Ep. 802: The Life And Death of Jim Harrison

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
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Speaker 1 (00:35):
That's f I R S T L I T E
dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're doing Joined Today by
UH with no headphones on. I've been pushing the fill
on it.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
I'm in full support the headphones. Just for the audience
at home. This is a conversation we've had on my
off mic a lot. But the headphones help guess, especially
ones who aren't used to talking into microphones. It helps
them hear their own voice and stay close to the
microphone or else I'll have to yell at them from across.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
That makes you, like I always said, it makes you
feel like God's talking to you. So it's gonna be
different now without these headphones on. Join Today by Todd Godder,
who just published a new book about a biography of
Jim Harrison. So any any hunting and fishing type person
who likes to read a lot is of course familiar
with Jim Harrison. If you if you go, if you're curious, like,

(01:29):
who the hell is Jim Harrison, the greatest point of
contact would be what was that? Why'd you make a
ten signal?

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Facing the book?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
That can people if you're trying to go like, you know,
fucking Jim Harrison, you go, you know, Legends of the Fall,
and people like, oh, yeah, but that's even that's just
barely scratching the surface. I'm partial to the old stuff.
So like Wolf, Brown Dog, He's got a book of

(01:59):
He's got a finalenminal book of essays called Just Before Dark,
which is some of the most beautiful, brilliant hunting and
fishing writing combined with some of the most obnoxious and
arrogant food writing. What are the other oh and then
literature essays? So Just Before Dark is like a complex
Like Jim Harrison was writing about hunting and fishing and
sports Illustrated back in the seventies, and it like collects

(02:21):
all that. It's just really brilliant stuff on hunting and fishing.
He also has all these characters that hunt and fish,
and he has characters that are filled with like environmental rage.
Wolf one of my favorites is a false memoir. It's
like a guy who is wandering around in Michigan's Upper Peninsula,
in the Huron Mountains, trying to catch a glimpse of

(02:42):
a wolf. Later in life he started doing these more complex,
I don't want to call them, like less angry, more
complex works like Dolva, The Road Home God, He's got
a million. How many books does he have?

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Don she has twelve novels, nine collections of novella's, something
like eighteen books of poetry, a couple book, collections of
essays like Just before Dark children's book called The Boy
Ran of the Woods. So just an outrageously an outrageous

(03:18):
amount of output.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
That, yeah, like everything ranging from like outdoor stuff. Much
of it's tinged with like a kind of a little
bit of an infantile kind of male fantasy kind of
stuff is tied in there. But like a like a
absolutely brilliant writer, like like a technically brilliant writer of

(03:40):
the one of the great writers who's colored by the outdoors,
the worlds of hunting and fishing, very complex kind of
frustrating person full of flaws, which we'll get into, but again,
a brilliant writer. And Todd are our guest. This is
his first book and he's a literary professor at Utah

(04:05):
Valley University and born in Philadelphia. And like, what age
did you start reading or that mcgwain, we'll talk about mcgwain. Yeah,
we could write what age did you start reading Harrison? Man?
Like how did you get on to Harrison?

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah? I probably started reading Harrison back in my early twenties, honestly,
And I think it began like it begins with lots
of people with Legends of the Fall. I think I
had a friend of mine turned me on to Legends
and when I began college in New York and just
immediately gravitated right to him. I mean, he hoped me
from the start, and from there, you know, I just

(04:38):
went back and started did a deep dive in Harrison.
And I remember, you know, I was trying to get
hold of every book Jim was writing, back to Wolf,
to Warlock, to Farmer or Farmer to Warlock to you know,
all the way up until what Jim had written in
the mid nineties or so, and then really tried to
catch up with anything new that was coming out with him,

(05:00):
you know, ever after and I think I went from
his fiction, then to his poetry, and then to his essays,
and just got completely hooked to by his food and
wine writing, by his outdoors essays, his hunting and fishing essays,
and sort of was off and running. And then got
a few chances to teach him in graduate school, taught

(05:21):
him a few times at Utah Valley University and tried
to incorporate him whenever I could into a class, and
and then you know, just kept rereading him over the
years until I finally sort of got into a position
to write this book.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah. Man, Like one thing I haven't gotten into his
is short of outside of like Robert Service, I'm not like,
I'm not a poem guy. Creation of Sam McGee is
like iking genius, you know, But I'm not a poem guy.
Like I never got into his stuff, like his his
I never read his books of poems. But I started

(05:54):
out like we were all when we were young, like
in college from Michigan, we were all way into Wolf,
like way into Wolf and then way into brown Dog
and other stuff like the Michigan stuff. You know, like
pissed off dudes a hunting and fished a lot. That
was our deal, right, like big time. And then later
I kind of like discovered the essays and then I

(06:15):
got really in it. I got for a long time.
I was really interested in food, and I liked all
his food stuff. But for me, it was like he, yeah,
his his hunting and fishing stuff and his environmental awareness
is what drew us in. It was weird though, because,
like you mentioned that, he he wasn't a big game

(06:36):
hunter man. Like he would write a lot about eating venison.
He'd even write about eating roadkill stuff, but he didn't
like any kind of he talked about. He saw a
bear skinned out one time and it looked too much
like a dude hanging there. You know. He was like
pretty particular about what he participated in.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, it's finny. He loved to eat big game, but
he wasn't a big game hunter. I mean, he hunted
deer when he was younger, you know, and occasionally hunted
deer even even into his thirties and early forties, but
he you know, it's a great story of Jim was
out hunting with a friend of his from Livingston Montana,

(07:16):
and Jim had settled outside of Livingston, Montana later around
two thousand, living in the Paradise Valley, and he went
out to hunting.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
We should hit that route, did he real quick? Yeah?
Hit like where he was born, Yeah, where he spent time,
and then where he died.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Oh, yeah, definitely. So Jim was born in Grayling, Michigan,
grew up in Reed City, and grew up in Hazlet
outside of Lansing, and then settled with his family in
Lake Lelanis in Michigan Lake Leland Peninsula, and then really
lived there for most of his life until around two thousand.

(07:52):
So he's born in nineteen thirty seven. Around two thousand,
he moves relocates out to Montana, where his daughters were
living at the time. Uh settles in the Paradise Valley
outside of Livingston, Montana, and Uh ended up buying a
small casida down in Patagony, Arizona. And so the family
would you know, spend half the year in Montana and

(08:14):
spend the winter in Patagony, Arizona. And that's sort of
the general you know that those are Jim's main places.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Right, and hunting a lot of kail down there.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
And hunting a ton of a ton of merns quailed
down in Patagonia.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
And of course famously he had a cabin up in
the Upper Peninsula which he in gram Ray, just outside
of Gramma Ray, Michigan. And so those are like his
big spots.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
So when Jim moves out to Livingston around two thousand,
you know, he he would go out aid, he would
got bird hunting for hunts and different things like that
Hungarian partridge.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
But occasionally he go for big game. But there's a
story of Jim going out one time with a friend
of his from Livingston, a guy named Dan Laarn and
he they were hunting antelope and or pronghorn, and they
get finally into a position where Jim can take a
shot and he uh, he passes the gun to Dan
and says, you take the shot right. And of course

(09:12):
he would want to eat the meat. He'd want, he'd
want he had won the animal, but he couldn't actually
pull the trick execute. And I think it comes back
to the you know, the reason you were suggesting partly
is he couldn't he couldn't handle killing animals that were mammals, frankly,
and he thought they looked too much like their insides,
their parts looked too much like humans. And I think

(09:34):
he among other reasons, but I think that was definitely
one of them.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, he was something of a fly fishing snob. He
wrote a great piece about ice fishing one time, but
was definitely like a fly snob, you know. But he
hated snobs. Yeah, hated snobs, but was a little bit
of a fly fishing snob. One of his many contradictions.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah,
he was a little bit of a fly fishing snob.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
But he hated arrogance, you know, outside of his own you.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Know, Yeah, he for an arrogant guy, one of his
many contradictions. Right, for an arrogant guy. He couldn't stand
there against and other people, right, But he was Yeah,
he was a little bit snobby about fly fishing, but
you know, that came later. I think he grew up
bait fishing and stuff like that and fly fishing too,
but really later in life. He really I think McGain
was very instrumental in introducing him to fly fishing, and

(10:23):
really Jim was already doing it, but really showed him
the ropes.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Well, you know what, we were talking about his hangout zones.
We kind of missed like he also like he's one
of these dudes if you look at like Elder Leopold,
Elder Leopold is embraced by Wisconsin and Elder Leopold is
embraced by New Mexico. Yeah, Okay, these are like and
there's other places embraced Hi because Elder Leopold was like

(10:50):
el Leopord, taught in Madison and kind of wrote about Wisconsin,
spend a bunch of time in New Mexico. So these
guys that has these like these guys a bunch of homes,
you know, or multiple homes. Harrison also for a big
part of the country. Harrison is also like a Key
West guy, right right, because he was when when dudes

(11:13):
were figuring out down there, like catching permit and catching
bonefish on flies and stuff in the seventies when that
was kind of coming into a thing and tarping and stuff,
like he was there. So it's just yet another place
around the country. Northern Michigan, Arizona, absolutely, Montana, Key West

(11:34):
or all these places that sort of hold a little
bit of a like they kind of hold the Harrison mystique,
you know.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, I mean he's like he's like Leopold, but he's
also like Hemingway in that regard, right, Hemingway has his places, right, Yeah,
Michigan is his place. Key West is definitely one of
his places. Cuba's place, Cuba's place, France is his place,
Spain is his place, Italy is his place. He's claimed
by all of these different geographical and settled in Idaho eventually.
And and Harrison's very much the same way, right, He's

