Again, Half As Long
THE MOVIE A River Runs Through It, which came out while I was an English undergrad at the University of Nebraska, exerted a strong influence on me. No, I didn’t buy a flyrod and move to Montana (though sometimes I wish I had). It wasn’t the epic scenes of fish rising to elegantly presented flies on beautifully lit rivers that struck me. Instead, it was a scene about writing that really hit home. Early in the movie, adolescent Norman Maclean struggles through the “School of the Reverend Maclean,” while learning to “write the American language.” Maybe it was my Scots-Irish upbringing, but I fully understood the idea that the “art of writing lay in thrift.” Young Norman is visibly dispirited when Reverend Maclean hands back his writing with the instruction, “Again, half…
