Skill and Art Theme Analysis

A River Runs Through It is full of lushly described scenes of fly-fishing in Montana—in Maclean’s hands, the effort to figure out which fish are biting and how to best angle oneself in relation to them becomes almost a minor epic. Some might distinguish between a technical skill that involves separate, learnable tasks, and a kind of artistic genius that simply cannot be learned, but the novella collapses this distinction—for Maclean, technical skill is not in opposition to sublime artistic genius, but rather a necessary aspect of art.

Thanks to Maclean’s descriptions, the reader gains an amateur knowledge of the vocabulary and technique of fly-fishing. The four-count rhythm is one well-tested skill revealed to us as essential to the task—a task that is alternately described as an art or as a skill. Sometimes, this craft is a matter of expertise developed over time, but in other cases it is a matter of individual creativity, even genius. Paul’s “shadow casting,” for instance, a wrist-based technique that makes the fish believe there are flies flitting over the water, is an idiosyncratic technique rather than a standard rule of fly-fishing. Paul’s seemingly natural gift for fly-fishing is a source of admiration for Norman and their father. It almost compensates for Paul’s weaknesses in other aspects of life, though the tragedy is that fly-fishing is the only way Paul can ever truly feel at home and in control. By describing fly-fishing as an art developed through skill, the book elevates the sport to the level of more classical arts like painting, sculpture, and poetry. In the novel, fly-fishing becomes an art particular to the American West, one whose secrets may be shared with the readers, but which remains in the possession of a lucky few (as Neal’s disastrous attempts to join in make clear).