(12:02):
got these very strong sort of local identifications, right. Uh, Patagonia,
Montana definitely first and foremost Michigan, but also Key West.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
One of the things that grabbed like when I say
I'm talking about it just like me and my like
circle of people, and when we just grew up like
you know, like definite didn't like grew up like not
well off, okay, and it grew up kind of not
We grew up not real clear on how the whole

(12:33):
like college world worked. Like most of my bodies were
definitely like first time people and their families and went
to college. You know, my dad didn't finish high school, right,
so it was like we didn't understand the guys I
grew up around. We didn't like understand that world of
like education, We didn't understand the world that you'd become
a writer. We didn't know about writers, do you know

(12:54):
what I mean? It was like, oh, yeah, everybody's like, oh,
I'm gonna be a game ward and you know, you
just didn't know. Even though we're definitely afraid of game wards,
people thought like, oh, I'll be a game warden when
I grow up. But all of a sudden, like here's
this dude who grew up like north of us. And
the thing in Michigan is, no matter where you are,
the real Rednecks are just north of you, do you

(13:16):
know what I'm saying? Yeah, So I've talked about this before,
Like if you lived in like where I grew up
in Twin lank the real Rednecks were in Holton, just north.
But if you talk to a dude in Holton, the
real Rednecks are just north in Hisspiia. And it like
advances up the state. And so here's this guy like
two or three clicks north. The people in France are
buying his books, and it's kind of like, how does

(13:38):
that happen? Do you know what I mean? Like, how
is this dude like known and celebrated in France from
some redneck ass town north of US? Do I mean?
Like how like how did he? How did that click?
You know? His dad was what his dad was an
extension agent.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, he was an agricultural agent. You're right. I mean,
Jim is an nomally right, He's an extremely unusual in
that regard. I Mean, the one thing I'd say is
that he came from a family of readers, So his
dad was an agricultural agent, you know, went to farm
school at m.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
S U.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Still an agricultural primarily.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Was that the first generation in his family to go
to college would have been his old man.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
It was his dad, Yeah, his dad, and his dad
was driven I think from an you know, from an
early age. I think he was extremely motivated by sort
of agricultural research and saw himself as something like an
agricultural missionary, coming out of sort of the dustbel era
where farms were you know, had certain practices that led

(14:41):
to environmental sort of devastation of their farms and dust dustbells,
so that he had.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
That he grew up around that land ethic.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, so he grew up around that land. I think
he was a big Steinbeck fan, right, and and and
he came from a family of primarily non readers. And
so where Jim's dad, and his dad's name was Winfield,
you know, got this sort of motivation Winfield. Oh yeah,
I've caught that, Yeah, Winfield. And where he got this
sort of motivation to educate himself and read is not

(15:13):
entirely clear. He didn't necessarily get it from his family,
but he had. He was driven, and I think he
was driven largely by wanting to learn as much as
he could about agriculture, but he also read Steinbeck, and
he read literature, and he was really interested in reading.
And Jim's mother too, was an avid reader. And I
think they instilled that in all of their children. But
the thing is they didn't know any writers either, right,
They didn't know Jim's brother, David Harrison once told me,

(15:37):
he said, we didn't know writers. We didn't know writers.
We didn't know anyone who knew any writers, not let
alone us. Right there, stage is removed, Yeah, there's stage
is removed. So, you know, being a writer as an occupation,
as a living, as a calling, as it was for Jim,
was just unheard of to his parents, you know, and
so when Jim came home it's age sixteen and said

(15:58):
I want to be a poet, they just had no
idea what to do with him. Right, But how does
a guy like Jim go, you know, from that background
to being sort of read broadly and celebrated in Paris.
I mean, that's that's a difficult question, right, how does.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
He That's kind of I remember doing a book one time. Yeah,
someone asked a question, you know, and it was kind
of like the whole question was the whole point of
the book. Yeah. They'd be like, well, I mean I
just spent I mean it's I just spent two hundred
and fifty pages explaining that.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Like right, yeah, right, yeah exactly. I mean I can't
just tell you. I mean the short answers. He he
was incredibly motivated and worked.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
I love this description by mcwaine. Mcgwain called and I'm
talking about Tom mcgwaan, who is one of Jim's really
close friends.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
He's been I don't know, he's been on the show
a million years ago.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, like six years ago.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Dude. He was old then, and he's got a new
book out now. Yeah, he's still still it was the
name of the McGain episode. Do you remember, if people
want to refer back, we're gonna mention mcgwaine. A number
of times. McGain was like a contemporary of I'm sorry,
go ahead, yeah, well, clonel, dig that up.

Speaker 4 (17:08):
I mean mcgwaane on the beauty of not knowing.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Okay, what a gentleman.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, I mean, great guy, and uh, you know, we
can talk about how they're connected and stuff like that.
But mcgwaine once called Jimmy said he's a country boy
who was touched. Oh is how he described Jim. And
I mean, I think that's a really good description. Touched
by genius, that is right. And Jim worked extremely hard
at his writing and got himself into a position, I

(17:33):
mean where he really worked his way into, you know,
literary culture in America. But I think I think his
his sort of rustic identity, right, his what did you
say up north? What do you say? He's above north? Right,
He's way up there, right, as part of his appeal
in France. So I'd say, you know, not only did

(17:56):
he earn that through his writing, but I also think
the appeal is partly where he comes from.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Like they recognized him as a country bumpkin.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
They recognized him not a.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Bumpkin, but they recognized him as like a man of
the like someone of the land in a way, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, definitely. I think I think the French associated gym
with wilderness, right, the American wilderness, the American you know,
the Great north Woods. Someone who's writing about the sort
of land and landscape and history of northern Michigan and
of northern America, right, I think that's part of his appeal.
So his sort of rusticity is part of his appeal
in France.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, because he never got there's a thing that happens.
It didn't happen to him. But I remember when I
was going away to writing school. I remember like I
always read about like trappers and hunters and explorers and shit,
that's all I wanted to read about when I was
a kid, when I was going away to writing school.
After I got out of regular college, I remember being like, man,
I should probably remember I went and tried to read

(18:52):
James Joyce as dubliners, because like, I should probably figure
out what people actually write about, do you know what
I mean? And then he gave up on that. He
never got, he never fell for that trap because early
work was about the people he knew. Like his early
work was about the people he knew. You know, he
didn't try to be something he wasn't, but he wrote

(19:12):
about it with like the skill set of someone who is.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Not that I think that's right. I Mean, he was
so well read, and so I think, you know, he's
he's coming to his even his early works with this
immense body of sort of learning and reading behind him, right,
But he was smart enough not to fall into that
trap of sort of trying to to closely or carefully emulate, right,
some of the some of the writers that he so admired.

(19:37):
I mean, I think he really claimed that maybe if
he used and borrowed some of the style and was
influenced by writers, he really made it his own right,
and he was going to anchor his books in the
people he knew, the world that he grew up in, right,
the local details and characteristics of his own specific upbringing
right in Michigan. And you know, and he carries that

(19:59):
around the country with him and Wolf.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
What's his deal? What's his deal with like his love
hate kind of like like he's haunted by Hemingway, haunted
by Hemingway. Like what is that all about? Did you
ever come to understand that? Like you never tell if
he likes the guy or hates the guy.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, I think he was conflicted. I think he wanted
to distance himself from Hemingway because he had so much
in common with heming People would.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Point out the right hanging out the same place. But
Hemingway's in Illinois, dude, Chicago.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
You're right, yeah, but he but he spent his summers
all the time in difference. Man, No, I agree, I
won't claim otherwise. Yeah, dad is a doctor or something. Right, Yeah,
you're right, So his dad's a doctor. He comes from
a very different background, grows up in Oak Park, Illinois,
comes from a religious family. His mother was very religious,

(20:50):
and Jim's mother was very religious. But uh, you know Hemingway.
But Hemingway also, you know, his early books are associated.
They're said in Michigan, up in Michigan, same rivers he fished, man, Yeah,
I know exactly, the big two hearted in other rivers
and so you know, and he's what Hemingway's writes about
fishing and hunting. Lived in Paris, right, fished in Key West,

(21:13):
and his associated with Key West was a man of
big appetites like Harrison was, and so there's lots of
parallels between Harrison and Hemingway.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
They like to pull a cork.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, you like to pull a cork from time to time,
to put it mildly. But so I think, on one level, right,
a whole generation of writers coming after Hemingway felt like
they had the distance in themselves from him to do
exactly what you suggested earlier, right, was to avoid being
sort of pulled into his universe, right, become a satellite
instead of their own system.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Right.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
And Hemingway had that allure, right, he had that appeal
and that power, And so I think writers went out
of their way to distance themselves from him after him, right.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, to not be like, you know, guys like Hemingway. Right,
whenever I'm talking about Harriston, someone says something about him
and I just roll my ass like it's not the same. No,
it ain't the same thing.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
No, it's not the same thing. And he writes extremely,
very differently than Hemingway. And so I think, you know,
there's a love hate thing there. I think he tried
to distance himself from Hemingway and did so successfully. But
I think he also admired Hemingway, but maybe didn't want to,
you know, was reluctant maybe to celebrate Hemingway as much
as he might have otherwise coming out of his you know,

(22:24):
as everyone did, you know, growing up in Hemingway's shadows,
so to speak. And so, yeah, did I ever get
to the bottom of that? I mean, he likes Hemingway, right,
he admires his writing, and he says it plenty of times,
but he also says, you know, ah, he dismisses him simultaneously,
and so I think there's a conflict at his court.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, talk about tell everybody about like you look at Harrison,
like here he is, you know, yeah, on the car,
I'm holding up the book cover, the book. This is
when he's older, just closer to way, closer to death.
I guess a big thing that comes up in his
work comes up. I mean, the guy can't he can't write.

