“Haunted by Waters” A Narrative Reconciliation

1. “Haunted by Waters”A Narrative Reconciliation Kenneth Womack and Todd F. Davis

2. Kenneth Womack • English Professor at Penn State Altoona • Head of Division of Arts and Humanities • Teaches Twentieth-Century Lit and a class on The Beatles • coeditor of Twentieth-Century Bibliography and Textual Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography and three volumes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography • Also has many published books • Received BA and MA (English) from Texas A & M University • Received Ph. D from Northern Illinois University

3. Todd F. Davis • Associate Professor of English at Goshen College • Author of many papers on Twentieth- century English and British Literature

4. Main Points in Article Therapy for Self • Seeks reconciliation through the book. • Tries to know his brother better through writing. • “desire to heal himself through telling and retelling of the beauty and darkness of his brothers life” (194). • Showing love through the devotion of nature • Others can relate to their family through the story by “shared dilemmas.” • Offers reconciliation for those who read and relate. Therapy for others

5. Relevant Quotations “In its own way, the accuracy of Maclean’s prose pays homage to his love for his brother. By chronicling what he calls the ‘genius’ of his brother’s fly fishing, he expresses his love and sincere devotion to Paul without ever verbalizing those emotions. . .Such lyricism, interlocked with the accuracy of one who knows the intrinsic details of fly fishing, intimates not only Norman’s love for his brother but also his loss” (4).

6. Relevant Quotations “The faith of his father, the stoicism that he finds in the Westerns that he reads, and the shared lave of his family determine Norman’s way of understanding the world. His unflagging love for Paul, however, allows him to transcend the narrative boundaries of his past, culminating in the celebration of his brother’s life in his own art” (6).

7. Relevant Quotes “If nothing else, Maclean’s act of narrative therapy suggests that those brief moments of grace may be all that remain for the living. They offer the only form of reconciliation to be found in an imperfect world where ‘those we live with and love and should know elude us’ (161)” (6).

8. Fuzzy Words Calvinism • “ it should be no surprise that threads of Calvinism and strands of the Western are woven into the fabric of A River Runs Through It . . .” (2) • “Maclean finds no solution in either his wife’s of the desk sergeant’s story. The narrative loops that he discovers on other families, to his great disappointment, resemble his own discouraging ways, leading Maclean to lament that ‘I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably referred to as brothers’ keepers’ . . .(45)” (6). Solution

9. Discrepancies Purpose • For therapy or Not for therapy?? • Were therapeutic purposes intentional?? • “But Norman never finds a way to stop telling ‘true stories’” (5). Writing Fiction

10. Works Cited • Greenwood publishing group, Online.www.greenwood.com • "Kenneth Womack." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2010. • University of Virginia Press. http://www.upress.virginia.edu/ books/davis/womack.html. Revised 9/24/07 • Womack, Kenneth, and Todd F. Davis. "'Haunted by waters': narrative reconciliation in Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It." CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 42.2 (2001): 192+. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Apr. 2010.