Wading through the murky waters of life

Those who have read "Young Men and Fire," Maclean's nonfiction reconstruction of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana, in which 13 smokejumpers were burned to death, may recall the multiple parallels Maclean drew between their fate and that of the 7th Cavalry troops under George Armstrong Custer at the Little Bighorn, another death-dealing Montana site. "In the dry grass on both hills are white scattered markers where the bodies were found, a special cluster of them just short of the top, where red terror closed in from behind and above and from the sides. The bodies were of those who were young and thought to be invincible by others and themselves," Maclean wrote. "None were surer they couldn't lose than the Seventh Cavalry and the Smokejumpers."

The "Reader" contains two striking outtakes from "Young Men and Fire," one of which includes the Custer-site comparison; the other, printed as a free-standing story titled "Black Ghost," was used as the very opening of "Young Men and Fire." It was found among Maclean's papers after his death (the book itself was published posthumously and so represents decisions made by others) and is a gripping account of one of his own firefighting experiences, caught with flame in front of him, behind him and overhead as well, his shoelaces smoldering by the time he gained safety. As if in psychic contact with the dead of Mann Gulch, Maclean writes, "As a fire up a hillside closes in, everything becomes a mode of exhaustion -- fear, thirst, terror, a twitch in the flesh that still has a preference to live, all become simply exhausting."

The surprise here is to learn that the Custer comparisons were hardly incidental: From 1959 to 1963, primarily, Maclean struggled to write a book about the battle of the Little Bighorn and its cultural afterlife, and "The Norman Maclean Reader" presents five heretofore unpublished extracts from his manuscript, including sections of what was to be his conclusion, titled "Shrine to Defeat."

The importance of this material does not lie in historical import: Its unfinished nature is self-evident, as is its heavy reliance on other accounts, including Mari Sandoz's "Cheyenne Autumn," and further it pales in comparison with fully developed works such as Evan Connell's "Son of the Morning Star." It is better regarded as an illumination of the way Maclean thought -- his concern that the bodies of the men on the hillside, naked except for bloody socks, "have been transformed into a universe of other meanings" -- and it reveals some of his humor as well.

Looking analytically at the narratives that arose around the battle, Maclean writes, "We can get an early glimpse of the mind's preference to construct history more by the principles of literature than by the canons of evidence" -- this dovetails with his belief that particular moments of life are highly aestheticized, and in fact present themselves as art. On the humorous side, he reports witnessing a mother and son in front of a display case in the museum at the battlefield. In it was the cadet uniform that Custer had worn at West Point (where he finished last in his class), and the mother "whispers to her son that he must study hard in school if he expects to get anywhere in life." In a chapter on the Sioux, he recounts that when Sitting Bull finally led his followers onto the reservation, he was given 12 acres of plowed land and instructed to become a farmer; ordered to pick up a hoe, he complied and took a few strokes with it. "In the joke book of history, this must be rated among the better laughs," Maclean comments.