David Profumo

‘I am haunted by waters’: Norman Maclean and his lyrical ‘little blue book’

The author of A River Runs Through It emerges as wiry, sardonic, compassionate and inspirational from Rebecca McCarthy’s trenchant memoir

Norman Maclean – wiry, sardonic, compassionate and inspirational. [Credit: Joel Snyder] 
issue 27 July 2024

Although in his later years Norman Maclean was renowned for his nuanced and often lyrical autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It (subsequently filmed by Robert Redford, and known in angling circles – with mixed feelings – simply as ‘The Movie’), by all accounts he could be forbidding and ornery in person.

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