(23:10):
I don't know, I was gonna saw on a number
of pages. I can't do it that way. Harrison Man,
he was disfigured as a child, and it permeates like
it's every it's everything, it's in everything, it's baked into everything.
He's got what he's got a googly eye. That's his

(23:32):
his word, not mine, his word, not mine. It haunted him, dude,
Like it's like it became him. You know, like explain
that the folks like how that happened. And in the
way that just was kind of like, you know, it
was his uh what's that famous uh you know, the

(23:52):
the Orson Wells deal, like the fucking rosebud. Yeah, it
was his rosebud moment.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
You know, it's his rosebud. I think that's really a
good way of saying it. So, you know, it's a
spring day in nineteen forty five, I think.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Is that what it was for it? Okay?

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, he was seven years old and he was you know,
living in Reed City, Michigan. Went down the street and
he was playing with a young girl and they were
in a lot behind a hospital and what exactly in
the hospital?

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Reed City? Yeah, you were going to get the wrong
picture and they hear behind a hospital.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Well, it was just it was just it was just
an empty lot right just down the street from his house.
You know what, kids playing in back lots and there
was you know, some woods behind very old, little small
little town, small town, small hospital. Yeah, rustic and he's
out back, and what exactly was going on it has
never been made entirely clear, but I think they were experimenting,

(24:52):
playing around, maybe playing doctor, right Jim. Jim would say
this himself, right, that they were experimenting, and something happened,
something clicked. The girl panicked or you know, got scared
or defensive, and she grabbed a piece of glass broken
from a beaker that was next to them on a
trash pile and jabbed it at Jim and caught him

(25:16):
in the eye.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
So and and Wolf, what happens to the character who
is very much like him, but not him. It's like
a broken beer bottle or something, but yeah, a beaker glass, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
It was like a beaker glass caught him in the eye,
and immediately, you know, the sort of left side of
his face, you know, went blind left, you know, his
left his left eye. And so the girl took off
and he went. He went across the street to his
neighbor's house, and the mother was a nurse and she
recognized the severity of what had happened immediately, and is

(25:50):
you know, everybody freaked out. He ended up in Grand
Rapids in the hospital for a couple of weeks with
bandages on both his eyes, and at one point they
tied him to the bed because he was panning and
they wanted to keep him still. And this was an
incredibly traumatic experience for him, right, and he recalled it's
an experience, like you said, it's his rosebud. It's something
he would never forget for the rest of his life.

(26:11):
And all he could really see out of that eye
was just sort of like maybe light and shadow a
little bit, right, so he could remember seeing a bit
of sort of the blur, the vague blur of the moon.
But for all intents and purposes that I was blinded.
He'd never get his vision back, and it was incredibly
traumatic for him. You know, literally the left side of

(26:33):
his his his vision was completely cut off with the.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Rest of it changed how the brother looked man like, and.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
It changed how he looked. He felt, uh, you know,
sort of freakish. He had a googly eye right his
he says, his eye jogged in its socket like a
milky sparrow.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
You know.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
It was uh. And and he you know, he thought
he thought he had buck teeth, He thought he had
this swarthy complexion he had.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
This comes up a lot as he's like just constantly
mentioning the people would think he was people would think
he was hispanic or and he's got this crazy eye,
and they didn't believe that he's from where he's from.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
And definitely, yeah, I mean he was. He did have
a kind of swarthier complexion. Part of that was just
from being outside. Part of that was just maybe the
pigmentation in his skin. He just had a little darker complexion,
and you know, and he really felt like an outsider.
He felt sort of alienated from those around him. And
I think if you wanted to sort of draw this

(27:32):
back his early to you know, that period in his
life he sort of retreated into the woods. And Jim
already liked the woods a lot, but this was a moment,
I think when he really developed attachments to the natural,
non human world, because there he wasn't judged right. He
could go out into the woods, you know, observed creatures
walk in the woods, things like that, and there became

(27:52):
sort of this really stark division between the societal and
the judgment that he experienced there with his eye and
his fireman that I think in his mind was sort
of blown out of proportion and.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Amih you get the sense that I always had the
sense that he thought when he looked in the mirror, Yeah,
he saw something a lot worse than what was there. Right.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
You look at Jim at thirty, and you know, you
see something askew with his eye. But it's not probably
what he am at. He probably you know the way
I think in some days he thought it was like
a monster. Yeah, I think he looked. I think he
felt like he looked like a monster. And you know,
the children's book that he wrote, The Boy He Ran
into the Woods is really about is exactly about this experience,
and it becomes sort of like an origin story for

(28:34):
Harrison where he says, you know what sort of this started,
you know, sort of you know, it was the origin
of my sort of interest in and fascination and love
and devotion to the natural world on the one hand,
but also to his giving himself sort of an artistic perspective.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, he wasn't in it now. He was off the side, right,
And that's something he would later name his memoir Off
to the Side, Right, because of his disfigurement, he felt
he he was sort of always off to the side now,
seeing things differently, literally figuratively right and sort of not

(29:17):
part of the crowd, but observing part of the crowd.
And so you know, it becomes this sort of beginning,
sort of this mythology, right, this origin story of Harrison.
But you know, and that all may very well be true,
and I think in many ways it is, but he
would still carry this trauma with him for the rest
of his life. You know, I had real consequences for him.

(29:42):
There's a story about him walking through the woods one
time fishing in northern Michigan and he's with this guy
named Mike Ballard, the guy he used to fish with
in the Upper Peninsula, and it was getting dark and
Mike's urging Jim to hurry up, and he says, I can't.
You know, I can't go any faster. If I get
a branch in my other eye, I'm done. And when

(30:05):
you stop and think about that, you're like, oh, yeah,
I got it. Like living with one kidney man. He's
got that one eye right, because that's all he's got
left right in terms vision, And so one of the
funny not one of the funnier he's it was.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Also we haven't touched on this. Also, at times a
very funny writer. But in one of his bird hunting essays,
I think he talks about the moment it occurred to
him that instead of carrying around binoculars, you could buy
a monocular. That's great, Yeah, yeah, a stroke of genius.
It was to realize you didn't need two things.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
It came with real practical consequences, right.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
And then another big one with being a kid as
a and I kind of know the way it comes
up and his I kind of know the way it
like comes up in his writing and things. But he
also like his father and his sister are killing the
car accident. Yeah, and that also just lives like it
just plays out over decades of writing. You know. It's

(31:11):
just it's it's becomes baked into his everything, you know,
and it's probably kind of like I just said, he's funny,
he's funny. Oh, also it's his stuff is sad. Yeah,
I mean, I keep talking about wolves Is. It remains
my it remains my favorite work of his, not just

(31:33):
because of it, like not because of the work. I
mean the work for sure, but it remains a favorite
of mine because of what it meant to like, what
it meant to grow up in those areas and to
hang out in the Up a lot, and then here's
this guy that like wrote about that in that way,
it also remains a favorite of mine because, like when

(31:55):
I discovered it, I was at that age kind of
like at that age of where the of where the
narrator is. I remember I saw my first Wolf track
in the Up, you know what I mean. It's like,
so I hold it out as my favorite, not because
it's his best work, but it's it's his most meaningful thing,

(32:17):
you know, and it has I don't want to blow
up for anybody. It has one of the most abrupt, sad,
catatonic like endings to a book. He goes to see
his grandma, like stops in at his grandma's and like
nothing happens. He just says a couple things about leaving

(32:39):
his grandma's house, and it leaves you just gutted. So
he's like funny, but it's sad, and like that sadness
like his losing his dad and his sister's big for him,
you know.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
I mean, yeah, that's one of the most remarkable things
about Jim that I found writing this book is his ability.
You know, He's went through incredibly deep depressions throughout his life.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yeah, right, Like how bad would that get for him?
All right? Would it make it that he couldn't work ever?

Speaker 1 (33:10):
You know?

Speaker 2 (33:10):
I mean he's so prolific, you know.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Later in life, really, after the death of his father
and sister, he would work through the deepest of depressions
and somehow his poetry would help to sort of lift
him out of it. Right, But before he really really
started writing, before his his before the deaths of his
loved ones, he wouldn't necessarily write, and he would fall.
He would fall into the deepest of depressions even as

(33:34):
a young man, right Like while he was in the
years that take place in the novel Wolf, and he
would come close to sort of nervous crack ups.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Really serious. Tell a story of how of the of
the car crash. Yeah, so I don't even know the
I don't even know the deal, the win or where.
I don't know that.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
So Jim was in his in his in his twenties.
I think it happened in nineteen sixty two, and it
was Thanksgiving weekend, and Jim was married to his wife Linda,
and they were visiting with his parents. They were in
Haslet and Jim's father, Winfield, and his sister Judy were

(34:16):
going to go on a hunting trip, your hunting trip,
as they did annually, and Judy would go along, she
was a hunter too, and Jim was sort of wavering
on whether to go with them. Right that day and
he was sort of hanging around the house. He'd just
gotten home from a trip with his wife and sort
of decided at the last minute that he wasn't going
to go, and Judy and Winfield took off and for

(34:38):
their trip. Jim went over to Linda's parents' house right
down the street, not too far in Lansing, And later
that evening, Norma called the King's house, which was Linda's
parents name, and Bil King picked up the phone and
sort of had a stricken look on his face and

(35:00):
pulled Jim aside and told Jim that there had been
a car accident and that his father and his sister
were killed. So unbelievable, right, a incomprehensible sort of information
being conveyed to Jim. It turns out that what happened
was that they had headed up north and on their

(35:21):
way they were coming down a two lane road a
car was backing out onto the highway and a car
that was coming the other direction swerved to miss the
car that was backing out and hit them head on
and they were both killed instantly. And as you can imagine,
I mean, the trauma of that is unimaginable, learning of

