Loving without full understanding

Those are the words of author Norman Maclean in his autobiographical novel, "A River Runs Through It," which also was made into a brilliant film by Robert Redford in 1992.

We were pleased to come across comments about one of our favorite films by one of our favorite authors, Wendell Berry.

Berry comments favorably on the book in an essay entitled "Style and Grace," noting that Maclean's father (a Presbyterian minister) believed that "all good things...come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."

For those who have not read the book or seen the film, the setting is rural Montana in the 1920s and essentially is the story of the timelessness of family (especially the father-son-brother relationship) as told through a shared love of fly fishing in the beautiful Big Blackfoot River.

Underlying the joy of family and the love of outdoors is the sense of impending doom as the author's brother, Paul, is as reckless in life as he is adept at fly fishing.

Father, mother and brother can see the tragic path on which Paul is traveling, but are helpless in its face. Despite that, they clearly see the joy in which he approaches life, especially in the artistry of his fishing ability.

After Paul's death, Norman and his father are discussing what happened, with the father looking longingly for answers. He asks Norman to tell him every detail he knows about his son's death as a result of a violent confrontation on the streets.

"I've said I've told you all I know," Norman says. "If you push me far enough, all I really know is that he was a fine fisherman."

"You know more than that," the father says. "He was beautiful."

The complexities and questions of life, as portrayed in Maclean's masterwork, are what appeal most to Berry. "The story admits grace because it admits mystery," Berry writes. "It could not have been written it if had demanded to consist only of what was understood or understandable, or what was entirely comprehensive in its terms."

Norman perfectly explained the frustration of trying to help someone who clearly needs guidance, but failing in the ultimate sense -- "So it is that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed."

"Something within fishermen," Maclean said, "tries to make fishing into a world perfect and apart."

"But this story refuses that sort of perfection," Berry notes. "It never forgets that it is a fragment of a larger pattern that it does not contain. It never forgets that it occurs in the world and in love."

In the film, actor Brad Pitt is masterful in capturing the glory and beauty of Paul's natural place the Montana outdoors, while also struggling with the demons that eventually will lead to his tragic ending. The frustration of those who love him in their inability to provide ultimate help is, in essence, the theme of the story.

"This is tragedy pretty much in the old Greek sense," Berry writes, "a story of calamity and loss, which arrive implacably, which one sees coming and cannot prevent. But the relentlessness of the tragedy is redeemed by the persistence of grace."

Maclean did not publish the book until many years after the death of his brother and one can see the sense of acceptance, and the grace of which Berry speaks, in the sublimely beautiful words which close the story:

"Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

"Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

"I am haunted by waters."

--REK