By Ellis Purdie. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 13)
Some years ago, John Evans of Lemuria Books offered me a job, and I joined his crew as a bookseller. John proved invaluable in his knowledge of books and great writers, and he impressed upon me many authors that needed to be read, or “drank,” as he often said. One day soon after I began, John and I were working together and talking shop. At one point he turned to me, eyes full of light in his captain’s chair, and asked, “Have you read Jim Harrison?”
I admitted that I had not, and John said, “Start with ‘Legends.’” I took Legends of the Fall home with me that evening and started in on the first of the three novellas. Reading Harrison was like falling into a dream both soothing and riveting. Sentences moved with the strength and beauty of a river, and I began to notice, possibly for the first time, writing craft.
The title novella used little in the way of dialogue, and yet I heard the characters speaking to one another, saw them—as John said I would—stand up and begin moving in my world. I finished the novellas and moved on to Harrison’s essays in Just After Dark, absorbing his culinary knowledge, experiences in nature, and his disdain for greed and its toll on the wild. Harrison embodied the writer both deeply talented and deeply interesting.
I understood why John loved this author, why Harrison’s photos were pinned and taped to the store’s walls, why Harrison’s section was always well-stocked, and why he had been invited to the store numerous times. “I’m going to try to get him back. We’ll see,” John said.
Sadly, Harrison was unable to return to Lemuria during my time as a fan, and he passed away in March 2016. John once told me conversation with Harrison was always rewarding as the man had a very large brain, and it took a lot of joyful effort to keep up with such erudition over dinner. Though it is no longer possible to speak with Harrison face-to-face, his interviews collected in Conversations with Jim Harrison, the revised and updated edition, are a gift.
This volume contains some of the most artful and gratifying conversation you are likely to read. For those familiar with Harrison’s work, his answers to questions are what you would expect: humorous, dense, remarkably literary, and nonetheless relatable.
Readers yet to pick up Harrison would do well to purchase this anthology along with one of his novella or poetry collections, allowing themselves immersion in Harrison the man as they read his art.
A screenwriter, poet, and novelist, Harrison shifts comfortably from discussing director Ingmar Bergman to elaborating on the necessity of poet Federico García Lorca and novelist Gabriel García Márquez.
Certainly a consummate man of letters, Harrison was also an accomplished cook, and he talks with as much enthusiasm about quail stew as he does his love of William Blake. Read with caution on an empty stomach.
Included with his literary and culinary obsessions is Harrison’s own recounting of his life. His self-analysis is the stuff of fine autobiography. A hunter of birds and a fly-fisherman, Harrison possesses wisdom that comes only from unfettered living.
How he came to be a writer is essentially summed up in his own words: “That’s my only defense against this world: to build a sentence out of it.” However, he did more than build sentences. He constructed a deft literature of the Midwest as vital to American letters as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.
His interviews are to be drank.
Ellis Purdie is a graduate of The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. He lives with his family in Marshall, Texas.
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