(35:41):
the sort of sudden deaths of two loved ones, and
Jim was so close to his father and even closer
to his sister arguably, I mean, Judy and Jim were
like twins in their connection, and so it absolutely devastated Jim.
And on top of that, compounding things was the fact
that Jim felt somehow responsible because he had sort of

(36:02):
delayed their departure by thinking whether or not maybe I'll go,
maybe I won't, And so he was tormented by the
fact that if he had decided a few seconds earlier,
a few minutes earlier, or a few minutes later, they
would still be alive. And so he really blamed himself
with the timing of that. And you know, that was
an event. Really that's another sort of if you want

(36:23):
to call it that, I mean, as horrible as it is,
it's also a kind of origin story for Jim's writing.
And I think that was absolutely definitively the catalyst that
Jim needed. As dark as it was, he just absolutely
devoted himself to his writing after that. He was already
interested in writing before that, but he was really having
trouble getting pen to page and make, you know, actually

(36:46):
having some kind of productive output. But after that, I
think Jim's world changed. I think he thought, if this
can happen, and death is that close and so sudden
and unpredictable, that there's absolutely nothing left to do but
to do what you absolutely want to do. Uh, no
Plan B for Jim, right, there was not going to

(37:06):
be a plan B. He there was plan A. He
was going to be the writer that he wanted to be.
He was going to be a prolific writer, and he
was not going to look back. And that was it.
And he started writing after that. He says, at one
point he says, I found a new voice. He says,
the truth is always new wine right, he had somehow
been gifted, he found he thought, with sort of the

(37:28):
gift of speech, right, and all of a sudden he
could begin writing. And he really never looked back from that.
But I think you're absolutely right. That story permeates everything
he wrote after that and defined the rest of his life.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah, hmmm, what was how did it come to be? Like,
like when did he start becoming friends with all these
with with like these other writers. Let's let's just I
guess we'll focus on instead of saying these other writers,
will focus on what we'll talk about mcgwain, because here's
this other great writer, another Michigan guy, another guy like

(38:05):
obsessed with hunting, obsessed with fishing, transcended that world. Neither
of these guys. No one would call Harrison or mcguain
an outdoor writer. No one would call him a hunting
and fishing writer. But their writers that hunters and anglers love.
But they they way, they overshot any kind of definition

(38:26):
like that, they became like literary figures, right, you know, yeah,
Like how at what point did he start to be
that he was going to be with writers and associate
with writers and join the kind of like literati you know.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, I mean, so you know, Jim, like like we
were saying, I mean, Jim didn't grow up knowing writers.
It wasn't really until he got into college and he
began like you know, getting to know professors and things
like that. He really didn't get to know some professional
writers until you know, I think he ran into Jack
Kerouac once at a bar New York and so that

(39:01):
was like the first writer I'd ever met. And Jack
Kerouac was at a jazz bar in a village and
he was apparently really drunk, and Harrison says he met
him and sort of got to know him. He says, well,
that was the first writer I ever really got I met.
But you know, he really became he really got to
know and sort of become part of the literary scene.

(39:21):
At one point, he was invited by a professor at
Michigan State University who got to Stonybrook University on Long Island,
and there Jim got to know a lot of poets, right.
He was partly in charge of inviting writers to the
department to get to you know, to for talks and
readings and things like that, and sort of met the
whole literary world there, at least in the world of

(39:43):
poetry time, right, And I think so that got him
to know a lot of writers. And then you know mcgwuaine,
who had gone to school with at Michigan State University,
reached out to him, you know, around this time, and
they didn't know each other. That well at MSU, but
mcwi reached out to him and they began this sort
of decades long correspondence and deep friendship that would develop.

(40:06):
And it turns out mcwaine was, you know, incredibly invested
in writing too, and was very active in writing and publishing,
and so all of a sudden, Jim started to have
a literary community, right, And it was mcwaine in many
ways introduced Jim to lots of his good friends who
would later become good friends, like he.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Became friends with buff Jimmy Buffett and Jimmy Buffett.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Gee Delaval then, right, who was a French count who
he met fishing in Key West.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
That's one dude. I'll never understand. What did that dude do. Well,
he's always like they're always bringing him up that they
just like him because he's a French count.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Well he was his deal, he was, he was, He
was an avid fish. He's dead now. Yeah, I did get.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
To always talking about that guy. I never got it.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
Yeah, Gee, I mean gee was he name again?

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Gee?

Speaker 1 (40:51):
G Delaval? Dad?

Speaker 4 (40:52):
I think I met his great his uh not grandson
or yeah, we hunted in Scotland together and word all
about Gee.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't mean he like disrespect the dead.
But whenever those dudes, like either of them just talking
about that guy, I'm like this guy.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Again, who is this guy?

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (41:12):
He was important to that though, you know, yeah, like
I never got it because he had like he could
afford the good wine definitely part of it, but they
paid for everything or something. Yeah, he had money. I
think they genuinely really liked him. He was he was
He was an excellent fisherman, right. He was one of
the people that mcgwaine met down fishing in Key West

(41:33):
and was one of the only people, I mean very
few people in the island who understood tarp and fishing.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
He did.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
The French dude he did, oh yeah, extremely serious fisherman
and bird hunter, right, and so they had that in common.
And then maybe it was jealous and then he was
who wouldn't be, right, Yeah, who doesn't want to be
a French count? He had He grew up with a moat.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
I mean, you know who can say I ever understood
like he just like having a googly eye and having
your dad and sister dying a crash, Like there's like
those things and you go, like what else permeates? Harrison's
work like the French count right exactly right, right? How

(42:17):
would you put Like there's a songwriter like a lot
Evan Felker from Turnpike Troubadors, and we're talking about he
he puts honey and fishing in his music. But he
does in the way that you know it's legit, okay,
like you can from a mile away smell when someone
is just inserting stuff they don't understand. Well, it's like

(42:40):
his references are very good, like you know, it's legit.
And he said, why don't I only think of it
like it's not it's not what the story's about. I
just need them to have a thing to do, Like
they're gonna the characters in the songs. They're gonna interact
and say the things they need to say, or the

(43:01):
story is that. But then well what are they doing?
Why are they there? And he goes, in my head,
I'm paraphrasing when I think of like where do I
put them? That just tends to be where I put them.
But it's not what it's about. It's just where I
stick them, you know what I mean? Like like this,
I'm doing a horrible job of like putting it. But

(43:21):
that's like he's not trying to write like a song
with like a hunting reference. He just doesn't know what
to have him doing or whatever. So oftentimes they're doing
stuff with horses, or they're doing stuff with guns, or
you know whatever. Yeah, So, how like, how after doing
all this work and spending all these years on this,
and I'm saying it says a guy like I wouldn't

(43:42):
if he wasn't into hunting and fishing, I wouldn't have
discovered him, and I wouldn't read them. But like, how
do you think of the role j I mean, like,
if you look at like all these poems and all
these books and novella's and essays, how do you describe
what those things meant to him? You know? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (44:03):
I mean, uh, you know I I think it's you
did describe it nicely. I mean this idea that you
might be writing about death or mortality or you know,
consciousness or these other things. But but what the characters
are doing are hunting and fishing rights. And that's what
Jim knew, right. I mean, he grew up with hunters
and fishers in his family. You know what that means
to him? I mean it meant everything to him, it's

(44:25):
it was how he grew up, it's what his family did,
it's it's what he truly enjoyed to do doing, right,
And so you know, and I'm not talking just about
hunting and fishing, but I'm talking about being out in
the natural world, right in the non human world, whether
it's floating a river and fly fishing or bird hunting,

(44:47):
which Jim genuinely loved to do, walking fields. He just
loved to walk through the woods.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
And so he's a great observer, a very astute observer
of nature. In one of his frustrations with a lot
of hook and bullet guys, and one of his big
frustrations with like a lot of outdoor writers is they
were only interested in animals insofar as like how best
to kill them? Yeah, and it like he did. It

(45:14):
infuriated him, like it comes up references again and again,
like they weren't students of nature.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think Jim was an
incredible student of nature, right he uh, and hunting and
fishing was part of that to him, but it was
not the only thing to him, right, He was incredibly observant,
as you said, he's.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Like he probably I don't know if he called himself that.
He's definitely like a birder, you know.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Oh yeah, and not just a bird hunter, but a birder.
He'd loved to just you know, like his mother, he
loved to go out and birdwatch, right and he you know,
would go you know, he knew a huge range of birds.
You know, we could talk about them fluently. But you know,
Jim was famous for just going out and sitting on
a log right in the middle of the woods, and

(45:56):
he would just sit there and he would sort of
melt sort of melt in into the into the into
the stump he was sitting on as the sort of
natural world around him came alive around him because he
no longer posed a threat. He was this sort of
you know, inanimate sort of object or animate object that
had become one with his surroundings, and he would just observe.

(46:17):
And I think, I mean that meant everything to him.
It was it was his spirituality. It was a very
deeply spiritual practice for him. Uh, and he would connect
with that, you know, in a classic sort of romantic
romantic way. Even though I don't think Jim ever romanticized nature,
he knew I think he knew what the wild was. Yeah,
but I think in a spiritual sense, I think he

(46:40):
found sort of spiritual sustenance there. I mean it was,
you know, not to use a cliche, it was like
his church. Right, he would go into he would go
into the into the wild, into nature just on even
just sort of small walks. But that's where he got
his ideas for literature. That's where he'd do his thinking,
and that's where he'd do was sort of meditating. And

(47:00):
so you know, it was such a large part of
his life that what else would he write about, right,
I mean a large part of his work has to
deal with that huge factor that's in the middle of
his life.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Right. Yeah, I don't think he ever had like a
main character that didn't respect nature. It was like a
prerequisite to be a character, is like you had to
respect nature else you're not allowed.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, you're certainly not a good guy right in his work, Right,
they're bad characters writers who are you know, exploitive And
that was Jim's one thing, right, He really could not
stand people who hunted to excess or fish to excess,
almost in a sort of greedy sort of way, with
you know, taking much more than they would eat or

(47:43):
kill or any reasonable person could possibly want to take
out of take out of the wilderness, and and or
you know, sort of malpractice in fishing and hunting, snagging
fish and other things. You had zero patients with that,
as I'm sure you know, right, and just incredibly you know,
dislike that to his core. Yeah, what uh?

