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Jim Harrison
at The Cottage Book Shop
Jim Harrison will always find a home in our local section, even as he
moves on to Montana to be near his daughters. He made Leelanau County his
home for some 30 years, and made the landscape and occasional character
indelible subjects of his internationally-renowned work. They are stories of
great romanticism about the bounds of family, the individual, and
frontierism. His stories resurrect the American ideal of love for the land
and the moral identity that engenders. Readers have long seen themselves,
and northern Michigan, in these stories and fancied themselves part of a
better world because of it.
Harrison's newest
work returns to his age-old three-novella structure, infused with all
the wisdom and generous spirit that have made him one of our masters. In
the title novella, "The Summer He Didn't Die," Brown Dog, a hapless
Michigan Indian loved by Harrison's readers, is trying to parent his two
stepchildren and take care of his family's health on meager resources.
"Republican Wives" is a riotous satire on the sexual neuroses of the
right, the mystery of why any person desires another, and the irrational
power of love that, when thwarted, can turn so easily into an urge to
murder. "Where Are We?" mines Harrison's private religion of the
sensuous and sensual as integral to the transcendent joy of living.
The Summer He Didn't Die
displays wit as sharp and prose as lush as any Harrison has yet written.
It is a resonant, hilarious, and joyful ode to our journey on this
earth.
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 The
Summer
He Didn't Die
(2005)
Hardcover, $24
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 True
North
(2004)
Hardcover, $24
Paperback, $14
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Harrison has returned to the
literary form he commands with a novel tracing the individual and
collective experiences of those touched by the generational accumulation
of wealth from the forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The U.P.’s
forests, lush and pristine, are ravaged for the financial gain of the
David Burkett’s. Those readers familiar with Harrison’s writing will
find a character equal to Dalva’s tragic yet gritty vision in David
Burkett. The fourth generation in a line of David Burkett’s, he embarks
on a quest to discover what went wrong with his family. With sage
dialogue, Harrison seems to be yielding up the tools for our own
historical searches. Indeed, this is Harrison at the top of his form.
True North can be read as the revelation one man’s search for redemption
in the face of accumulated evil, the fictional history of an industry
and its lifestyles, or simply to relax and relish in the prodigious
skill Harrison brings to the written word. I am compelled to read True
North from all points of the compass.
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This memoir places us in the
corner of a comfortable cabin as Harrison and a trusted companion talk
candidly about living. We are privy not to a glib conversation, but to a
portrait of the landscapes Harrison has lived and loved. The memoir
reads like a novella of three, making Harrison readers feel at home in
his quintessential form. “Early Life” is filled with the tapestry of
significant events that lead to the man. In “Seven Obsessions”, Harrison
takes the reader to an expansive territory where, unapologetically and
unabashedly, he walks us through his passions. “The Rest of Life” was
the bonus novella, going far beyond the accumulation of gray hair and
extra weight. It takes raw guts to look at a life this way, and Harrison
does it without apology. You will respond to his life as you have to his
fictional characters: at times amazed at the circumstances of life, as
seemingly determined by fate or self-infliction, and in due time
laughing as Harrison yields a new perspective. A truly great read, even
for non-Harrisonites who may revel in a master writer revealing a
poetically rich life. For the Harrison stalwarts, come meet his muse.
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Off the Side:
A Memoir
(2002)
Paperback, $14
Signed copies of hardcover limited edition, $90
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Conversations with
Jim Harrison
(2002)
Paperback, $18
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Reading Jim Harrison is like
having a bear loose in your head. Slowly, the bear wreaks havoc on the
way you think about things. Everything gets rooted through and pulled
out of the drawers and sniffed. Stuff you never thought of as edible,
seems like it might not be so bad after all. Blake’s admonition —that
you never know what is enough until you know what is too much —comes to
mind. You realize how foreign some human standards are to all the other
inhabitants of the planet. It dawns on you: the presence of wildness.
This new book is no exception. Harrison’s talk is as accomplished,
eventful and far ranging as his fiction, essays and poetry. Spanning
nearly 30 years, the interviews offer a glimpse of Harrison in the
company of others. His openness and responsiveness to often the same
questions is wonderful. A spoof literary interview that Harrison
conducted with friend Tom McGuane is hilarious. Harrison probes with
insightful questions like: “Why have you never mentioned the Budweiser
Clydesdales in your work?”
As Robert DeMott, the editor of this collection, writes in his
introduction: “What Gertrude Stein once said of Paris applies to
Harrison—it isn’t what he gives you, so much as what he doesn’t take
away.”
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For Harrison, food is not a simple
custom or function of necessity, but an act of redemption, a litmus test
of personal and moral fortitude, and a current of memory as powerful as
sight and sound. Readers are taken through many locales and occasions: a
hotdog cart after a six course publisher's lunch in New York, a picnic
table in the U.P. upon which the ingredients of pig's head cheese are
laid out, and the exhaustive preparations of a feast for friends with
his signature dense, poetic writing. We see the breadth of heart, depth
of appetites, and the scope of vision that has fueled this author's most
powerful works.
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The Raw and the Cooked:
Adventures of a Roving Gourmand
(2001)
Paperback, $13
Hardcover, $25
Signed 1st Edition Hdc, $60
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The Beast God
Forgot to Invent
(2000)
Hardcover, $24
Paperback, $13
Signed 1st Edition Hdc, $80
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Strong voices bring
to life each character in Harrison's new collection of novellas, telling
distinctly different stories in quintessentially similar ways. From
Michigan to Los Angeles to Spain, Harrison's voice carries us
unwaveringly through uncharted territory of human souls. His strong
voice brings to life each character telling distinctly different stories
in quintessentially similar ways. Harrison’s voice carries us
unwaveringly through uncharted territory of human souls. The U.P.
provides a setting with independent, sometimes “quirky” residents. We
see the return of a favorite, Brown Dog, as he wanders L.A. The main
character of "The Beast God Forgot to Invent " becomes one of the
caretakers of a young brain damaged man. This elderly, somewhat
melancholy, cranky character is like the man Harrison doesn’t want to
become as he ages. The character in the third novella looks back at a
lifelong dream of poetic and artistic ambitions which have slipped past
him as a part of the aging process.
