Jim Harrison Around The Web

By Allen M. Jones, 9-02-05

To mark the occasion of Jim Harrison's fifth collection of novellas, reviewers from around the country have come out of the woodwork to fling accolades his way. The New York Times, in their own "featured author" archive, corrals together thirty-five years of reviews, as well an interview, “Will Write for Food," conducted by Nick Ravo. (The interview in particular conveys a nice sense of Harrison’s appetites, and should perhaps be read in conjunction with a later interview conducted by Jonathan Miles for Salon. A home page gives a fine (if somewhat outdated) bibliography of Harrison's work, conveying a sense of his range in poetry, criticism, essays, and fiction (including twenty or so screenplays). A nice site, Wired For Books, also provides free audio of Harrison reading and lecturing.

As far as formal review attention goes, Jane Ciabattari for the LA Times writes, “The Summer He Didn't Die doesn't match the lean precision of Harrison's best work. Nonetheless, these new novellas are urgent and contemporary, displaying his marvelous gifts for compression and idiosyncratic language." For the San Francisco Chronicle, Heller McAlpin describes the title novella as, “a luminous, heartwarming reminder of what literature can achieve." In a rather clumsy review for the St. Louis Dispatch, Harper Barnes plays up the machismo angle, writing, “Jim Harrison is a walking contradiction, a grizzled, time-battered one-eyed outdoorsman with undeniable – and undenied – macho tendencies who writes about women with great sensitivity, insight and grace." Jeff Baker for The Oregonian calls the novel (in praise) “a literary Cerberus." While, most importantly, Jean Thompson for The New York Times, writes that, “One of the pleasures of reading Jim Harrison’s fifth collection of novellas is the reminder that this intermediate, unloved and ostensibly unpublishable form is capable of great range and vitality."


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