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A Good Day to Die

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Jim Harrison may be the best writer no one ever heard of.  Except for his novella, Legends of the Fall, which was made into a movie with Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt, it is doubtful few would know him at all.  His first full length novel Wolf was laughably turned into a werewolf movie starring Jack Nicholson, as I guess a young man trying to find himself in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan didn't suit Hollywood.

Legends was reportedly based on actual journals, but it struck me as a thinly veiled portrait of Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt and his three sons, the youngest similarly dying in WWI due to poor vision.  It was easily adaptable into a film, but as a novel was rather weak.  Harrison improved considerably in his later efforts, notably Wolf and Sundog, both of which I enjoyed very much.

He kind of disappeared from the scene after the theatrical versions of his novels, content it seems to write poetry at his reclusive Arizona ranch.  Always an outdoorman, he preferred to commute with nature rather than his fellow man, but Iain Sinclair tracked him down in American Smoke, as Harrison once ran with the Beats.

His style was more in the mold of Wallace Stegner, a hero to him, whose work he would often quote.  Harrison's West was pretty broad, he set novels in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Nebraska, Montana and other locations.  His men were strong without being self-serving.  There was usually a muse, but she would be strong-willed too, as was the case in Sundog.  In Dalva, he devoted his novel to a half-Indian woman, with very much the same strength as his male protagonists.

In all, he had some 30 novels to his credit but poetry remained his passion.  Philip Caputo found Harrison on the floor of his Arizona home with pen in hand and an unfinished poem on the desk.


Comments

  1. Rick DiguetteMarch 30, 2016 at 7:35 PM

    I don't know, I can think of quite a few little known writers who impress me more than Harrison ever did.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rick DiguetteMarch 30, 2016 at 7:36 PM

    Oh, and he really looks like the Travelocity guy in that photograph.

    ReplyDelete
  3. James FergusonMarch 30, 2016 at 9:37 PM

    To each his own. I haven't read any of his more recent books, but I won't suggest one for a reading group ; )

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rick DiguetteApril 3, 2016 at 3:50 PM

    I've been curious about Legends of the Fall and may finally take a crack at it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. James FergusonApril 5, 2016 at 3:31 PM

    If you are not a Jim Harrison fan this novella will certainly not win you over. I found it to be one of his most disappointing efforts.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Rick DiguetteApril 6, 2016 at 10:30 PM

    Thanks for the heads-up.

    ReplyDelete

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