Aristocrat of Consciousness

Conversations with Jim Harrison Revised and Updated Edited by Robert DeMott. University Press of Mississippi. 289 pp. $25.00 *****

Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems Edited by Joseph Bednarik. Copper Canyon Press. 229 pp. $18.00 *****

Some years ago—probably thirty, at this point—I was sitting with a bunch of book reviewers and editors in New York, celebrating the publication of a friend’s book, and the conversation turned to Jim Harrison. One of the men there edited Harrison at Dell, where they produced a uniform edition of his works in paperback, and told us that when Harrison showed up at the office the first thing he said was, “Where’s the whiskey?” Ah, the old days of publishing.

One reviewer, actually a prominent book review editor, made a cutting remark about the new Dell editions of Jim Harrison’s work. “It calls him an outdoorsman and a man of letters. Can you imagine calling that guy”—in his photos Harrison looked like a cross between a bricklayer and a professional wrestler—”a man of letters?” The Dell editor who was with us folded his arms and put his head down on the table. Turned out he’d been the one who had written that copy. Gales of laughter all around.

But if Jim Harrison wasn’t a man of letters, I don’t know who ever was. He took up poetry as a teenager and said repeatedly, to anyone who asked, that if you don’t dedicate your life completely to that vocation there’s no reason to take it up at all. He continued to write poetry all his life, apparently died of a heart attack while writing a poem at age 79. He took up the novel at the suggestion of his friend Thomas McGuane, after Harrison had seriously injured his back in a fall and was laid up in bed, and his first effort in that genre—Wolf: A False Memoir—was published by the first publisher that saw it.

He singlehandedly rescued the novella form from oblivion—it was a collection of three novellas, Legends of the Fall, that initially made him famous—probably wrote more novellas than any other writer in history. For a while early in his career he supported himself with non-fiction about his outdoor pursuits for Sports Illustrated, and he later spent years making money, big money, writing screenplays.

He also apparently was a prolific writer of actual letters; he mentions once-a-week letters to his friend McGuane (we hope that collection will be published), also a number of letters to his shrink in New York. He saw the man in person when he was in town, but spent most of his life far from New York and pretty far from civilization. I should also mention that Harrison answered the one fan letter I sent him, something not all writers have done.

What might have shocked my book reviewing friend, as we discover in Conversations with Jim Harrison, is that Harrison was extraordinarily well read. He mentions several times, for instance—this was one fact that startled me—that when he was a young man, Finnegan’s Wake was his Bible; he read through it a number of times. He was widely read in poetry and fiction in general; one of my reasons for reading a book like Conversations with Jim Harrison is to get ideas for things to read, and suggestions pop up on every page of this book. You don’t see how a man who worked such long hours on his writing, had an active life as a hunter and fisherman, spent hours cooking (and eating), seemed to end every evening in a funky bar somewhere, ever had time to read. And yet he apparently did. Maybe he just didn’t sleep.

I approach volumes of interviews with some trepidation, especially when I love the writer (and I don’t think I’ve ever loved another writer the way I’ve loved Harrison). Writers often come across as pompous and self-conscious in interviews; it’s just not their genre. But Harrison was as relaxed and down home in interviews as in his writing. He just chatted away, didn’t give a damn what he said (people obsessed with political correctness should beware). He’s one of the few writers that I think I would have enjoyed having a drink with—several drinks, it would have been—as much as sitting and reading his work. The cigarette smoking, which everyone mentions, would have driven me nuts. But what you saw was what you got with Jim Harrison. You could take or leave the whole package.

Robert DeMott has done a superb job with this volume, not only collecting these interviews and indexing them, but also writing an excellent introduction to the man and his work; this volume will have to do until we get a good biography, and God knows when that will be (I’m hoping to live long enough). Harrison speaks several times of his admiration for DeMott’s work. DeMott, like almost every interviewer in the volume, was devoted to Harrison’s work and loved the man. The recent documentary about Toni Morrison compelled me to read through all her work in order, and I’m starting to get the same itch about Harrison, hearing him talk about his books. I’ve read them all already, of course. They have the most prominent space in my bookshelves, right at the top of my favorite writers.

