"A River Runs Through It"

¶ … River Runs Through it' can be easily described as a masterpiece because it has all the right elements needed to qualify for the title. It has some very powerful themes, a sound storyline, a realistic but sensitive perspective and on top of everything, some truly magnificent characters. While discussing the book, one can often get lost into a myriad of themes that have been woven into this autobiographical text and for this reason, it is important to see book from the standpoint that the reader can relate to.

In other words, the book has something to offer to everyone from those who strongly believe in religion and natural force to those who maintain a secular stance on issues. However the one theme that easily dominates the rest is that of art and the role it plays in one's life. This theme is however combined with fly-fishing that more or less works as the device used to explain what art means and how it differs from mere competence.

Norman's father who was a Presbyterian minister believed that art was 'one' way man could clearly understand God and His creation. He advocated creativity because for Norman's father, art was the channel man used to communicate with God and to become a part of His wide universe. In short, it was not competence but mastery of art that helped man establish a direct link with the wider world around him and Art was man's way of showing appreciation for God's universe.

This is the reason why Norman's father tells him to create stories because he knows that this is one art form that will bring his son closer to God and nature. "You like to tell true stories, don't you?" he asked, and I answered, "Yes, I like to tell stories that are true." Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it? "Only then will you understand what happened and why.

"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us." (160-61) But it is the art of fly-fishing, which helps us understand the differences that exist between competence and art. In this book, the art of fly-fishing is what the author uses to explain why competence is not the same thing as mastery of an art and why a skilled man did not fall in the same category as an artist.

Fly-fishing may serve other purposes in the book too, but it has actually been used to accentuate the meaning of art and to pit art against competence to show how the true winner is. Paul, Norman's younger brother, is the artist in the book while Norman himself is a man who believed in competence but didn't really understand the philosophy of art as Paul did. Even though Paul was three years younger, yet he was more in tune with his father's philosophy of fly-fishing being an art.

Paul knew what his father meant when he said that "man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace" (p.2) and that "all good things -- trout as well as eternal salvation -- come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy" (p.8). This philosophy is deeply ingrained into the narrative as the theme of art surfaces frequently and author makes a clear effort to show why art was superior to competence.

Competence refers to effective and serious learning of skills. A person competent at something is a man with required skills for the job but the same person may or may not be an artist. An artist is a person naturally gifted with the right attitude and aptitude for a certain task and during the course of his life, the task becomes his passion and attaining perfection in his art becomes his most important objective in life.

Norman for example is competent where fly-fishing is concerned but Paul is the true artist. But then Norman is an artist where writing is concerned and Paul is not. Paul is however the artist who has been used in the book to describe what real art is and how it is superior to competence. Paul has mastered the art of fly-fishing and his entire body language changes when he is deeply immersed in catching fish. He steadied himself and began to cast and the whole world turned to water.

Below him was the multitudinous fiver, and, where the rock had parted it around him, big-grained vapor rose. The mini-molecules of water left in the wake of his line made momentary loops of gossamer, disappearing so rapidly in the rising big-grained vapor that they had to be retained in memory to be visualized as loops. The spray emanating from him was finer-grained still and enclosed him in a halo of himself.

The halo of himself was always there and always disappearing, as if he were candlelight flickering about three inches from himself. The images of himself and his line.