquest that he believed Paul's murder to be a mugging gone bad, which remains the official police explanation. Another widely held theory at the time was that Paul's murderers were linked to organized crime and the murder was over Maclean's refusal or inability to pay them an illegal gambling or loansharking debt. No arrests were ever made and the case remains unsolved.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, pages 153-155.
Maclean accompanied his brother's casket, alone, on an overnight train trip from Chicago to Montana. After the funeral, Maclean spent several weeks of compassionate leave with his parents at their family's cabin at Seeley Lake.John Norman Maclean (2021), Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, pages 155-156.