Speaker 2 (48:04):
How did he cope with? Or you know, somewhat like
I said, like a lot of his work is like
angry about like wealth, angry about people like just getting
things without working for them, you know what I mean.
Like he's got like he like prides people with work ethics,

(48:28):
like his good characters work hard. But then all of
a sudden, like later he kind of becomes like like
early he's sort of looking into the fish bowl, do
you know what I mean? And in the fish bowl
is like wealth and wealth and privilege and elitism. But
then later he's kind of in the bowl, right, Like

(48:51):
what was that? Like? What do you think that was like?
For that guy?

Speaker 1 (48:54):
It was a conflict and a struggle for him. You know,
he grew up his parents, his dad, and his parents
say he was you know, we're sort of you know,
they respected labor leaders, right, to come from real working
class to call their democratic families sort of like a
Butte Democrat, but Montana Democrats who were, you know, very

(49:16):
invested in the labor movement. And Jim grew up in
that setting. He grew up around people who worked hard,
outdoor labor, hard work, right, And and his dad wasn't
you know, his dad was always going out farms, and
Jim was always meeting farmers, and so he deeply respected,
you know, people who you know, weren't weren't didn't have

(49:38):
easy wealth, right, right. And then later, you know, but
I think Jim also, I think this is why he's
a contradictory and complicated person. I think Jim liked nice things.
He liked the things that he could get with his buddy,
the French count, right, And Jim seemed to sort of

(49:58):
gather around him people of means throughout his life. And
then once he published Legends of the Fall, which was
a really big hit, and then started getting movie deals,
he started making a ton of money, and I think
he enjoyed the money. He liked the wine certainly, right.
He liked some of the other fruits of his money wealth,

(50:21):
good food certainly, and even some cocaine from time to time,
or maybe more than from time to time. And I
think I think he enjoyed that, but I always think
he became deeply conflicted about that. On the one hand,
he feared that he had lost track of who he
once was to some extent, right, and he laments this

(50:43):
fact in his poetry and his fiction. I think, you know,
he has an image in one of his poems of
like feeding at the bourgeois trough. Yeah, right, and he's
like leaning into it and just and he knows that
this is highly problematic. And it's problematic for him because
it's distance him from I don't know, a certain kind
of consciousness that he thought was necessary to be a

(51:05):
writer and a poet, right, And it also distanced him
from the sort of values and things things that he
valued and the people who he valued. And I also
think it was a conflict for him because what he
had to do to make that money repeatedly took him
away from his first love, which was poetry, right, And
so no one was going to get rich writing poetry,

(51:27):
but poetry he was sort of in his core, right,
and every time he was.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Going he describes himself as that all the time It's
funny because I never read a look of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, you know, he says it was
the true bones of his life. It was poetry, right,
And every time he had to go out to Hollywood
to work on a screenplay, or go to New York
to meet with film producers, or do all the things
that you know, or go on tour for even a novel,
all that was constantly taking him away from what he's
viewed as his calling, right, which was I won't say

(51:59):
fiction wasn't a calling of his, but his poetry was
his core, and I was always taking him away, right,
So sort of that conflict was twofold, right. It contrasted
with the values he'd grown up with of sort of
just rural simplicity, right, and simple pleasures, And it conflicted
because it took him away from his art.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
I think, you know, I've hit you with a bunch
of like things that I regard as I don't know, man,
like like themes of his work and things I pull
from it in your book, Like what are some of
the things you pull at outside of what I've asked
you about? Like what are some of the you know,

(52:41):
the through lines or the discoveries you found that help
kind of explain him as a as a writer.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean you hit on
a lot of the key themes I think that I
do explore in the book as a writer. I mean
as a human. Friendship was one of the sort of
through lines.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
In this book. So he was a good friend.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
He was a good friend. I think he was. He
could be a difficult friend. We seem to have friends.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
He had friends for long times, man, which I respect
me too.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
I mean, you know, you hear so much about sort
of the crisis of male friendship and loneliness in the
US today, and Jim, in some ways, I mean, model
a sort of life that was very different from that.
Here is like masculine guys, outdoor guys who you know,
were not solitary people. They were communal people. They love
to be around other male friends. And Jim cultivated not

(53:36):
just male friends, female friends too. Jim really worked at
building friendships, yeah, and sustaining them over decades. I mean
Tom mcgwain and Jim Harrison wrote for five decades to
each other two letters a week. I mean that alone,
is that's insane.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
So foreign, Like I know, I'm still buddies with guys
I knew growing up. There's some as I grew up
with them, still budies with But like, there is no
way in the world I'm gonna pen them a letter.
It's just not gonna happen, right, I mean.

Speaker 4 (54:09):
Letters of Steven Ronella's just.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Not I'll shoot him a quick text.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Somebody some day is gonna want to publish your collected letters.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
You have to collection a chance, yea over that way, Okay.

Speaker 4 (54:23):
The should be published into like a coffee book because
they're so funny. The random text you get from Steve.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
That's funny. Yeah. And Jim, you know, you could collect
his emails to friends too, But I mean he would
handwrite letters to to mcguaine for decades and decades, you know,
but he would.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
Were they doing it like knowing it would be collected?

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, I think Tom and Jim were.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Yeah, Like they were like writing out so that someday
there'd be a record of themselves.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
I suspect that someday they suspected someone like me woul
spending like six months in an art times somewhere reading
every letter they ever wrote, so I could write a
biography of one of them. I do think that's true,
and I think at first it was aspirational. They were like,
we're going to be famous, right, We're going to be
great writers. We're gonna be famous writers. And then at
a certain point they were like, wow, we're pretty famous writers, right,

(55:17):
and this came true, and we're doing this for posterity.
And so you know, there's a level of sort of
performativity in the letters right with they know definitely, I
think there's an eye they know people are going to
be reading these letters. But I but in spite of themselves,
they're always lapsing into real periods of honesty and being

(55:37):
incredibly supportive of each other in their correspondence. Early on,
Tom and Jim saw each other a lot. They'd see
each other in Montana all the time, yearly, for sometimes
weeks and months at a time. They go fishing together
in Key West all the time, so they did spend
a lot of time together physically in the same place.
Later that became more correspondence. But no matter how busy
Jim was, and he was extremely busy, he would always

(56:00):
carve out time for friends, you know, for gee until
well then right for Russell Chathams or you know Buffett
for and a lot of Jim's professional relationships became friendships.
He would hang out with his psychiatrist, you know, they
woul write letters to each other and spend time together

(56:20):
when they were in New York, right. You know, his
publishers and his editors and his producer friends, they would
all become friends. And so Jim, yeah, really went out
of his way to cultivate friendships. And you know, Gee
and those other guys would come up to Lake Lelanod
and they'd hunt every fall. They'd come up to Montana
every year for bird hunting season. Right, they'd all congregate

(56:42):
and meet at early on. They'd all meet at mcwain's
ranch in Paradise Valley and they would all hunt together
and then they would create. They would cook these big
feasts of everything they caught, right, the fish and the
birds that they shot, and they'd create these elaborate meals.
And that was very much part of their life.

Speaker 3 (56:57):
You know.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
That's one of the through lines of this book. That
and it's one of the big surprises for me, just
how dedicated Jim was to cultivating and sustaining friendships.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
One of his bodies. So for years, let me explain
this to listeners, not you is, if you go by
Harrison's books, the covers are Russell Chatham paintings. If you
want to watch a great movie, go watch Rivers of
a Lost Coast. It's a very obscure film about the

(57:32):
Steelhead Runs of Northern California. Kind of about the death
of the Steelhead Runs of Northern California, but like the
Steelhead Heyday of Northern California and Chatham, this painter, Chatham
kind of carries this documentary but also does these beautiful landscapes,
and Harrison always used them. Did that just stay true

(57:54):
all the way to the end. No, I guess some
of his covers weren't Chatham paintings, but you know, I mean,
like all those covers were those like very moody, dark
landscapes by Russell Chatham.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Oh yeah, definitely, so yeah, I mean Chatham. Uh, Chatham
is a fisherman, right, and I've seen.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Them the Bay Area.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Oh dude, it's an unbelievable movie, Rivers of a Lost Coast.
I can't wait to see it now, classic man, like
no one, no one knows about that movie.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Yeah, I'm totally gonna watch that. Yeah, I mean Chatham.
It's funny I was. I was talking to Chatham's daughter.
You know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Did he pass away? He did, Yeah, yeah, because he
started that restaurant kind of like that went a little
tits up and then like yeah, I mean he was
a cool restaurant.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Yeah. He started all sorts of ventures, publishing house, Clark
City Press and Livingston and then open Livingston Bar and grill.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Yeah, we go there a bit man. Yeah, but I
mean those long time I was back in like around
two thousand or something. Yeah, that was a long time ago.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Even today, Leah Chatham, Russ's daughter, says that if you
ask someone in town in Livingston, Montana, who Russ Chatham is,
half of them will say, oh, he's that famous fisherman,
and half of them an artist which really speaks volumes, right,
the guy with the restaurant. Some of them would probably
definitely say that too. But I mean, I think he

(59:15):
holds he held the record for the largest stripe maass
caught on a fly for a long time, if not
still so Okay, So I'm losing track of where I was,
But so, Jim and Chatham became close friends beginning from
Key West fishing days.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
That's how they met. They met in Key West, got
it and they just into that fishing scene down there.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Yeah, and Chatham had also a bad eye. Yeah, he
had no depth perception. He's an artist, the landscape artist
with no depth perception. Apparently he went a tarpeid Fishermen,
which and it is a death perception game. Yeah. So
somehow Russ managed to like not only like fish tarpin
and spot him and cast him, but also to paint right.

