Paul Maclean:

The Unquiet Life of Paul Maclean: An American Tragedy

Paul Davidson Maclean, forever immortalized as the gifted, self-destructive younger brother in his brother Norman’s elegiac novella, A River Runs Through It, remains a figure of both fascination and sorrow in the landscape of American literature. His life, a volatile mixture of brilliance, charm, and a deep-seated recklessness, was cut short by a brutal, unsolved murder in 1938. To understand Paul Maclean is to navigate the complex interplay between a historical individual and a near-mythical literary creation, a man whose story is as much about the currents of a Montana river as it is about the dark alleys of a Chicago night.

Born in Clarinda, Iowa, in 1906, Paul was the second son of the Reverend John Norman Maclean and Clara Davidson Maclean. The family moved to Missoula, Montana, in 1909, and it was in the rugged beauty of the American West that Paul and his older brother, Norman, came of age. Their upbringing was a study in contrasts: the strict Presbyterianism of their father, with its emphasis on discipline and the power of the word, and the liberating art of fly-fishing on the Big Blackfoot River, a form of communion with nature that bordered on the sacred. As Norman would later write, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”^1

From a young age, Paul exhibited a precocious talent and a rebellious streak. While Norman was the more introspective and scholarly of the two, Paul was the artist, a natural at everything he set his mind to, especially fly-fishing. His casting was not merely a technique but a form of grace, a rhythmic expression of an inner fire. Norman, in his novella, describes Paul’s angling with a sense of awe, seeing in it a perfection that his brother could never quite achieve in his own life.^2 This duality—the beautiful, precise artistry and the chaotic, often violent, personal life—would come to define Paul’s existence.

After his schooling, Paul pursued a career in journalism, a profession that suited his inquisitive and confrontational nature. He worked for several newspapers in Montana, most notably the Helena Independent Record. In Helena, Paul quickly gained a reputation as a fearless reporter who was not afraid to take on powerful interests. His writing was sharp and incisive, and he possessed an innate ability to connect with a wide range of people, from politicians to the rough-and-tumble characters who populated the bars and gambling dens of the city.^3 This period of his life is often glossed over in popular retellings of his story, but it was a time when he was forging his own identity, separate from his family and the long shadow of his father’s manse.

However, the demons that would eventually consume him were already present. Paul was a heavy drinker and an inveterate gambler, habits that frequently landed him in trouble. He was known for his love of a good fight, and his hands, which could so deftly handle a fly rod, were often bruised and battered from brawls. Norman’s novella captures this aspect of his brother’s character with a painful intimacy, recounting the times he had to bail Paul out of jail or tend to his injuries. These incidents were not mere youthful indiscretions but signs of a deeper turmoil, a restlessness that the beauty of the Montana landscape and the love of his family could not quell.

In the 1930s, seeking new opportunities, Paul followed Norman to Chicago, where Norman was a professor at the University of Chicago. Paul found work in the university’s public relations department, a job that, while respectable, likely did not provide the same thrill as investigative journalism in Montana.^4 Chicago, a city in the grip of the Great Depression and still bearing the scars of Prohibition-era gangsterism, was a dangerous place for a man with Paul’s proclivities. His drinking and gambling continued, and he fell in with a rough crowd, accumulating debts that he could not, or would not, pay.

The end came on the night of May 2, 1938. Paul was found beaten to death in a South Side alley. He had been so severely bludgeoned that many of the bones in his right hand were broken, a testament, as Norman would later emphasize, to the fact that he had fought back fiercely against his assailants.^5 The murder was officially recorded as a robbery-gone-wrong, but the brutality of the crime and Paul’s known associations with the city’s underbelly led to speculation that it was a mob hit, a settling of scores over gambling debts. The case was never solved, and the identity of his killers remains a mystery.

Paul Maclean’s death at the age of thirty-two was a devastating blow to his family, particularly to Norman, who would be haunted by it for the rest of his life. The question of what more he could have done to help his brother, a central theme in A River Runs Through It, is one that Norman grappled with until his own death in 1990. In the novella, the character of Norman reflects, “It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”^6 This sense of profound and tragic incomprehension is at the heart of the story and is the source of its enduring power.

The publication of A River Runs Through It in 1976, nearly four decades after Paul’s death, transformed him from a private family tragedy into a public literary figure. The novella, and the subsequent 1992 film adaptation directed by Robert Redford, cemented the image of Paul Maclean as the quintessential American romantic hero: beautiful, gifted, and doomed. He became a symbol of untamed wilderness and artistic genius, a man who lived life on his own terms, however destructive those terms may have been.

This literary portrayal, while deeply moving, has also, to some extent, obscured the historical Paul Maclean. In his 2021 book, Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River, Norman’s son, John N. Maclean, provides a more fact-based account of his uncle’s life, drawing on family letters and historical records. John’s work helps to flesh out the man behind the myth, offering a more nuanced portrait of a complex individual who was more than just the "beautiful" but "unhelpful" character of his father’s novella.^7

The life of Paul Maclean is a poignant and cautionary tale. It is the story of a man blessed with immense talent and charm who was ultimately consumed by his own inner darkness. His legacy is twofold: the historical reality of a life cut tragically short and the enduring power of a literary creation that continues to resonate with readers and audiences. In the end, we are left with the haunting image from his brother’s pen: a masterful fisherman on a Montana river, a "work of art" in a world that he could not navigate with the same grace and precision. His life, like the river that ran through it, was a thing of beauty and of mystery, a current that flowed inexorably towards a violent and untimely end.

Bibliography

Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Maclean, John N. Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River. New York: Custom House, 2021.

"Paul Maclean's Life in Helena." Helena Independent Record, July 9, 2000.

University of Chicago. "Guide to the Norman Maclean Papers 1880-1990." University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center.

"A Tragedy Runs Through It." Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, March-April 2021.

Tribune Staff. "125 Montana Newsmakers: Norman and Paul Maclean." Great Falls Tribune.

Norman Maclean. Wikipedia. Accessed June 22, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Maclean.

A River Runs Through It (film). Wikipedia. Accessed June 22, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_River_Runs_Through_It_(film.