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With a well weathered style of wilderness
writing, Harrison takes us on a journey of adversity and discovery as a
young boy finds all that is natural after losing sight in one eye. It
is Harrison’s answer to his grandson who several years ago asked him how
he had hurt his eye. Harrison "just wanted to explain it to him in the
best way possible", and calls it "a recovery story". So many people have
severe traumas in their life and it’s interesting to see how they get
over it.” His experiences in the woods with its dark and wild beginnings
is still central to his life. The boy’s running wildly in the woods as a
means of dealing with his loss and anger will speak to many. The story
ends with an important lesson, “life is a flowing river and the river
changes but it is still a river.” The illustrations by Tom Pohrt, of Ann
Arbor, are sensitive in their coloring and detail and convey the story’s
feeling.
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The Boy Who Ran
to the Woods
(2000)
Illustrations by Tom Pohrt
Hardcover, $18.95
1st Edition Signed by both Harrison and Pohrt, $80
He ran into the woods and is not entirely
sure he ever emerged.
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The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems
(1998)
Paperback, $20
"This book...means the most to me." --
JH
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This volume brings together
Harrison's long praised, but quickly falling out-of-print, poetry,
including several previously uncollected poems, an index to first
lines, and "Geo-Bestiary," a new 34 poem suite dedicated to Harrison's
passions for food, sex. poetry, and nature. Harrison is best known for
his fiction and non-fiction, but it is his poetry, sustained by his
truly unique voice and vision, that means the most to him. He equates
poetry to cave paintings or petroglyphs, so intrinsically human is the
urge to express the life of the soul.
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This is a portrait of the American Midwest as
only Harrison could dream it and write it. Wrenching shifts in narrator,
time and space drag us through the stories of Dalva and her family. An
eternal interconnectedness of the earth and human life grounds the
stories in a landscape in which relative truths are revisited by various
narrators at various points in time. Through it all, there is a
reverence of the ordinary - the abundant redundancy of the sandhills of
Nebraska. Harrison crafts a compelling story of love and life through
five separate narrators, each more compelling than the previous.
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The Road Home
(1998)
Paperback, $14
Signed 1st Edition Hdc, $40
"the grace of the divinely ordinary"
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After Ikkyu and
Other Poems
(1996)
Paperback, $16.95
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Harrison has ignited a western
reverence of Zen-inspired lives. These poems tread peacefully and
thoughtfully into Harrison's very soul, allowing us to see the world
through his clear, observant eyes. Poetry is what your soul would speak
if you could teach your soul to speak.
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Julip, the title character from
the first of three novellas, has been surrounded by lunatics her whole
life: alcoholic father, frigid mother, nymphomaniac cousin, certifiable
brother. Brown Dog surfaces in the second novella, blubbering his way
through foul-ups in an attempt to breach the rhythm of nature and chaos
of man. Finally, an academic run amuck embraces the natural world in an
attempt to but his pieces back together.
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Julip
Signed 1st Edition Hdc, $125
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Just Before Dark
(1991)
Paperback, $15
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Collection of non-fiction essays
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In his second shot at a
collection of three novellas, Harrison opens up lives lived close to the
land to us, and the complex relationships of the men and women there.
Brown Dog is a scoundrel and folk philosopher who simply wants to live
off the land and be left alone. He takes the reader on a roller coaster
of intuition, passion, wit and wiles, as he treads heavily on the
boarder between lawfulness and outlawfullness.
Sunset Limited is a political melodrama that brings four 60's radicals,
now middle-aged and ''reformed,'' back together to rescue their former
leader from a Mexican jail.
The subtle outlawfullness of Clare, The Woman Lit by Fireflies, is
revealed when she simply walks away from her husband and life as a
wealthy, middle-aged suburban-Detroit housewife. The night she spends in
a cornfield invulcrates us in her rebirth into a new, more authentic
self.
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The Woman Lit by Fireflies
(1990)
Paperback, $14
Signed 1st Edition Hdc
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The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems
(1989)
Paperback, $13.95
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Harrison seeks solace in the
natural world, in a philosophical and romantic collection of poems in
response to the death of his 16-year old niece, Gloria. |
An American epic, rich in
atmosphere and history, here is the story of an unforgettable woman--a
tale that sweeps from East to West, from the Civil War to Wounded Knee
and Vietnam.
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 Dalva
(1988)
Paperback, $14
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Sundog
(1984)
Paperback, $12.95
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Warlock: A Novel
(1981)
Paperback, $19
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Legends of the Fall
(1979)
Paperback, $13.95
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This trilogy of novellas --
Legends Of The Fall, Revenge, and The Man Who Gave Up His
Name -- explores revenge, considering the actions to which people
resort when their lives and goals are threatened. The result is an
entirely unique vision of the twentieth century man. Legends Of The
Fall has been adapted to a screenplay and became a blockbuster hit
starring Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn.
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Farmer
(1976)
Paperback, $13.95
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A Good Day to Die
(1973)
$15 (Printed on Demand)
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| A modern man is trapped in a
world he can't even fathom, let alone understand. Long forsaken by the
world, he takes us on an emotional journey to see wolves, ending in a
goring of food in Ishpeming. The screenplay for the 1994 blockbuster
movie by the same title starring Jack Nicholson was written by Harrison,
but is not to be confused with this novel. |
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