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Off to the Side: A Memoir, by Jim Harrison
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For nearly forty years, Jim Harrison has been one of America's most beloved writers, an award-winning literary giant who has given us such American classics as Dalva, Legends of the Fall, and The Road Home. And he is perhaps just as loved for his personality -- gleefully devoted to life's sensual pleasures, staunchly unpretentious, and ever mindful of the dangers of straying too far from our origin. Now, for the first time, Jim Harrison has put pen to paper to write about his own life -- a life that is the root of his wonderful fiction, and which he captures with a riveting directness and a delightful, peculiar music. In Off to the Side, Harrison writes about his upbringing in Michigan; the austerities of life amid the Depression and the Second World War, and the seemingly greater austerities of his starchy Swedish forebears; and how a boy from the "heartland" somehow ended up a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter and world-renowned novelist. He returns always to his love of literature -- from his first awakenings to the power of writing in his teens, and his youthful decision to model himself on Rimbaud; how books have remained his center, sustaining him during the darkest times of his life. He gives free rein to his "seven obsessions" -- alcohol, food, stripping, hunting and fishing (and dogs), religion, the road, and our place in the natural world -- which he elucidates with earthy wisdom and an elegant sense of connectedness. Above all, he delivers a joyful, meditative, candid, and wise book that is a paean to the complex delights of life. The New York Times Book Review has written that Jim Harrison's work is "a big, wet, sloppy kiss [that] Harrison continues to plant on the face of life itself." Now, for the first time, Harrison has been willing to share his immense spirit with readers in a most personal way. Off to the Side is a work of great beauty and importance that is sure to delight. "Reading Jim Harrison is ... as close as one can come in contemporary fiction to experiencing the abundant pleasures of living." -- The Boston Globe "Harrison has quietly established one of the deeper canons in modern American letters." -- William Porter, The Denver Post "Somewhere in that big literary acreage staked out by Thoreau, Hemingway, and Hunter Thompson is a ... space for Jim Harrison." -- Playboy
- Sales Rank: #151822 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
- Published on: 2002-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.08" h x 6.26" w x 9.26" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Rarely does one encounter a memoir so filled with the details of a life lived. Whether recalling bits of his past as a depressed child, manual laborer, Hollywood screenwriter, aspiring poet, novelist, or alcoholic husband, Jim Harrison pauses to analyze these moments--the cause and effect--and the choices that have made him who he is. Loosely divided into chapters, Off to the Side is somewhat rambling, and Harrison's opinions and conclusions occasionally remain obscure ("nearly everything you hear about Mexicans in the great north is utterly untrue")--but, to the benefit of readers, Harrison is never at a loss for ideas.
The solace Harrison finds in the natural world is most compelling, and it could be said he, too, shares Frost's "lover's quarrel with the world." After losing an eye at an early age and sinking into melancholy, Harrison's father advised that "curiosity will get you through hard times when nothing else will. Your curiosity had to be strong enough to lift you out of your self-sunken mudbath, the violent mixture of hormones, injuries, melancholy, and dreams of a future you not only couldn't touch but could scarcely see." These words were not lost on Harrison. With "no expertise outside of [his] own imagination" Harrison plays to his strengths in Off to the Side by setting down the events, experiences, thoughts, and feelings that have shaped his quite literate, truly American life. --Michael Ferch
From Publishers Weekly
"I'm not sure I'm particularly well equipped to tell the truth," writes Harrison. But with such a colorful life, there's not much need to tell lies. Bus boy, gardener, gourmand, novelist, screenwriter, drunkard-Harrison has done it all. Now add successful memoirist to that list. After a rugged outdoor childhood in Michigan, where an accident left him blind in one eye, Harrison moved to New York with vague ambitions to be a poet. Denise Levertov soon recognized his talent and launched Harrison on a literary career that eventually included teaching at SUNY Stony Brook, writing for GQ and Esquire, authoring several popular novels (The Road Home; Legends of the Fall) and writing Hollywood screenplays. Throughout, Harrison befriended an impressive gang of fellow free spirits: Jack Nicholson, Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane, among others. He swingingly recounts trout fishing with Richard Brautigan, bingeing with Orson Welles, arguing gay poetry with W.H. Auden and drinking with just about everybody. Alcoholism, Harrison writes, was his constant enemy, the writer's "black lung disease," as his friend McGuane once said. But he had other vices, too: strippers, cocaine, hunting, long walks in the woods by himself-all of which fed into Harrison's characteristic mix of freewheeling boho sensibilities and earthy western melancholy. A man as willing to shoot a grouse as trip on psychedelics-he claims to annually experience God-like visions and swears that he was once transformed into a wolf-Harrison is never less than intriguing. This fine memoir is a worthy capstone to a fascinating career.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Poet, novelist, and screenwriter Harrison is perhaps best known for his novella Legends of the Fall, which was made into a blockbuster movie by the same name. In this odd memoir, much of which is written in the second person, he uses biographical incidents as a springboard for his ruminations on a wide variety of topics, including alcohol, food, strippers, hunting, fishing, religion, and travel. While his remarks on these subjects can be trenchant, they are too often banal, resulting in superficial, mind-numbing prose. The third part of the book, "The Rest of Life," which recounts the tragic loss of his father and sister in a car accident, his tenure in the English department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and his adventures in Hollywood, is more interesting and includes allusions to friendships with celebrities like actor Jack Nicholson and singer Jimmy Buffett. Even so, libraries would do well to skip this title and spend the money instead on Harrison's poetry or fiction.
William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By R C Byko
great stuff
36 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Who does one write a memoir for?
By Michael Moore
I started reading Jim Harrison in the seventies. I even liked the early books he doesn't. I read his poetry and kept track of his work up through Off to the Side. I subscribe to Esquire and Men's Journal so I read many of the "Raw and the Cooked" pieces and saw early printings of various novellas. (I read "Legends" in Esquire in one sitting at my kitchen table. Hey, I was born poor too) This is some context for my remarks. Who does one write a memoir for? I guess my hope is that a memoir by an author is for his readers. If you are hoping for this, you'll be disappointed. It seems this memoir was for Harrison and probably his family and a few close friends listed toward the end. As for people who have been reading his work, maybe we're just better off reading his work. When a writer writes a memoir, I am interested in understanding what he/she reads and how he/she reads. Harrison mentions a number of writers but he doesn't say much about what he got from them (except near the end when he reveals a bit of what Notes From the Underground meant for him). I am interested in how events shaped writing and thinking. What we get are anecdotes. Harrison knew many writers who I like to read but we learn nothing of interest through his encounters. Ultimately, this memoir seems to me self absorbed. As if it were time to do the "memoir" thing. I guess I was na�ve enough to think that writers consider their readers, but I don't think Harrison knows anything about his readers except as schmucks who go to his book signings that he was trying mightily to get out of. (I've never been to a book signing.) Is Off to the Side entertaining? Yes. Is it well written in Harrison's distinctive voice? Yes. Did Harrison have a life interesting enough to write about? Yes. Do we learn anything about his writing or reading or his take on other writers and their ideas? No. The rating is higher than it probably should be, but like Harrison, I hate to admit that something I spent time on reading wasn't worth my time.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
What a life!
By El Goucho
I have always been a fan of Jim Harrison. His autobiography is even more interesting than some of his novels. I can now see that he puts himself in most of his stories; you just have to read between the lines to understand and see this.
The man has paid his dues and yet lived a wonderful life in ways many of us can only dream of.
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