Norman Maclean: Difference between revisions

Norman Fitzroy Maclean (1902-1990)

Norman Fitzroy Maclean (1902-1990)

Norman Fitzroy Maclean (23 December 1902, Clarinda, Iowa - 2 August 1990, Chicago, Illinois) was born in Clarinda, Iowa on December 23,1902. In 1909, his family moved to Missoula, Montana where he grew up along with his younger brother, Paul. Until 1913, he and his brother were educated by his father, a Scotch Presbyterian minister, instead of attending public schools. He later wrote of this experience in The Woods, Books, and Truant Officers, and briefly in A River Runs Through It (1976). In his youth, Maclean worked in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service in what is now the Bitterroot National Forest of southwest Montana. The short story 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.

Maclean received his Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College in 1924, and served there as an instructor there until 1926, a time he recalled in This Quarter I'm Taking McKean: A Few Remarks on the Art of Teaching. He began graduate studies in English at the University of Chicago in 1928. Three years later he was hired as a professor at University of Chicago, where he went on to receive three Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. It was during this time that Maclean married Jessie Burns, a red-headed Scotch-Irish woman from Helena. They later had two children, their daughter Jean, born in 1942, is now a lawyer. Their son John, born in 1943, is now a journalist and author of Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire (1999).

In 1940, Maclean earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago where during WWII he served as Dean of Students and as Director of the Institute on Military Studies, and co-authored Manual of Instruction in Military Maps and Aerial Photographs. Maclean, a scholar of Shakespeare and the Romantic poets, was William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago until he retired in 1973. He then began, as his children had often encouraged him, to write down the stories he liked to tell. His most acclaimed work, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was published in 1976, the first fiction ever published by the University of Chicago Press. This title had nearly unanimous support by critics to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Letters in 1977, but the story, a semi-fictional account of Maclean's family, was deemed to be to close to real life to be considered fiction. A River Runs Through It was adapted into a motion picture directed by Robert Redford and released by Columbia Pictures starring Brad Pitt and Tom Skeritt.

Maclean's books and short stories, ending with Young Men and Fire (1992) published after his death, tell his and his family's story. Young Men and Fire was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.

Norman Maclean, one of the greatest American storytellers, passed away August 2, 1990 in Chicago, at the age of 87.

Citation

This text (with minor alteration) is taken from [[1]]