Poet & Novelist Jim Harrison has died.
March 27, 2016 9:26 AM Subscribe
Excellent 1986 interview from the Paris Review.
"All I have to say about that macho thing goes back to the idea that my characters aren’t from the urban dream-coasts. A man is not a foreman on a dam project because he wants to be macho. That’s his job, a job he’s evolved into. A man isn’t a pilot for that reason either—he’s fascinated by airplanes. A farmer wants to farm. But you know what it’s like here and up in the Upper Peninsula. This is where I grew up. How is it macho that I like to hunt and fish? I’ve been doing it since I was four. I have always thought of the word macho in terms of what it means in Mexico: a particularly ugly peacockery, a conspicuous cruelty to women and animals and children, a gratuitous viciousness. You don’t write—an artist doesn’t create, or very rarely creates—good art in support of different causes. And critics have an enormous difficulty separating the attitudes of your characters from your attitudes as a writer. You have to explain to them: I am not all the men in my novels. How could I be? I’m little Jimmy back here on the farm with my wife and two daughters, and, at one time, three female horses, three female cats, and three female dogs, and I’m quite a nice person. So how can I be all these lunatics?"
"All I have to say about that macho thing goes back to the idea that my characters aren’t from the urban dream-coasts. A man is not a foreman on a dam project because he wants to be macho. That’s his job, a job he’s evolved into. A man isn’t a pilot for that reason either—he’s fascinated by airplanes. A farmer wants to farm. But you know what it’s like here and up in the Upper Peninsula. This is where I grew up. How is it macho that I like to hunt and fish? I’ve been doing it since I was four. I have always thought of the word macho in terms of what it means in Mexico: a particularly ugly peacockery, a conspicuous cruelty to women and animals and children, a gratuitous viciousness. You don’t write—an artist doesn’t create, or very rarely creates—good art in support of different causes. And critics have an enormous difficulty separating the attitudes of your characters from your attitudes as a writer. You have to explain to them: I am not all the men in my novels. How could I be? I’m little Jimmy back here on the farm with my wife and two daughters, and, at one time, three female horses, three female cats, and three female dogs, and I’m quite a nice person. So how can I be all these lunatics?"
Oh man, I was just listening to an old interview with him on NPR and he seemed like a very intelligent and fascinating writer. He's on my literary bucket-list. Should move him up a few spaces and give him a chance soon.
.
posted by Fizz at 9:38 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by Fizz at 9:38 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
If anyone is interested, the interview can be listened to here: Jim Harrison's Quixotic, Erotic Road Novel, The English Major (2008)
posted by Fizz at 9:52 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Fizz at 9:52 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by chicainthecity at 9:55 AM on March 27, 2016
posted by chicainthecity at 9:55 AM on March 27, 2016
Ugh. Fuck 2016. Thanks for many amazing hours with your words, Jim.
.
posted by nevercalm at 10:12 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by nevercalm at 10:12 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
*bursts into tears* One of my favorite poets. In Nebraska his friend Ted Kooser is hurting too.
I'll walk into my favorite bar on the 45th parallel and raise a glass to you, Jim.
The truest night of the hunter
is when like his prey
he never wakes up.
.
posted by barchan at 10:14 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'll walk into my favorite bar on the 45th parallel and raise a glass to you, Jim.
The truest night of the hunter
is when like his prey
he never wakes up.
.
posted by barchan at 10:14 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
His epigraph for Dalva, courtesy Twitter user Nick Ripatrazone (@nickripatrazone).
posted by salvia at 10:17 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by salvia at 10:17 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by doctornemo at 10:28 AM on March 27, 2016
posted by doctornemo at 10:28 AM on March 27, 2016
.
posted by Glomar response at 10:39 AM on March 27, 2016
posted by Glomar response at 10:39 AM on March 27, 2016
Cripes. So what, 2016 decided to take a break from mowing down actors and musicians, and is now working on writers?
So far, I don't see much to like about this year.
posted by easily confused at 11:16 AM on March 27, 2016
So far, I don't see much to like about this year.
posted by easily confused at 11:16 AM on March 27, 2016
Dang. Have meant to read more of his stuff just because he was from MI. (Even reading the places he'd lived here evoked so much for me.)
I see his wife of many decades passed away last year. So there's one of his causes of death, regardless the official one.
posted by NorthernLite at 11:54 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
I see his wife of many decades passed away last year. So there's one of his causes of death, regardless the official one.
posted by NorthernLite at 11:54 AM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
Margalit Fox gets right to it in the excellent NYT obit:
"Because of his books’ hypermasculine subject matter, their frequent setting amid the woods and trout streams of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and his own knockabout life, Mr. Harrison was chronically, and to his unrelieved disgust, compared to one man.