If you haven’t read Harrison—and if that’s so, where the hell have you been?—Legends of the Fall or Dalva would be good places to begin. I remember how startled I was years ago when the entirety of that title novella was published in a single issue of Esquire. Is there a magazine around that would do that today?

I came late to Harrison’s poetry, after I’d read many of the novels. I’m not much of a poetry reader in general, and wasn’t sure what I’d think. But the poetry is at the same high level as the fiction, in some odd way is very much like the fiction. It’s Harrison’s mind that is remarkable—he speaks in a number of places about Lawrence’s idea of an aristocracy of consciousness—and it seems just as available in a poem, a work of fiction, a column on food (which he wrote for a couple of publications) or any page of these interviews. He opens himself up on every occasion.

Joseph Bednarik is to Harrison’s poetry what DeMott is to his interviews, and he has combed through the volumes to pick what he sees as best. I’m sure people will argue with his omissions and inclusions (the only answer is to get all the books and read all the poems), but it’s a beautiful volume, and includes a number of my favorites. Harrison as a poet seemed to get simpler and more plainspoken as he got older, and I tend to like the later poems better. They don’t always seem like poems, but they’re very much Jim Harrison. I’ll include one of my favorites, from In Search of Small Gods. If you don’t like this poem, Harrison may not be for you. But if you do, you’ve got a lot of great reading ahead of you.

Advice

A ratty old man, an Ojibwe alcoholic who lived to be eighty-eight

And chewed Red Man tobacco as a joke, told me a few years back that

time lasted seven times longer than we “white folks” think. This irri-

tated me. We were sitting on the porch of his shack drinking a bot-

tle of Sapphire gin that I brought over. He liked expensive gin. An

old shabby-furred bear walked within ten feet of us on the way to

the birdfeeder for a mouthful of sunflower seed. “That bear was a

pissant as a boy. He’d howl in my window until I made him popcorn

with bacon grease. You should buy a green Dodge from the Fifties, a

fine car but whitewash it in the late fall, and scrub it off May 1. Never

drive the highways, take back roads. The Great Spirit made dirt not

cement and blacktop. On your walks in the backcountry get to where

you’re going, then walk like a heron or sandhill crane. They don’t

miss a thing. Study turtles and chickadees. These bears and wolves

around here have too much power for us to handle right. I used to

take naps near a female bear who farted a lot during blueberry sea-

son. Always curtsey to the police and they’ll leave you alone. They

don’t like to deal with what they can’t figure out. Only screw fatter

women because they feed you better. This skinny woman over near

Munising gave me some crunchy cereal that cut my gums. A bigger

woman will cook you ham and eggs. I’ve had my .22 Remington sev-

enty years and now it looks like it’s made out of duct tape. Kerosene

is your best fuel. If you row a boat you can’t help but go in a circle.

Once I was so cold and hungry I ate a hot deer heart raw. I felt its last

beat in my mouth. Sleep outside as much as you can but don’t close

your eyes. I had this pet garter snake that lived in my coat pocket

for three years. She would come out at night and eat the flies in my

shack. Think of your mind as a lake. Give away half the money you

make or you’ll become a bad person. During nights of big moons try

walking as slow as a skunk. You’ll like it. Don’t ever go in a basement.

Now I see Teddy’s fish tug coming in. If you buy a six-pack I’ll get

us a big lake trout from Teddy. I got three bucks burning a hole in

my pocket. Women like their feet rubbed. Bring them wildflowers.

My mom died when I was nine years old. I got this idea she became a

bird and that’s why I talk to birds. Way back then I thought the Ger-

mans and Japs would kill the world but here we are about ready to

cook a fish. What more could you want on an August afternoon?