The first general nonfiction title in thirty years from a giant of American letters, The Search for the Genuine is a sparkling, definitive collection of Jim Harrison’s essays and journalism—some never before published.
New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison (1937–2016) was a writer with a poet’s economy of style and trencherman’s appetites and ribald humor.
In The Search for the Genuine, a collection of new and previously published essays, the giant of letters muses on everything from grouse hunting and fishing to Zen Buddhism and matters of the spirit, including reported pieces on Yellowstone and shark-tagging in the open ocean, commentary on writers from Bukowski to Neruda to Peter Matthiessen, and a heartbreaking essay on life—and, for those attempting to cross in the ever-more-dangerous gaps, death—on the US/Mexico border.
Written with Harrison’s trademark humor, compassion, and full-throated zest for life, this chronicle of a modern bon vivant is a feast for fans who may think they know Harrison’s nonfiction, from a true “American original”.
Johnny Lundgren, a.k.a. Warlock, is an unemployed foundation executive who, after surviving a midlife crisis, finally decides to get a job. Warlock soon gets hired by a crazy but genius doctor as a trouble-shooter, where he's tasked with everything from battling poachers in the haunted wilderness of northern Michigan to investigating his employer's wife and son in the seamy underside of Key West. A comedy with one foot in the abyss, Warlock is what the New York Times called "farcical, reflective, luscious, gritty" entertainment from one of this country's most beloved authors.
In Farmer, Jim Harrison tells the story of Joseph, a forty-three-year-old farmer and school teacher who suddenly finds himself at a crossroads. Forced to choose between two lovers-one a younger woman, the other his beautiful childhood friend-he must also decide whether or not to stay on the farm or finally seek the wider, broader horizons he has avoided all his life.
Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to find this early Harrison work available in audio, and for new readers, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison's remarkable insight, storytelling, and evocation of the natural world.
Their plans were conceived in a drunken excitement and resulted in more horror than any of them could have imagined. There was the poet able to retreat into beatific reveries of superb fishing in cold, fast streams; the Vietnam vet consumed by uppers, downers, and violence; and the girl who loved only one of them-at first.
With their ideals ostensibly in order, they set out from Florida to save the Grand Canyon from a dam they believed was being built. Along with the tape deck for the car, the liquor, and the drugs, there was also a case of dynamite.
Wolf tells the story of a man who-after too many nameless women and drunken nights-leaves Manhattan to roam the wilderness of northern Michigan, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare wolves that prowl that territory.
Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to rediscover this early novel once again, and for new listeners, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison's remarkable insight, storytelling skill, and evocation of the natural world.
Jim Harrison's legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch. From the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses to pieces from Brick, Playboy, Kermit Lynch's newsletter, and others, from the relationship between hunter and prey to the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison's pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines, the pieces give glimpses of Harrison's life over the last three decades. A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.
New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison is one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. In The Ancient Minstrel, Harrison delivers three novellas that highlight his phenomenal range as a writer, shot through with his trademark wit and keen insight into the human condition.
Harrison has tremendous fun with his own reputation in the title novella, about an aging writer in Montana who spars with his estranged wife, with whom he still shares a home; weathers the slings and arrows of literary success; and tries to cope with the sow he buys on a whim and the unplanned litter of piglets that follow soon after. In “Eggs,” a Montana woman reminisces about staying in London with her grandparents and collecting eggs at their country house. Years later, having never had a child, she attempts to do so. And in “The Case of the Howling Buddhas,” retired Detective Sunderson—a recurring character from Harrison’s New York Times bestsellers The Great Leader and The Big Seven—is hired as a private investigator to look into a bizarre cult that achieves satori by howling along with howler monkeys at the zoo.
Fresh, incisive, and endlessly entertaining, with moments of both profound wisdom and sublime humor, The Ancient Minstrel is an exceptional reminder of why Jim Harrison is one of the most cherished and important writers at work today.
“[Harrison is] among the most indelible American novelists of the last hundred years.”—New York Times, praise for the author
Jim Harrison is one of our most renowned and popular authors, and his last novel, The Great Leader, was one of the most successful in a decorated career: it appeared on the New York Times extended bestseller list and was a national bestseller with rapturous reviews. His darkly comic follow-up, The Big Seven, sends Detective Sunderson to confront his new neighbors, a gun-nut family who live outside the law in rural Michigan.
Detective Sunderson has fled troubles on the home front and bought himself a hunting cabin in a remote area of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. No sooner has he settled in than he realizes his new neighbors are creating even more havoc than the Great Leader did. A family of outlaws, armed to the teeth, the Ameses have local law enforcement too intimidated to take them on. Then Sunderson’s cleaning lady, a comely young Ames woman, is murdered, and black sheep brother Lemuel Ames seeks Sunderson’s advice on a crime novel he’s writing, which may not be fiction. Sunderson must struggle with the evil within himself and the far greater, more expansive evil of his neighbor.