(59:58):
And he was apparently a really good pool player to boot.
So I don't know how deficiency and he had the
same eye injuries Jim not done, you know, for the
same reasons. But he had a bad eye. And it
happened around the same age as Jim, maybe the exact
same age as Jim. So they were like they saw
each other at in Key West and they were just like, oh,

(01:00:18):
we need to be friends, right, and they just hit
it off from the start, right, and uh, I can't
remember exactly when it began, but Chatham Jim started using
hair Chatham's paintings on the covers of his books, and
really that would that would and then eventually, you know,
Chatham would go back and create covers for his like
sort of back list of books. And so now pretty

(01:00:40):
much if you go into any bookstore and pick up
a Jim Harrison book, you're going to see a Russell
Chatham painting on the cover, and you know, in their
beautiful covers. A lot of people have told me that
they picked up a Harrison book because of the cover
for the first time. Sure, right, because it's such a
striking cover. And they became sort of inextricably linked, right,

(01:01:03):
complementing each other, right, larger than they would be individually, right,
And so yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
They really you know, there's a documentary if I don't know,
it's not even really fair to call it a documentary.
It's more like a compilation of clips of that seventies
era of fly fishing in Key West with those guys
all in it. It's not Chasing Silver. No.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Well, the original documentary that Gee made right of fly fishing,
of those guys fly fishing in Key West was called Tarpin,
and that is if you haven't seen.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
That's not I have that. Yeah, I have that on DVD.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Yeah really cool. Yeah, great thought.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Which is impossible to play, but I own.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
It, yeah, exactly. And then someone recently made a documentary
of that documentary. Is that what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
I'm talking about Tarpin.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
You're talking about Tarpa specifically.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Okay, yeah, that's in my DVD pile, but that's not
it Rivers of the Lost Coast and tarp and Tarpin.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
Yeah, yeah, and that documentary Tarpin, I mean just really
sort of tried to capture a sort of you know,
the wonder and amazement of of you know, pulling a
skiff around the flats off of Key West, right and
casting you know, site casting to Tarpin, and then with

(01:02:22):
amazing sort of photography, right, they captured these tarpin you know,
coming up out of the water, under the water, you know,
being caught in the sort of electric experience of catching
the tartan. Yeah, and then it brushed, you know, to
a decent amount. I also explored sort of the nightlife
that those guys explore the Key West, but maybe a
lot less. So I think it's a lot more about
the fishing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
We get to send to the nightlife aspect.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
You know, another guy, another outdoorsman right that definitely transcended
the world, is Richard Broadigan. So Richard Broadgan wrote trout
fishing in America, which is not about people fishing it.
But it's not about trout fishing in America, but it
has one of the greatest fishing lines ever. Is Broadigan's

(01:03:07):
talking about fishing a stream that was so narrow and
so brushy and hard to fish. She said you had
to be a plumber to fish that creek, which all
is the greatest thing. But like Broadigan kind of like
Broadigen later shoots himself.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Yeah, do you know is it true?

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Like Chad, like Russell Chatham kind of wrote this thing
and it was kind of from hanging out with Broadigan
and Harrison and all that. Is it true that broad
Agan like maybe killed some kid with a twenty two
when he was young. Are you familiar with that?

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
I don't know that story.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
No, possible because it made like like he's talking about
they would get together to hunt birds. Yeah, and Chatham
wouldn't hunt or sorry, Broadigan wouldn't hunt, wouldn't go hunting,
but talk about one time he shot it hole through
the TV with the gun. Yeah, and he talks about
I understand why you would shoot zenus but not pheasants.

(01:04:08):
It was kind of about like broad against torments you know,
but like killed himself.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Right he did. Yeah, And you know he had a thing,
you know, he had a thing with guns, sort of
shooting them off indoors. He had you know, he did.
Lots of stories of of Brodigen, uh who. And Brodigan
eventually bought a sort of small farm in Paradise Valley,

(01:04:34):
Montana too, right, not not, Yeah, in that same seventies
there off of East River Road, in the same area, Yeah,
same era, right when mcgaine and all them were there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
And Whoopie Goldberg for a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Yeah, yeah, and everybody right in la who was like
setting it. Yeah, it was the new place to be.
But Brodigan lived there for a while. Yeah, and he
would hang out with all these guys in Paradise Valley.
But there are lots of stories of sort of you know,
unfortunate sort of drunken late nights with you know, forty
four magnum that that brought him would carry around and

(01:05:09):
he would there's a story of him shooting out a
clock like that was on the wall and he shot
around the clock in a circle, you know, until they
could push the clock out of the wall.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
There's another one of him shooting up through the ceiling
and then him going to bed and waking up in
the morning and coming downstairs and having splinters and stuff
all on his back because the bullets had gone through
the roof into the bed, through the bed and his
mattress and had shot splinters up into the match and
came down with splinters in them. So yeah, yeah, I

(01:05:45):
never heard that story about him having shot somebody.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Man, Like, I feel like, I'm maybe I should have
brought I should have checked him that before I brought
it up.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
But you know, I know he loved the fish and
he would get fishing with those guys all the time. Yeah,
and he would He didn't cook, but those guys would
go over Broughtigan's house and they cooked big, elaborate meals
at his house and they would host big parties of
her Broughtigans. And there are some funny stories in the
book about Jim and brought Again in their funny relationship together.
Jim taught his daughter to fly fish, brought Again's daughter

(01:06:14):
to fly. Yeah, and Brogan was very much part of
the community and Broughtigan's in Tarpin what state? Did he
kill himself in California?

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Does it ever surprise you? It wouldn't have Like, had
I read that Harrison killed himself at some point, I
would not have been surprised. Doesn't seem like he would
have been a dude who would killed himself.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
Maybe he came really close, I mean because of his depressions.
You know, in his thirties, he hit a depression of
all depressions basically, and you know, and contemplated suicide very seriously.
His daughter, I mean said repeatedly that they would just
she was reading his poetry a lot at the time,
but everywhere she looked she saw thoughts and ideas of suicide.
And Jim came extremely close. He was writing a collection

(01:06:52):
of poetry called Letters to You Senen was Sergey you
Senen was a Russian poet, and Jim was called the
collection you know, Letters to You sent, and he was
literally writing letters to this dead Russian poet, right. But
he credits that book with really sort of pulling him
out of that deep depression, right, and sort of poetry

(01:07:13):
helped him sort of gain his footing and recover himself,
right in writing to this poet. And it turns out
Sergey U Senen had committed suicide, hung himself. Wrote his
last letter out in his own blood or a poem
and then you know, really gruesome stuff. And Jim recovered,
you know, some sort of recovered himself through through the

(01:07:34):
writing of poetry. But I mean something we never got
at earlier, which we were talking about, was it, you know,
despite all of the other big through line through this book.
And what always amazes me is that despite these epic
depressions that Jim would go through, he had these unbelievable
store of humor. And you know, it would be a
mistake to paint him as this really dark, sure troubled figure,
which he was, but he was also this guy with

(01:07:57):
this just endless sense of humor and sort of zuberants
for life and viv right that he never seemed to lose.
You know, it had been flowed, but he would always
recover himself. Even in his darkest times. He'd make jokes.
You know what we're talking about, the Hemingway deal. He
he Harrison.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
I can't remember where he was, right, but Harrison had
talked about, you know, you know that ritualistic suicide like
is Harry carry.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Yeah, yeah your sword kind of death before well you
disemboline tool yourself, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
The reason one of the reasons I always picture that
he might be that that would have been how he
would have died. Is he he seemed to struggle with this,
like like death before dishonor, but dishonor would have been senescence. Yeah,
you know what I mean, Like would you really let
yourself get old and senile? Would be better to like

(01:08:54):
go out on your own terms? And that's kind of
he seemed to. That's like a reference he seemed to
make fair bit And that was like the Hemingway deal
because I think that when Hemingway shot himself, like Hemingway
was supposed to be contributing like a sentence to a
Kennedy memorial. And my understanding is maybe this is like
a little bit of a you know, maybe it's like
an apocryphal story. But but like he couldn't come up

(01:09:18):
with a sentence for Kennedy's memorial or something, and felt
that it was like he was tapped out.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
And you know, maybe that's what kept kept Jim Jim
in this world, is he never ran out of words.
In fact, I think the closer he came to death
and dying, he wrote more and more and you know,
a language. You know, he felt sometimes trapped in language,
you know, ironically, maybe I think he felt that he

(01:09:49):
had been a slave to language his whole life, and
he started to feel that later in life. But it
was language that really never abandoned him.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
He would sometimes lament that he had no mechanical capabilities.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Yeah, definitely, Yeah, I mean his physical cap is that
what you mean, like physical capable?

