The inner life of a writer and how it appears in their works is a mystery as deep and as wide as the canyon of the human spirit. How that grandeur leaves a haunting echo on the page is as curious a notion as is to suppose there is a meaning existing between two things. Namely that this piece of the story reflects or holds a piece of the author in some way, shape, or form. Being able to make those connections is the stuff of literary studies.
Timothy Schilling is a master at this, leading us to the waters to listen. Listen that we might hear the haunting echo across the surface of the waters as well as the page, in the canyon of what it meant to be Norman Maclean.
Schilling will be presenting his new biography, The Writings of Norman Maclean: Seeking Truth amid Tragedy, in conversation with Alan Weltzien at Alpine Artisans' Open Book Club, Saturday, Aug. 31, 7 p.m. at the Foundation Building. Weltzien is the editor of The Norman Maclean Reader. The event is free, and everyone is welcome.
Schilling gives us a glorious reflection by John N. Maclean that adds more than a simple authentication of the piece itself, but a warm, fair and honest telling by someone so close to Norman Maclean he could have been eluded by him. But, the son here, stands clearly alongside the father, unraveling the bird's nest knot of a life lived amid tragedy with a strong hope in rising. Rising above long enough to see the beauty of it all. John's touching and clear insights open up the piece with a nod to a life lived that not only honors that life but tells a true story. It boosts the whole work.
Schilling tells the landscape of the elder Maclean's life and works. He uncovers the geology of a soul that had been scraped by tectonic time, the great forces of mountain making, the wonder and awe of big waters and of the alluvial deposits of family, faith, work, struggle, tragedy, love, beauty, word, art and grace. Maclean's life was big. Schilling shows us bigness, up close and at a distance.
All of the passages you hope would rise certainly do, showing where word parallels life and where meaning runs alongside hunch. Maclean's characters and forces are deftly etched along the road between Montana and Chicago, the cypher that opens up more of who he was and what he did. The soul of a man is timelessly written upon the underside of the rocks on which he stands. Schilling points these out and names them.
Schilling uses Maclean's oeuvre as his terrain. Details return as echolocation amid Izaak Walton, Robert Redford, style, madness, fire, teaching, city, mountain, youth, old age, rivers, silences, words and people. The landscape is sometimes treacherous, sometimes not, sometimes haunting and sometimes ordered. Always a catechism of the heart.
This slim volume does the work of tomes. In addition to some of the best and the tightest writing about Maclean lay a vast trove of endnotes, references and bibliography that rivals a step through Lewis's wardrobe. The scholar and neophyte alike have access to an endless cartography of the man and all he touched.
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