In a story shot through with wit, bedlam, and Sunderson’s attempts to enumerate and master the seven deadly sins, The Big Seven is a superb reminder of why Jim Harrison is one of America’s most irrepressible writers.
“Reading Jim Harrison is about as close as one can come in contemporary fiction to experiencing the abundant pleasures of living.”—Boston Globe, praise for the author
New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison is one of America’s most beloved writers, and of all his creations, Brown Dog—a bawdy, reckless, down-on-his-luck Michigan Indian—has earned cult status with readers in the more than two decades since his first appearance. For the first time, Brown Dog gathers all the Brown Dog novellas, including one never before published, into one volume—the ideal introduction (or reintroduction) to Harrison’s irresistible Everyman.
In these novellas, BD rescues the preserved body of an Indian from Lake Superior’s cold waters; overindulges in food, drink, and women while just scraping by in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; wanders Los Angeles in search of an ersatz Native activist who stole his bearskin; adopts two Native children; and flees the authorities then returns across the Canadian border aboard an Indian rock band’s tour bus. The collection culminates with “He Dog,” never before published, which finds BD marginally employed and still looking for love (or sometimes just a few beers and a roll in the hay) as he goes on a road trip from Michigan to Montana and back, arriving home to the prospect of family stability, and, perhaps, a chance at redemption.
Brown Dog underscores Harrison’s place as one of America’s most irrepressible writers and one of the finest practitioners of the novella form.
“This essential collection of six novellas (including the never-before-published “He Dog”) offers an omnibus look at Brown Dog, a pure Harrison creation and a glorious character who will make readers howl with delight…Often moving, frequently funny, these five hundred pages offer the best way to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with one of literature’s great characters.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
From one of America’s most versatile and celebrated writers, Legends of the Fall is Jim Harrison’s classic trilogy of epic novellas.
The publication of this magnificent trilogy of short novels—Legends of the Fall, Revenge, and The Man Who Gave Up His Name—confirmed Jim Harrison’s reputation as one of the finest American writers of his generation. These absorbing novellas explore the theme of revenge and the actions to which people resort when their lives or goals are threatened, adding up to an extraordinary vision of the twentieth-century man.
Set in the Rocky Mountains, Legends of the Fall is the epic tale of three brothers and their lives of passion, madness, exploration, and danger at the beginning of World War I. In Revenge, love causes the course of a man’s life to be savagely and irrevocably altered. And in The Man Who Gave Up His Name, a man named Nordstrom is unable to relinquish his consuming obsessions with women, dancing, and food.
“A triumph.”—New Yorker
Jim Harrison is one of America's most beloved and critically acclaimed authors, and this collection of novellas is Harrison at his most memorable-a brilliant rendering of two men striving to find their way in the world, written with freshness, abundant wit, and profound humanity.
In "The Land of Unlikeness," sixty-year-old art history academic Clive-a failed artist, divorced and grappling with the vagaries of his declining years-reluctantly returns to his family's Michigan farmhouse to visit his aging mother. The return to familiar territory triggers a jolt of renewal-of ardor for his high school love, of his relationship with his estranged daughter, and of his own lost love of painting. In the title story, "The River Swimmer," Harrison ventures into the magical as an Upper Peninsula farm boy is irresistibly drawn to the water as an escape and sees otherworldly creatures there. Faced with the injustice and pressure of coming of age, he takes to the river and follows its siren song all the way across Lake Michigan.
The River Swimmer is a striking portrait of two richly drawn, profoundly human characters and an exceptional reminder of why Jim Harrison is one of the most cherished and important writers at work today.
"One of America's great literary treasures, Harrison delivers not one but two works: 'The Land of Unlikeness,' in which a washed-up sixty-year-old academic returns to his Michigan home for renewal, and ['The River Swimmer'], in which an Upper Peninsula farm boy sees ghostly creatures in the waters of the nearby lake. Magic realism à la Harrison?"-Library Journal
Author Jim Harrison has won international acclaim for his masterful body of work, including over thirty books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. In his most original work to date, Harrison delivers an enthralling, witty, and expertly crafted novel following one man's hunt for an elusive cult leader, dubbed the Great Leader.
On the verge of retirement, Detective Sunderson begins to investigate a hedonistic cult, which has set up camp near his home in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. At first, the self-declared Great Leader seems merely a harmless oddball, but as Sunderson and his sixteen-year-old sidekick dig deeper, they find him more intelligent and sinister than they realized. Recently divorced and frequently pickled in alcohol, Sunderson tracks his quarry from the woods of Michigan to a town in Arizona, filled with criminal border-crossers, and on to Nebraska, where the Great Leader's most recent recruits have gathered to glorify his questionable religion. But Sunderson's demons are also in pursuit of him.
Rich with character and humor, The Great Leader is at once a gripping excursion through America's landscapes and the poignant story of a man grappling with age, lost love, and his own darker nature.
'A classic Harrison novel, complete with humorous and introspective characters.''Library Journal
