“So many books, so little time” say the tote bags sold at independent bookstores. It’s impossible to keep up with the new books published daily, much less the abundance of classics that fill the world’s bookstores and libraries–neglected, celebrated, or dutifully praised but unread. The truth is that there are more than enough books to keep even the most avid reader occupied through several lifetimes. Still, there are some that deserve to be high up on the lifetime reading list queue.
One of the best non-fiction books in American literature
Jon Foro of Amazon’s Omnivoracious book blog recently got around to one of those books that people say “you must read.” Admitting he was “late to this party,” he offered the following assessment of Norman Maclean’s 1992 book Young Men and Fire:
On August 5, 1949, a team of young, tough, and apparently (if not actually) fearless firefighters called the Smokejumpers parachuted into what seemed a minor lightning-struck wildfire in Mann Gulch, an arid ravine on the Missouri River, just north of Missoula, Montana. Sixteen men leapt from the plane, but within an hour all but three were dead or dying, overrun by a “blowup,” a nearly instantaneous fireball that scorched the valley to its head.
Young Men and Fire is Norman Maclean’s meticulously researched recreation of the tragic events–and a gracious homage to the men who perished and those who helped–told in language as pragmatic and awe-inspiring as the Big Sky country it represents. The story deserves as much, and Maclean’s direct approach delivers. [more]
It’s hard to improve on those comments. Norman Maclean may be best known as the author of A River Runs Through It [the novella that inspired the film], but Young Men and Fire really is a masterpiece of what we now call “creative nonfiction.” The style of the writing is so understated, almost dry, that the story’s emotional impact just creeps up on the unsuspecting reader. CSI-style discussions of fire behavior, combustibility, and the physics of air and flame combine with novelistic portraits of individuals and the subculture of “smoke jumpers”–aerial firefighters, some of them veterans of the legendary WWII airborne units. Maclean sets the scene, describes the landscape, and outlines the characters. The story unfolds in a spiral pattern, returning to the central events and personalities again and again as we learn more about what happened. On a foundation of understated and matter-of-fact language, the book builds to a poetic and heart-breaking crescendo.
You can read an excerpt from Young Men and Fire here, but you should really just read the book itself. In the meantime, here’s an interesting musical sidenote…
Wag Dodge, one of the few survivors of the Mann Gulch fire was forever haunted by that day. He lived by testing a counter-intuitive idea–escaping an approaching wall of flame by pre-emptively setting fire to the grasses that surrounded him. Once proven, this technique would save many lives among those who fight wildfires. Dodge’s story, and Norman Maclean’s book, inspired a beautiful song, performed here by Cry Cry Cry [best online version I could find]:
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