The search for the genuine Nonfiction, 1970-2015

Review by Booklist Review

Harrison (1937-2016) was a larger-than-life force during his prolific career, creating 18 poetry collections, 21 works of fiction, several screenplays, five volumes of of nonfiction, and one children's book. Spanning 45 years, this new bevy of essays and musings bursts with insight, adventure, and well-lived experiences, from literature to fishing and hunting to life in Michigan's UP, Montana, Patagonia, and Arizona. Harrison considered himself a poet who pushed himself to write fiction, screenplays, and magazine assignments to support his family. In "Why I Write, Or Not," he shares an exchange between himself and fellow poet Charles Simic, observing, "We know a great deal but not very much." And: "historically art and literature are as natural as the migration of birds or the inevitable collision of love and death." Although the subjects in Harrison's rich, vibrant, and enjoyable essays were at times steered by who was footing the bill, his writing is always and truly "genuine." Forthright, perpetually curious, and compassionate, Harrison remains wholly compelling and readers will be grateful that this buoyant, observant, and caring writer took time away from his sublime poetry to create these enriching essays.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

New and previously published essays, reviews, and travelogues by Harrison (1937--2016) come together in this rewarding trove of true-life tales and reflections from the restless Legends of the Fall author. The entries are grouped thematically and take readers through Harrison's thoughts on "love, spirit, and literature," lifelong passion and reverence for hunting (mostly game birds, with lovingly astute attention paid to his hunting dogs), contemplation of his home turf in "Michigan, Montana and other sacred places," and passion for fishing and being on the water. In "Meditations on Hunting," he muses that "the natural world is an enormous mystery and I married her very early," while in "Thoreau," he covers his "idiosyncratic relation" to the writer's work. One of the longer pieces, "Life on the Border," delivers a picturesque take on the frontier region where Arizona and Mexico meet: "Those in the border states see the horror no one else sees," he notes, "because it is not a discursive media abstraction, but flesh-and-blood suffering." When read chronologically, the pieces evince an evolution in tone and style and document the author's assured knack for his craft. Harrison devotees will eat this up. (Sept.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The boozy gourmand and superb writer recounts a long life of misbehavior, fishing, books, and wandering. "I excel at taking naps, pouring drinks, lighting my cigarettes, writing too many novels, and, some say, cooking," writes Harrison (1937-2016) in this collection of magazine pieces and other oddments. All of those things are true, but the author also confesses to early troubles in childhood--e.g., when he left a hard-earned fishing rod in the driveway, where his father ran over it. Quoth Dad, "Get your head out of your ass, Jimmy," to which, decades later, Harrison appends the rueful, "They're still saying that." The author had numerous specific loves, most of which he puts on show here: sturdy hunting dogs, fine shotguns, good company out on the chase, and, of course, the finer things of life, especially expensive wines and whiskeys. These coincide in several pieces, as when he recounts getting lost in the company of Philip Caputo and spending a dangerously cold night in the New Mexico mountains with grizzly bear whisperer Doug Peacock, misadventures made more palatable by an unending quaff of Bordeaux. Indeed, Harrison loves laughing at himself in episodes marked by pointed apothegms: "Of course, drugs and fishing don't mix"; "I could live here," he writes about walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, "though for reasons of claustrophobia it would have to be in a one-room cabin in the middle of the bridge." Challenged at a book festival for his love of hunting, he delivered a stock response: "Perhaps I'm less evolved than you are." Readers who don't object to pages full of trout, elk, and day drinking will find the essays endlessly charming, and the more adventurous of them will want to retrace Harrison's travels in places like the northerly canyons of the Yellowstone River and the Sandhills of Nebraska. An essential installment in the Harrison canon. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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