The Beast God Forgot to Invent

I have just found a new obsession and it's Jim Harrison! Not the man, but his books of course. I am always open to a new discovery and in this case, what a pleasant surprise. Jim Harrison has an impressive command of words that keep his story(s), in this case 3 of them, flowing without being bogged down with excessive descriptions. It's as if you were having a conversation with him rather than reading a book. After doing some research I found that he had written "Legends of the Fall", and that is one of my all time favorite movies. I just can't understand why he doesn't get more press. I have mentioned his books to several people and none of them were aware of him at all. He difinitely is a talent not to be missed. I have already ordered "A Woman Lit by Fireflies" and looking forward to his upcoming Memoir!One more thing,if you are not familiar with his writing take a peak inside one of his books, you might just like what you see.

And here's why: many authors write in the first person to give themselves an alter ego. Not so here, as Harrison uses the first person to give us 3 truly engaging partners in crime, who let us in on the most intimate details of their lives. His genius is that, although he brings the disparate together, he also understands their inevitable separation. These stories begin in Minnesota. They always come back there.Worth your time, if only to meet people who should go on and reoprt back "beyond the end"....

In the title story the narrator, a fifty-something antique book collecter and real estate agent, feels chagrined living in the north Michigan wilderness where he lives a paradoxical life of ruggedness tempered by his dependence on consumerism, creature comforts and gadgetry. Divorced twice, the lonely narrator lusts over young women who flock Joe, a feral young man, who, sustaining a brain injury, takes on the role of the town's "Noble Savage." The novella's comedy and deep, soulful pain comes from the sexually-frustrated, overintellectual narrator idealizing Joe into something akin to a hypersexualized Pan. It's clear that the narrator lives vicariously through what he perceives as Joe's unlimited sexual prowess.The novella is well-paced and combines a compelling narrative with a meditation on the conflict between our impulse to live the simple, "real" life resembling our animal nature and our impulse to indulge in our "sophisticated" passions, which too often make us forget who we really are.

I read the first sentence of the title novella five or ten times before I could go on. (I won't tell you what it is... get the book and read it yourself.) Then I read it to my brother-in-law, my wife and a potter friend. I memorized it and now feel strongly compelled to scratch it on subway wall. It's that good. There are many such profound sentences throughout these three simply plotted but canyon-deep novellas. Witty and thoughful sentences and paragraphs abound yielding fuel for prolonged sessions of enjoyment and pondering. Thank you, Jim Harrison!

Jim Harrison exhausts me. In two of his three superb novellas, I had to pause after every other paragraph to allow my mind to catch up. Reading Harrison is like drinking from a fire hose. Harrison's writing has the conceptual connectivity of a Dennis Miller rant, but it is more serious, more profound, longer and always within an odd story line. Does anyone else write like this? Harrison defines the solitary, cranky, intelligent, old man. Thank goodness for another Brown Dog story sandwiched neatly in between for relief. One imagines the Farley Brothers could make quite a movie about old B.D.