Norman Maclean needed a carpenter. His cabin in Seeley Lake, Montana, had seen its better days. He knew he should have gotten somebody out here long ago, but what with his job at the University of Chicago and all, there was barely time for lesson plans and grading papers and meeting with needy students, let alone tending to a broken screen door and a leaky ceiling.

Besides, what was he supposed to do, just pick a random number out of the yellow pages and hope for the best? What if he got hoodwinked, taken advantage of? It wouldn’t be hard. Norman was an English professor, for God’s sake. He’d never been good with tools. Fahrenheit 451. Pride and Prejudice. To Kill A Mockingbird. Literature? Norman was your man. But tools?

So, he formed an idea.

Instead of relying on the recommendations of friends or a carpenter’s reputation, he insisted on observing the man at work on a small test project. For two days, he watched the carpenter like a hawk, noting every detail. How he handled his tools, the precision of his cuts and his overall work ethic. Only after the carpenter had proven himself to his exacting standards did Norman agree to hire him for the larger job.

Norman was not a trusting person.

After his retirement in 1973, he began working on the stories that would eventually become A River Runs Through It. True to form, he kept the project a secret from nearly everyone, including his closest friends and colleagues. To share his stories, especially if they weren’t yet polished, he would need to trust them implicitly.

When the book was finally published in 1976, it was met with critical acclaim, but it had taken years of private toil before Norman was willing to let the world see what he had created. His secrecy about the writing process underscores the profound personal connection he had to the work and his desire to protect it from outside influence until it was fully realized.

Robert Redford knew his chances of getting Norman to sell him the film rights were slim.

“In 1981, during a visit to Montana, I had a discussion about Western writers with my friend Tom McGuane,” Redford writes in his foreword to A River Runs Through It. “We debated the authenticity issue: living it and knowing it versus just loving it. Several names were thrown about—Wallace Stegner, Ivano Doig, A.B. Guthrie, Vardis Fisher—before McGuane suggested he could settle the question by having me read A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean.

“I met Norman at Sundance in the mid 1980s to discuss the project. He was polite, courteous but wary. He had achieved a position in the pantheon of revered writers with no nod to self-promotion or reviews and he had very strict ideas about word and honor.

“I decided that the best way to cut through the mythology that surrounded both of us would be to propose a plan that might strengthen our mutual trust. I would come to Chicago three times. He could ask questions. I would ask questions. I would tell him how I saw the story. He could challenge and skewer that view as he liked. If at any point, we didn’t like the way things were going, we could cut our losses.

“Three years and several drafts later, I went to Montana again, this time to film A River Runs Through It. Norman had died a few months earlier, and I’m not sure he would have ever borne the shift from the privacy of pen and page to the very public business of filmmaking. His book was a great challenge; I’d like to think we saw eye to eye on much, and that in the end the film reflected that unison.”

John Doyle and I had just done a campaign for Dunham Boots. I was prouder of that campaign than anything else I had done up to that point. When the reprints came in, I couldn’t wait to hang them up on my wall. A couple of days later, a colleague dropped by to see if I wanted to do lunch. He glanced over at the wall.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

WTF?

“Yeah good? Yeah bad?”

He shrugged.

“Yeah, good… You know… Nice… Yeah.”

Not what I was expecting. Very un-Norman-like of me. I was fishing for approval. I was looking for striped bass and all I got was a sunfish. Not going to lie—I was bummed out for days. Lesson learned.

Asking for opinions on your work is part of the creative process. But make no mistake. It comes with risks. Be mindful. Be critical. Be wary as hell. Be Norman. ca