In fact, his prose is nothing like Hemingway’s: It is jazzier, more lyrical and more darkly comic. His characters, more marginal and far less self-assured — many abandon jobs and families to light out in search of meaning they never find — are handled with greater tenderness."
I also think more of Twain when I think of Harrison, especially when you consider the dozens of lightly comic novellas he produced. And his novellas and essays are my favorites. Anyone looking for an entry would do far worse than to read The Beast God Forgot To Invent a collection of three novellas. And The Raw and the Cooked is an excellent compilation of his essays on food, including all his columns from Esquire.
posted by valkane at 12:35 PM on March 27, 2016 [5 favorites]
"Because of his books’ hypermasculine subject matter, their frequent setting amid the woods and trout streams of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and his own knockabout life, Mr. Harrison was chronically, and to his unrelieved disgust, compared to one man.
In fact, his prose is nothing like Hemingway’s: It is jazzier, more lyrical and more darkly comic. His characters, more marginal and far less self-assured — many abandon jobs and families to light out in search of meaning they never find — are handled with greater tenderness."
I also think more of Twain when I think of Harrison, especially when you consider the dozens of lightly comic novellas he produced. And his novellas and essays are my favorites. Anyone looking for an entry would do far worse than to read The Beast God Forgot To Invent a collection of three novellas. And The Raw and the Cooked is an excellent compilation of his essays on food, including all his columns from Esquire.
posted by valkane at 12:35 PM on March 27, 2016 [5 favorites]
I recently read "Brown Dog" and was so delighted by it. I'm from Michigan, and these novellas are set in Michigan, and are so filled with humane-ness and humanity.
posted by acrasis at 12:41 PM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by acrasis at 12:41 PM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.
.
posted by crookedneighbor at 12:50 PM on March 27, 2016
and now there’s no chain.
.
posted by crookedneighbor at 12:50 PM on March 27, 2016
.
Quite a guy. My friend Scott used to hang out with him in northern Michigan, and held him in high regard.
posted by LeLiLo at 1:06 PM on March 27, 2016
Quite a guy. My friend Scott used to hang out with him in northern Michigan, and held him in high regard.
posted by LeLiLo at 1:06 PM on March 27, 2016
Outside reposted an interesting profile on him from 2011: The Last Lion.
posted by barchan at 1:21 PM on March 27, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by barchan at 1:21 PM on March 27, 2016 [4 favorites]
"Ice Fishing, The Moronic Sport" is one of my favorite essays by him.
It was a pleasure to read him.
posted by ITravelMontana at 4:27 PM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
It was a pleasure to read him.
posted by ITravelMontana at 4:27 PM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
Loved Dalva and Julip especially. Read an interview with him after his wife died last fall and thought he wouldn't stick around a lot longer from what he said. Just an amazing writer who lived an only slightly more moderate life than many of his characters - really remarkable that he made it to 78 given how large he lived. And yes, as another MI reader his work resonated all the more.
.
posted by leslies at 6:46 PM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by leslies at 6:46 PM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
Driving through the UP one of the times I have been up there, I hoped it was him that I saw talking in a yard with a guy. It meant a lot to me that it might have been him.
.
posted by artdesk at 7:03 PM on March 27, 2016
.
posted by artdesk at 7:03 PM on March 27, 2016
BARKING
The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.
posted by gwint at 8:28 PM on March 27, 2016 [4 favorites]
The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.
posted by gwint at 8:28 PM on March 27, 2016 [4 favorites]
I revere bears. I had a big male bear that I used to leave extra fish about a hundred yards from my cabin. I'd leave the fish on a stump and the bear would eat them. When I would come home from the bar, sometimes he would stop me and I would roll down the window, and he would set his chin right on the doorjamb and I'd scratch his head—but that's stupid.
posted by salvia at 9:19 PM on March 27, 2016
posted by salvia at 9:19 PM on March 27, 2016
So sad to hear this. I enjoyed Brown Dog so much, and the River Swimmer. I spent childhood summers in Northern Wisconsin and his descriptions of the UP capture so much what makes that area special, both culturally and the romance of the natural environment. The way he captured his relationship to the land and creatures. I would have loved to have met him.
.
posted by amusebuche at 4:26 AM on March 28, 2016
.
posted by amusebuche at 4:26 AM on March 28, 2016
.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 12:02 PM on March 28, 2016
posted by Jody Tresidder at 12:02 PM on March 28, 2016
« Older Comes highly recommended by the Lagosians | Can't hurt to try, right? Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
✋
posted by clavdivs at 9:36 AM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]