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
No, I mean like wasn't like he wasn't like like
fixing stuff and all that mechanical stuff. Yeah, he would
make jokes about that he was, you know, like not
not in some capacities handy at like vehicle repair or
whatever I do or whatever. Like he was a man
of words.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Yeah, Yeah, I don't doubt that at all. Yeah, I
don't think Jim ever, like he wasn't the kind of
guy who's going to call under, you know, a hood
and you know, get greasy death. Although you know maybe
when he was younger a little bit, but he wasn't
yeat mechanically inclined. Yeah, he wasn't that guy. But language
never abandoned him, you know. And he died writing a poem.
He was writing a poem the day he died, and

(01:10:40):
so till his very last breath. I mean was sitting
at his desk with the poem in front of him
and a cigarette smoldering in an ash tray. Huh when
he died And yeah, he had a big pilot of
cigarettes on his desk and one was smoldering. Or I
mean the day he died and he basically fell over
after writing his last poem. So you know, maybe who knows,

(01:11:03):
maybe if language had abandoned him, he might you know,
where would he have been.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Talked about that you take a lot of naps. Yeah,
but he said he didn't count it as a nap
unless he took his socks off. That life.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
In a classic Harrison right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
The one caveat that hangs over this and like the
one reason and I hate it, like I wish it
wasn't true, because the one reason I can't be like
that I love him, you know, and like I said, man,
he did me a good turn, like he blurbed a
couple of my books and right helped me out. But
like a thing that keeps me from being like I

(01:11:40):
love the guy is like I don't understand how he
could how he would just like humiliate his wife like that,
do you? I mean, like I'm like I've been married
for seventeen years, right, there's just no way. There's no
way I'm going to humiliate my wife. Do you follow me?

(01:12:04):
But he would so freely humiliate his wife, Like what
is all that about?

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
You mean by carrying on with carrying on with other.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
Fantasize about women carrying on with other women? Like how
could you like do that to somebody like habitually, dude,
and then not only that, but then like go home
and face them, you know what I mean? Like like
I don't talk like if like I can't be Like
one way to get like majorly like ot seed out
of my circle would be to like like dudes that

(01:12:34):
humiliate their wives or just like out of the club.
Do you follow me? So like makes it that I
can't like I want to be like, oh he was great,
but I'm eh, like what was that about? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
I mean that's that's tough. What is that about? H
I think I think Jim and his wife, I mean,
so there's no there's no excuse for humiliation. I think

(01:13:09):
Jim loved his wife very much. I don't have any
doubt about that, and I think she loved him very much.
I think Jim became so difficult to live with for
other reasons later in life, because of his alcoholism and
his you know, the sort of things that had happened
is his ability to sort of comprehend the consequences of

(01:13:31):
his actions. And I'm not talking about affairs now. I'm
talking about smoking cigarettes around his wife when she was
suffering from asthma and lung problems later in life, and
he could be incredibly self centered and self focused in
a way that seemed incredibly frustrating to people around them
because they knew that his smoking was hurting his wife

(01:13:54):
and such. And I think that eventually sort of his
wife became increasing intolerant of him. I think earlier when
Jim was having affairs and you know, you can't really
make excuses for him. You're right, it was a humiliation.
I think it's one that Linda realized what she was

(01:14:14):
getting herself into very early on.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
Yeah, he wasn't even bashful about it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
He wasn't bashful about it. And she was smart, his wife,
she was incredibly smart, incredibly perceptive. I think she knew
very I know for a fact that she knew very
early on how Jim was going to conduct his life
and I think Linda was an adult, and I think
she chose to stay in that relationship for you know,

(01:14:42):
reasons of all sorts of complex reasons, right, because she
valued that relationship, She valued Jim. She accepted explicitly, if tacitly,
if not explicitly, the terms of that relationship, right, they're
very from a young age. McGain once wrote to a

(01:15:06):
friend and I write about this in the book, and
he said, you know, there's only really two paths with marriage,
and he says, one is at least this was his perception,
and he was speaking about Jim's infidelity specifically, and he said,
you know there's one where, you know, you conduct your
business in private, you go and have ilicted affairs, you

(01:15:26):
hire sex workers, you do this or that all like
in closed private spaces behind your wife's back. And the
alternative is sort of having an open relationship, right, And
he says, Now, I don't know, he says, And at
the time mcgwaine said, well, and we know Jim. You know,
McGain himself had gone through a series of relationships with
their own sort of levels of complexity, and one of

(01:15:47):
them was a relatively high profile, even relatively open relationship.
But he said, you know, the trick to that and
maybe maybe it's doomed to failure open relationships to begin
with by definition, maybe they're unsustainable.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Oh it's like, just as a side note, people to
act like that's gonna fly. Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, and
it's like such a joke and be black like, oh, no,
we have an understanding. I'm like, you don't. Yeah, you
might think you do, Yeah, you don't. Yeah, And it's
not a two way understanding, right, you have an understanding
with your desires. But that's about that's the limit, right there,

(01:16:21):
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Yeah, and McGain recognized that, and he said, you know,
but the trick to doing that, and maybe it's impossible anyway,
the trick to doing it is to extend the privileges
to both people, fully right, you can't have one side.
It has to extend it to and Jim, you know,
there was no there's no evidence that they had that
sort of agreement.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
Yeah, but she wasn't a big swinging dick writer either.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
You're right, you're right. But she was also very attractive
though she was a beautiful moment or something, and she
was she was intelligent, she was beautiful, but I mean,
you know, I don't know. Mcgwaine went through several relationships,
eventually settled in what it is a very happy marriage
now to Jimmy Buffett's sister. But Jim, you know, Jim
and Linda stayed married when a lot of other their
friends got divorced throughout the years. And man, they were

(01:17:05):
they were together up until the end.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
And you know, it's something I'll never understand, man.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
And I think for someone who wrote poetry, for someone
who was so sensitive, someone who was a student of
consciousness and you know, and and and looking at the
world honestly, to be able to still do what he did,
you know, it's a contradiction and it's a complexity. Yeah, yeah,
I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
It's almost speaking ill of the dead, Like if he
was alive, I would be uncomfortable bringing it up. And
I didn't, yeah, you know, like because we had mutual
associates and mutual friends and stuff, and like I just
always I was always like why you know, you know,
I mean it's like a like, who's who's that culture

(01:17:49):
that used to make Who's a culture that make rugs?
And they'd put imperfection in the rug because because it
was hubris to to make it perfect, like in the
eye as a god, you'd intentionally make it imperfect. M right, Yeah,
And it was like he had this like glaring imperfection
that he has always bugged me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Man, he did have a glaring imperfection more than one.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
We all do. I mean we all do. But it
was like celebrated. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like
like when I was young, it didn't occur to me
to be it didn't occur to me to look at
it from two sides.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Only later that I'd be like, man, like you know, yeah,
like I have somewhat of a you know, like I
have some of a public profile, Like I have somewhat
of a way to go out and meet people and
have adventures that like isn't like readily available to my
wife taking care of the kids that we had together.

(01:18:48):
You become aware of that, like there's just a baked
in dude, I don't want to call it an imbalance,
but there's like a baked in something that you can take,
that you can exploit. And then later when I became
aware of that that there is a thing to exploit.
When I became aware of it, maybe very judgmental about

(01:19:08):
someone that takes the bait.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
I think it was baked in. Yeah, it was definitely
baked in for Jim two. You know where he grew up,
the people he grew up around and with from a
very young age. I think a lot of that, you
know that the way of thinking about you know, male
female relationships and marriages. I was baked into him from
a young age. And and I think it was it

(01:19:33):
just it always just remained a sort of like Fisher
in his identity. Right, this this uh, this contradiction, right
that he could be as sensitive as he was to
people's suffering. He could write novels in women's voices in.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
Ways, dude, like so sympathetic man.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
So sympathetic, Dolva and women lit by firefly.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
Like in a way you wouldn't be able to do now,
Like you couldn't. He would have if he'd have written
if he'd have written a novel from the perspective of
a female Native American in twenty twenty, dude, they would
have murdered him. Yeah, they would have hung him from
a tree, do you know what I mean? Yeah, he's like,
I got an idea. I'm like an old white guy.

(01:20:13):
I even read a book where I'm a Native American woman.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
Yeah, I know he might he might have gotten away
with the woman, but not the Native American woman, right, Yeah,
he got away with it in France, he would have
gotten away with it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
But I'm not saying he shouldn't have done it. Like,
that's not my perspective. I don't think that. I don't.
I don't look at it like I don't think that
you can own I don't believe in in I understand
the arguments for it, but I don't believe in people
being like that, that you can make it that other
people can't think about certain things, you know, I mean
I I don't. I don't. I don't like that. I
understand the argument, but I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
I don't. I don't like live by it. I completely
agree with that. And it's funny, you know. I just
read teaching, you know, and I just read three books
in a row where the man wrote a book from
a woman's perspective, and then the two women wrote two
books from his perspectives. And these are all in the
past five years. So I'm like, Okay, well, yeah, we
haven't you know fully, you know, people are still experimenting

(01:21:08):
with you know, and whatever experience they have.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
We live in a little bit of freer time right now.
You know. You know the writer Larry Brown, Uh yeah,
a little bit big bad love.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
He died young. He had a heart attack. He was
from Mississippi. He was a fireman.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
He wrote seven books. He wrote seven novels for he
had a novel published. Wow. He uh. He became like
a very like he sold some of his stuff to
He did stuff had in movies, like the Coen Brothers
bought one of the things. He became a big, pretty
big writer. He was the first guy. This is the

(01:21:47):
last thing I'll say about this thing with marriage and stuff,
is uh. When I was in writing school, Larry came
and did a he like came for semester or something
up from Mississippi. Dude never went to college nothing. Man.
He taught himself to write like between calls at a firebarn.
But became a very celebrated novelist. You know. Uh, I

(01:22:11):
mentioned him. He knew Harrison hung out just in the
literary circles. And he was the first guy that like
said to me. I brought him up and he said
something about like like eye roll because he was a
very faithful, loyal family person. He had like an eye
roll about like, oh him and his starlets, do you know?

