Early this year I got me a library card for the first time in my life. Since I figured I have been paying for the local libraries all these years through taxes, that I figured I should take a stroll through the entity I pay for each payday. My incentive was to first read “A River Runs Through It”. I did read it. I see how Robert Redford and Patrick Markey added to the story. For example, there was nothing in the book about the water falls and borrowing the boat….at least that I remember. I wonder if they actually did some research to find out missing events in the Maclean’s lives or if there was just a lot of filler to create the movie? I am not one to read a book and then watch a movie, but I have heard time and time again that the books are usually better than the movie. Now,I appreciate what Norman Maclean did in writing this particular story. It is a classic. I was also surprised how few pages there are in the book. However, after first seeing the movie several times (yes, I own one) before ever checking out the book…….I think Redford and Markey did an outstanding job on the movie. I have to be careful how I say this, but I like the movie a lot better than the original written story. I guess the filming of the scenery and the music painted “more than a 1,000 words” for me. Am I wrong in my thinking? Am I out of line to even say I liked the movie better, since the movie sprang from the book?

The book isn’t actually a “book,” it’s considered a novella, something between a short story and a novel.

Is your thinking wrong? No, it’s a preference and everyone is entitled to their preference.

I prefer the written version over the movie. I have read it three or four times and seen the movie three times. The storyline isn’t so much what many of us like about the written version, it’s the storyteller’s use of the English language. Those of us who are word freaks (not just readers, but lovers of reading–for example, I have about 2000 books that I own), find something beautiful in Norman Maclean’s written word. For example, Alfred Kazin, a noted intellectual and literary critic said this of A River Runs Through It: “No other 20th-century American work that is at all like [it]… there are passages here of physical rapture in the presence of unsullied primitive America that are as beautiful as anything in Thoreau and Hemingway.”

Yes, Redford did a nice job of adapting the novella to the big screen. You like the movie more than the book. Excellent, keep on thinking that way, no one will think the worse of you. Luckily they kept some of Maclean’s language in since “Norman” was narrating the story throughout the movie. Also, many people think it is a fly fishing story, which it isn’t, it’s about people, especially brothers. If you read the story instead of watching the movie and expect a “fly fishing” story, you’re more likely to be disappointed. Think of it as a memoir of what it would be like in that time and place (early 1900′s in Montana).

If you ever read the story again, try to savor the language and style, not just the story, and see if it does anything for you.

Thanks Scott, you are right. After you explained it to me, it all makes perfect sense. The book “is” greatly written…..especially for how short it is.
I also understand what you mean by saying that it isn’t a book, but that it is a novella (a new word for me)
The one is a great novella. The other is a great movie. (My opinion, anyway)