A River Runs Through It, and lessons on life
"Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn't think so."
One day, several years ago, I turned to the internet to learn more about the real-life story that inspired A River Runs Through It. (I suppose I should note there are spoilers ahead for a book some 40+ years old and a movie that's nearly 30 years old.)
I don’t know that you can emerge from a childhood in Montana without knowing this story. The book is as much a love story about growing up in Montana and fly fishing as it is about the complexities surrounding family and how we fail the people we love the most. A majority of the story takes place in the summer of 1937, the final summer two brothers spend fishing together. By the next May, younger brother Paul will be dead (murdered) and author Norman will have the story of his life (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1977) that will take him decades to actually put down on paper.
There are many details Norman fictionalized all of those years later, likely in pursuit of more expeditious or effective story telling. What I learned on that sleuthing expedition surprised me, however: Paul was murdered in Chicago, and not Montana. In fact, the story leads us to believe that Paul never left Montana.
Upon learning this, I remember feeling a little betrayed by a scene in the movie — my first introduction to this story — when the brothers are fly fishing. Brad Pitt rebuffs Craig Sheffer's offer to head to Chicago, saying: “I’ll never leave Montana, brother.”
Why, I often wondered after learning of this plot change, did Norman tell a story that was so close to the truth, but deviated on this not-so-insignificant detail? Why center the tragedy of his life in a place he loved so dearly, when it actually happened thousands of miles away? Did changing the location make it easier to accept the tragedy?
Enter: Home Waters
I got some additional information in a new book (Home Waters) by Norman's son, John Maclean. Like his father, John tells a personal story of family, fly fishing, and the long shadow of tragedy — and once again with Montana as backdrop. John provides some additional context about the uncle Paul that he never knew.
We learn that Paul was a reporter in Chicago when he was murdered, living near his brother and sister-in-law. He was popular with the gals on the University of Chicago campus, he had a girlfriend (perhaps even a fiancé), and he followed Norman east, at the urging of the family, in an attempt to escape a problematic existence in Montana.
Paul died in a similar way as Norman described in the book: Murdered in the streets at night. Beyond the change in location, Norman fictionalized some other bits that were more generous to Paul. In the book, Paul's right hand is smashed, suggesting he went down fighting. The book (and especially the movie) leans into the idea that Paul's past (gambling debts) finally caught up to him. The police reports, as described by John, aren't conclusive or so favorable to Paul — he was struck from behind and had been seen acting erratically before his death. No mention of a broken hand. The murder went unsolved, whether Paul was killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time or through some fault of his own is something his family never knew. Neither will we.
Two tragedies
Listening to the audiobooks of Home Waters and A River Runs Through It back-to-back recently, I realized that I had focused on the obvious tragedy of Paul’s death while overlooking the tragedy of Norman’s regret. Paul's problems are obvious — drinking too much, gambling too much, fighting too much. Norman’s are less obvious; that unanswered question of whether he could’ve done more to help his brother.
It’s not that he didn’t try. Norman's version of help typically involved taking his brother fishing or making awkward attempts to lend money or abstain from drinking. I was struck by how many times Norman mentions the idea of help, in passages like:
Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn't think so. At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.
This post originally started out about our sometimes complicated relationship with the place where we grew up. I wrote a bunch of words about that idea — how those 18 years shape us, that decision to stay or go, what it's like to return, and how some things may be fated to happen. Perhaps that's an interesting idea for another day, but that refrain of help seemed more compelling — the help we give and need — and the wide variety of messages about help we hear, ranging from: “the lord helps those who help themselves” to “everyone needs help from everyone.”
Spiraling or thriving?
Help seems all the more prescient after a year when plenty of people have been struggling in various ways — from loneliness to anxiety to losing work to losing loved ones to the juggle of a life upended by a global pandemic. But then an unexpected story began to unfold while I was listening to these books. Social media sometimes feels like idly watching a TV in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. And yet, it can also be revealing — and a friend of a friend seemed to be in the midst of a downward spiral. From afar, it’s difficult to pinpoint what, exactly, seems off. Maybe it’s the quantity of posts, the staying out ‘til all hours, the repeated insistence that he’s living his best life, the slurred words in some videos, the hints of anger that underscore messages meant to be positive, or the mildly forlorn look in so many selfies. Whatever has changed, it hasn’t gone unnoticed: The mutual friend says multiple people have checked in to make sure this lad is OK, and that’s made him even more adamant: “I’m thriving, dammit!” People are willing to help, it seems, but he’s not willing to accept that maybe he’s not, in fact, thriving. (And, hey, that’s OK.)
I wrote in another piece about a guy who has racked up DUIs, and whose friends say it’s not their place to help. Drinking, it seems, is an especially prickly topic to tackle. I went to a wedding a few years ago where the groom's drinking was an uninvited guest to the day's events. It was broached during the vows and speeches. No one said anything that came as a surprise to those of us who had seen him drunk, but I noticed his parents winced a few times. At my table, a fellow guest leaned over in-between bites of dessert to whisper: “I hope he doesn't get wasted tonight.” At the party, many people (myself included) went up to the groom, clapped his back and declared some variation of: “I'm so proud of you for not getting drunk!” And then glasses were raised as a toast. Only later did I think about the message conveyed, and how many people there — who stood the best chance of helping — surely knew the groom had given sobriety a short-lived attempt a couple years prior. Maybe pointing out the elephant in the room helps. But what if it doesn’t?
“Do you think I could have helped?”
We collect a lifetime of these types of anecdotes. Most bear little significance with time, but a few serve as a too-late warning sign of what was coming. Had Paul lived to old age, would Norman have sat down to share these stories 40 years later? Probably not. But Norman and his father (a preacher) were forced to reckon with their hands-off approach because tragedy struck. In one of the final passages, the two men ask each other the same question, without answering: Do you think I could have helped him?
For Norman, his way of helping may have come too late, but not too little: By writing this story, maybe he could help someone other than his brother. That is, if you can crack the nut of how to help someone who needs it, but doesn’t realize it. Norman quotes his father as saying:
Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted.
As for that question that vexed me for years? Meh. With additional context thanks to Home Waters and fresh ears to A River Runs Through It, understanding why Norman chose to center the tragedy of his life in Montana seems pretty trivial. Montana may not have been where Paul was killed, but it was where the collision course that led to that eventuality began. Paul didn't escape his demons by moving; Norman didn't escape his with time. Or, as John wrote:
Leaving Montana physically never meant moving away in spirit.
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