![CASTING A LINE](https://cdn.magzter.com/1422886351/1719817369/articles/zYjGjav-D1719835755852/CASTING-A-LINE.jpg)
When I am stuck on something I’m trying to write and have exhausted all the other options—ignoring the problem, staring blankly at the problem, moving the problem around to see if it’s less annoying in some other location, eating all the chocolate in the house—I eventually do what I should have done in the first place and go read some writer who is much better at this business than I am. The candidates are legion. But, from the whole long, idiosyncratic list of authors I regularly turn to for intellectual and aesthetic resuscitation, one of the most consistently useful is Norman Maclean. If you know Maclean, it is likely because of his first work, “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories,” a triptych of tales—about, among other things, families, fly-fishing, love, death, and a time when virtually all hard work in this country was still done by hand—that was published to enormous acclaim and considerable astonishment when the author was seventy-three years old. For many years before that collection appeared, in 1976, Maclean had tried to write a book about the Battle of Little Bighorn. For all the years afterward, until his death, at eighty-seven, he worked on a book about a different tragedy on a hillside—a wildfire in Montana that killed twelve smoke jumpers and a forest ranger—which was published, posthumously, as “Young Men and Fire.”
This story is from the July 08, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the July 08, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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ANTIHERO
“The Boys,” on Prime Video.
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HOW THE WEST WAS LONG
“Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1.”
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Taffy Brodesser-Akner weighs the cost of generational wealth.
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TWICE-TOLD TALES
The seditious writers who unravel their own stories.
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CASTING A LINE
The hard-bitten genius of Norman Maclean.
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TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR
Four years ago, when Ivan Cornejo was a junior in high school, he had a meeting with his family to announce that he was dropping out. His parents were alarmed, of course, but his older sister, Pamela, had a more sympathetic reaction, because she also happened to be his manager, and she knew that he wasn’t bluffing when he said that he had to focus on his career.
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THE HADAL ZONE
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OPENING THEORY
Ivan is standing on his own in the corner while the men from the chess club move the chairs and tables around.
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THE LAST RAVE
Remembering a summer of estrangement.
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КАНО
I’ve dated all kinds of women in my life,” the man said, “but I have to say I’ve never seen one as ugly as you.”