I GREW UP in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is essentially a New England–size forest with the population density of Siberia. As of this writing, the U.P. has coughed up a Major League pitcher, a couple world-class coaches, and exactly no movie stars, film directors, celebrity chefs, giants of finance, or (as far as I know) porno queens. Its sons and daughters, by and large, dream feasible dreams. For the U.P.’s young writers, though, it is a little different. This difference is largely due to Jim Harrison, who has been publishing fiction and poetry about the U.P. for the past 40 years, a good deal of which was written in a cabin up near Grand Marais, a two-hour drive from Escanaba, the ore town in which I grew up.
My father and Harrison, who is now 73, are old friends. They met through the writer Philip Caputo, with whom my father served in Vietnam. My father, like Caputo and Harrison, is a keen bird hunter, and during my childhood the three of them would hunt woodcock and grouse near Grand Marais. A few times, Harrison came by our house for dinner, seeming less like a man to me than a force of nature with a Pancho Villa mustache.
“Jim Harrison is a writer with immortality in him.” Or so the London Sunday Times once wrote—a high-mileage blurb Harrison’s publishers have splashed across several of his books. Once I developed an interest in writing, I would sometimes stop and ponder my father’s Harrison collection. I noted the paperback jackets’ comparisons of Harrison to Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner, but I was also aware of the Harrison Legend, which in the meantime has only grown: the films made from his work, the friendship with Jack Nicholson, the immense foreign readership, the incomprehensible appetite (he once ate a 37-course lunch and lived to write about it). There was also the way he wrestled with nature in his work. For Harrison, the natural world was not something to be cherished because it was pretty; rather, the natural world was something to be howled at, gloriously, in the night.
Imagine my puzzlement. The man who occasionally sat at our dining room table wrote stories set in the U.P., and critics in New York, London, and Paris regarded these stories as literature. Until that point in my life, I had heeded the inadvertent lessons of my English classes: literature was something written by the dead for the bored. Literature was decisively not about any towns I knew.
One day I pulled Harrison’s first novel, Wolf, from my father’s shelf. Subtitled “A False Memoir,” Wolf is about a Harrison stand-in named Swanson who retreats to Upper Michigan after youthful city living in an attempt to spot a wolf in the wild. I stopped at the line where Swanson says something about “the low pelvic mysteries of swamps.” I was 15, and for the first time in my life I underlined a phrase not to retain its information but to acknowledge its mystery.
I followed Wolf with Just Before Dark, a collection of Harrison’s nonfiction. I latched onto its first essay, which moves from an opening account of Harrison ice fishing on the bay in front of my father’s house to an anecdote involving dinner with Orson Welles. How was it possible, in life or in writing, to go from ice fishing in front of our house to dinner with Orson Welles?
The simple fact of Harrison’s existence demonstrated that you could slip from one world to the other, Escanaba to Orson Welles, smuggling literature both ways. Maybe it was time to thank him.
Harrison no longer lives in Michigan. Nine years ago he and his wife, Linda, sold their cabin in the Upper Peninsula and their farm in the Lower Peninsula and relocated to Livingston, Montana, for the summer and Patagonia, Arizona, for the winter. It was the early summer, so off to Montana I went.
Comments
Beautiful. Thank you for this.
Flag ThisBeautiful. Thank you for this.
Flag ThisI spent time on Drummond Island in the UP off of the Canadian Border at a resort that was a customs post for entering US Waters and airspace. I watched bush pilots land on the water to check into the customs office, fished and filled our tag daily with northern pike, yachts coming and going from the resort. It wasn't until the next year that I camped on the north shore of the island at the Wilderness Campground with my two kids around 13 and 11 at the time that I got my first taste of wild wolves. Even though I spent my adult life in the Rockies archery hunting, had run ins with Mountain Lions in my own back door, had bears stand up on me and had a 6 x 7 bull elk only 10 yards from me, the panting of a pack of wolves outside my tent flap was a bit more then I cared to deal with laying in an attempt to sleep. Their howls that night sent chills down my spine that dated back to the begining of man kind in what fear is all about. Love the UP and the folks brave enough to have grown up there. MB.
Flag ThisI spent time on Drummond Island in the UP off of the Canadian Border at a resort that was a customs post for entering US Waters and airspace. I watched bush pilots land on the water to check into the customs office, fished and filled our tag daily with northern pike, yachts coming and going from the resort. It wasn't until the next year that I camped on the north shore of the island at the Wilderness Campground with my two kids around 13 and 11 at the time that I got my first taste of wild wolves. Even though I spent my adult life in the Rockies archery hunting, had run ins with Mountain Lions in my own back door, had bears stand up on me and had a 6 x 7 bull elk only 10 yards from me, the panting of a pack of wolves outside my tent flap was a bit more then I cared to deal with laying in an attempt to sleep. Their howls that night sent chills down my spine that dated back to the begining of man kind in what fear is all about. Love the UP and the folks brave enough to have grown up there. MB.