(01:22:32):
I mean it was the first time I heard someone
like do like a condemnation and it was like dismissive,
you know, man. It wasn't even that long after that,
Larry Brown died of a heart attack. Wow. What was
like when Harrison died? What was sort of going on
with him? You know, like where was he at right

(01:22:55):
with his work? And he had like he didn't he
have had to have like bad health problems and things.

Speaker 1 (01:23:01):
Yeah, I mean he was sort of ravaged physically, right,
he is He's still sharp though he was, he still sharp.
He still had the capacity to write and write poems.
And I think fiction had become difficult for him. He
just couldn't sort of sustain the attention to detail that

(01:23:22):
was required for fiction, right. I think he was at
that point in his life. Right before he died, he
began a new novella called A Woman Who Loved Trees,
I think, and it was about his wife, about Linda.
And so the important thing to know is Linda died
about five months prior to Jim, and so when Jim died,

(01:23:42):
he was extremely lonely, right, he was sort of living
in Montana, but then when he died, he died in Patagony, Arizona,
and he was just didn't know what to do with himself, right,
because he had been married since nineteen fifty nine to Linda, right,
and all of a sudden he was without her, and
so there was this huge gaping, you know, hole in

(01:24:02):
his life. But in the sort of waning months of
his life, I mean, he he could write poems still,
there was still that sort of compression and smallness of
it that he could get his mind around.

Speaker 2 (01:24:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:14):
Yeah, and he you know, he was sharp enough to write.
I think his mind was very sort of beclouded by
sort of all the alcohol that he was drinking, right
from years and years and years of alcoholism, and I
think it had taken a real toll on him mentally intellectually.

(01:24:36):
But you know, he's he had his humor, he had
he had it still, like a decent life going on,
so those friends and things like that. But I think
in the absence of Linda, it seems.

Speaker 2 (01:24:46):
He really could got start to fade.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
It's not an exaggeration to say that he faded, you know,
in the absence of his wife, you know, died from
a broken heart in some ways, right from the loss
of Linda. He couldn't go on after that, but he
was still writing, I mean up until he died.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
He wrote.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
There was a collection of poems published right before he
died called dead Man's Float, And actually the soft cover
came out after he died and includes the last poem
he was writing when he died.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, dude. When you look at him, like
especially on the cover here, and you listen to it,
like clips him talk and you'd form sort of an impression,
and then you go read some of the sentences he
wrote and you're like, how could that sentence? Like how
did those sentences come out of that guy? You know,
it's like so unbelievably talented and smart. Man, Yeah, it's

(01:25:36):
so talented.

Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
Gary Snyder write the poet from California, Beat Poet, Nature Poet,
was walking across the campus one time in California with
his wife and saw Jim Harrison was coming across the
campus and she turned to Gary and says, I cannot
believe that's the man who wrote Dolva. So similar similar idea. Right,

(01:26:02):
you look at Jim on the cover that's in. Yeah,
he doesn't scream sensitive poet right.

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
Some greasy sweatshirt and stuff. It's just like, yeah, he
lived eight cigarettes hanging out of his mouth just but then.

Speaker 1 (01:26:16):
Just so brilliant man lived a long, hard life. Yeah,
and it shows on his face.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
So it took you. You spent five six years on
the book and talked to how many people do you interview?

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
I mean, well over one hundred different interviews for the book,
sort of all over the place, from Montana and Michigan
to New York and LA to France, you know, Florida
obviously Arizona took a solid six years. But from like
the first phone call I made to publication date, probably
seven years total. So it's been a long journey.

Speaker 2 (01:26:50):
And no, and you beat everybody to it. No one's
done a no one's done like a full biography of
Jim Harrison.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
Yeah, couldn't believe it. I mean that I'd be worried.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
While you were working on that someone else is going
to quick kick one out. I was you caught wind
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
I didn't think they get it done before me, necessarily,
but I was ill. Yeah, when I first started, when
I first sort of zeroed in on on writing a
biography of Harrison. I was shocked that no one was
already doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
I had some dudes calling me that were kicking around
making a documentary about his life.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
I don't know if you were involved in that or not.

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
No, No, I'm not. There's Yeah, there's been a number
of just sort of people circling the documentary of Harrison,
and I think there should definitely be one.

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
They had asked whoever it was, I don't remember. I
don't even know if I'd be able to even find anything,
but we spoke on the phone and they were asking
me about if I would do like a little talking
head bit in it. But I don't know what came
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Yeah. Yeah, people people have been circling a documentary, but uh,
and I sort of thought someone would start to not
start one while I was writing it. Sure, Yeah, I
don't think anyone did, not that I heard of.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
Yeah, when they were asked me there that it was
like not as someone that knew them, but just someone
was influenced by the work, right, righteah? Right? Or is
that were influenced by the work, Yeah, for sure. And
then I was kind of I didn't get you know,
I definite didn't get the sense that there was a
done deal on being in it. I was like, sure, whatever, yeah,
but I kept kind of I still kind of keep
my eyes out expecting the movie to come out.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
Yeah, I think it would be great.

Speaker 2 (01:28:15):
But the fact that you managed to get like a
big ass book done before they could get a documentary
done is impressive. What year did he die in?

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
Twenty sixteen? March?

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
Okay, so you didn't get Crank until he was dead.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
Yeah, I didn't, right, Yeah, So you felt.

Speaker 2 (01:28:31):
Phony doing it while he's alive.

Speaker 1 (01:28:33):
I don't think so now I don't think. I think yeah, yeah,
I think I would have. I think there's you know,
I would have loved to have interviewed him for the book.
But at the same time, you know, there's it's also
sort of liberating to do it when they're not alive too, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
Because when they're alive a matter of written biography, but
well I've written like biographical sketches, but I think when
they're alive, I've it just becomes different because their own
their own mythology is right, someone's own mythology is part
like in an interview, as you're getting the mythological version

(01:29:15):
you know what I mean, totally unless they're just done
in the guards down, you're gonna get like, here's how
i'd like you know what it is. Yeah, here's how
I'd like to be remembered totally.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
Yeah, And you would have to really filter for that, right,
You'd have to like take everything they excited with a
grain of salt. But I mean there were enough like
friends and family members still live and are still alive
now around Jim's in Jim's world that you know, I
don't know if I would have written it differently than
they've been alive, because I'm still writing, you know, with
the idea that it's still very much living story, right,

(01:29:47):
And so you have to keep that in mind, I
think when you're writing biography. Well, congratulations on it, man,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
I'm excited to I'm excited to dig in and rito
I just I mean, I just took possession of my
hardcover right now.

Speaker 1 (01:30:01):
Wonderful. That's great. I'd like to have.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
You sign it for me. I would love to again.
The title is Devouring Time Jim Harrison, A Writer's Life
by Todd Goddard. So if you're a fan of Harrison's work,
and I know there are many out there more than
any of the people of the writers that sort of

(01:30:26):
touch on and swerve in and out of the worlds
of hunting and fishing in nature. Like, I think that
he's the most celebrated. I don't think anybody comes close.

Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
I agree entirely. Yeah, I don't think anybody comes close.
In their manner, something for everybody. There's something for everybody, which.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
Is, if you're like a little too eighty HD for
a novel, try a novella.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
Yeah, and it's a short novel and Jim was a
Jim had mastered that for him. I mean, he's known
for that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:56):
If you're like, dude, I don't have time for a novel,
the novella.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
Take a novella, right, exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:31:02):
What's that term for a really long essay, not a
man not a memo, like a monograph.

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
Exactly. Well, it's been real honored to be invited on here.
So thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:13):
So I love it. And again, man, you can tell
that I'm like, I'm a Harrison fan. I'm haunted by Harrison.
I get mad thinking about him. I love his work. Yeah,
to reread his books, dude, he's like, he's like, uh,
you know, I guess he's to me what Hemingway was

(01:31:34):
to him.

Speaker 1 (01:31:35):
Yeah, yeah, right, contradictory and like he just like like
a not a dark cloud, but a cloud in the sun,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
He's just there, right, and.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
I turned back to him for nourishment in some way, right,
I don't know. Jim said this great thing in tarpin.
Actually he says, you know, you go fly fishing, you're
tarpin fishing. He says, because catching a tarpin gives you
a jolt of electricity, the fresh and the feeling of
being alive. And I think Harrison does that. Yeah, I mean,
go pick up a food essay, one of his sports essays, right,

(01:32:08):
and you know you'll be freshen you know, your feeling
of life will be freshened. And Harrison's so good at
doing that. You know. I can't turn back to him
enough and not feel that.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
The thing we didn't touch on, and I'll just mention
it is he was a lifelong, unapologetic environmentalist. Definitely unapologetic. Yeah,
he didn't care if that shit was in fashion or
out of fashion. That dude was an environmentalist, yeah, you know,
and he probably would have said that he maybe he
used that word. But he was like he was a

(01:32:39):
clean air, clean water, wildlife guy through and through.

Speaker 1 (01:32:42):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
No one had to ever wonder what he thought about
the habitat and you know, in degradation and the kind
of people that degrade. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
Yeah, and he never lost sight of like, you know,
you know, the people who work in that world. You know,
he never had an unrealistic view of the fact that
humans go into the natural world and have an impact
on it. Right. He was never one of his people
who was going to say, you know, everything needs to
be preserved in a pristine state where you know, people
can't go in and work in those environments. But he

(01:33:13):
had a strong environmental convert.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
No, he knew it. It's an occupied landscape that has
to be taken care.

Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
Of, that's right. Well yeah, but he cared about it, right,
and he knew we had to take care of it.

Speaker 4 (01:33:23):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:33:23):
Thanks for coming on, Todd, Thank you again. Devouring time.
Jim Harrison a writer's life. Fascinating guy. I can't wait
to read the book.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
Thank you, Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
Steve

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 802: The Life And Death of Jim Harrison