Flag ThisGreat article. Best description of the Dept of English, ever: . . . "the English department had all the charm of a streetfight where no one actually landed a punch.”
Flag ThisI had the privilege of meeting Jim Harrison in Grand Marais in 97 while I was practicing to be the town drunk. He had known my father, and had bought a cane from him while he was still alive, for a $100 , if I remember correctly. Meeting and talking with Jim and exchanging old war stories had to be the one of the greatest and side splitting times of my life, Bar None !!!
Flag ThisI had the privilege of meeting Jim Harrison in Grand Marais in 97 while I was practicing to be the town drunk. He had known my father, and had bought a cane from him while he was still alive, for a $100 , if I remember correctly. Meeting and talking with Jim and exchanging old war stories had to be the one of the greatest and side splitting times of my life, Bar None !!!
Flag ThisExcellent! Thanks!
Flag Thisanyone know where to find the piece "how men pray" mentioned here?
Flag ThisTerrific writers. You included.
Flag ThisOf my best memories: meeting up with Jim in Grand Marais several times and spending an afternoon at his cabin. That was years ago, of course, and after he sold it I found my way back in. I walked around the, watched the river and howled a few times hoping he heard it back in Montana. He remains a huge figure in my imagination. His work is the work of a shaman on the page. On my list: an afternoon of fishing with him. Maybe next summer.
Flag ThisGood as he is, as he's so very good, it is well to remember that Mr. Harrison apothesoses nothing so much as his willingness to remain average. It is how he loves things and us.
Flag ThisGood as he is, as he's so very good, it is well to remember that Mr. Harrison apothesoses nothing so much as his willingness to remain average. It is how he loves things and us.
Flag ThisIf there were more people like Mr Harrison around to learn from the world we live in would be a much better place. Thanks for this Tom, It's a great feeling to have inspiration once again coursing through my veins.
Flag ThisBravo. Beautiful.
Flag ThisI echo Phil Meyers - anyone know where to find Why Men Pray?
Flag ThisYeah, Harrison is in his own category. I've read every book and poem. Talked to him a bit at an Elliot Bay Books reading about three years ago. There he was, smoking outside, wearing a tan baggy coat and looking like....someone very interesting. He calls his Chevy Tahoe the Taco. Likes Los Lobos. Has read all of A.J. Leibling. Great article. Makes me want to get old.
Flag Thisthanks for giving away the stoning, and that was a cheesy ending.
Flag ThisThere tends to be a quiet spookiness at the corner bar in Grand Marais. Maybe it's the closeness of the Grand Sable Banks. Or, the epic silence of Lake Superior is the spring when the ice melts. Or maybe at that corner bar is Jim and Jack just getting faced before bed and talking of things no other human being could possibly understand. This is a great article about a great writer that knows his own place. BTW. Thank you.
Flag ThisThere tends to be a quiet spookiness at the corner bar in Grand Marais. Maybe it's the closeness of the Grand Sable Banks. Or, the epic silence of Lake Superior is the spring when the ice melts. Or maybe at that corner bar is Jim and Jack just getting faced before bed and talking of things no other human being could possibly understand. This is a great article about a great writer that knows his own place. BTW. Thank you.
Flag ThisJim Harrison discovers truth as he writes...which demonstrates stream of conscious genius. How he reconciles his understanding of nature with modern day society, does require a daily dose, of spirits. And when he offers up the fine line between civil thought and action, versus perverted thought and action, as in The Great Leader, we are left to ponder.....can humans make it, in this natural world.
Flag ThisI first came across Jim Harrison in a small book of poetry written jointly by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser of Lincoln, Nebraska. The poetry within was their form of communication between each other. I enjoyed it immensely and as a result sought out Harrison's books at book sales and such. Kooser went on to be the US poet Laureate for 2 or three years 2006-2008 If I remember correctly and currently writes a Sunday poetry column for the NY Times that is picked up in my Sunday, Albany Times Union. Loved this interview- It has me searching for more Harrison stuff! Thank you!
Flag ThisI was introduced to Jim Harrison's work in 1982 and have read everything since. I also underline small segments for no reason. Thanks for the piece.
Flag ThisRe-echoing Myers & Bolton - where/when was "How Men Pray" published?
Flag ThisRe-echoing Myers & Bolton - where/when was "How Men Pray" published?
Flag ThisJim Harrison was to make a cameo appearence in the movie"The Best Bar In America"as reported by the MOUNTAIN GAZETTE.Does anyone know who the other person making a cameo in this movie was? And what happened to the movie.It was never released.Great interview, enjoyed it greatly.Moe
Flag ThisI picked up a second hand "Dalva" that Paul H. had likely tromped through. Paul - please stop doing that - if words are to be underlined, let Jim do it. Annoying does not begin to describe this ill considered habit.
Flag This