吉姆·哈里森

James Harrison (December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016) was an American poet, novelist, and essayist. He was a prolific and versatile writer publishing over three dozen books in several genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, children's literature, and memoir. He wrote screenplays, book reviews, literary criticism, and published essays on food, travel, and sport. Harrison indicated that, of all his writing, his poetry meant the most to him.

Harrison published 24 novellas during his lifetime and is considered "America's foremost master" of that form. His first commercial success came with the 1979 publication of the trilogy of novellas Legends of the Fall, two of which were made into movies.

Harrison's work has been translated into multiple languages including Spanish, French, Greek, Chinese, and Russian. He was the recipient of multiple awards and honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969), the Mark Twain Award for distinguished contributions to Midwestern literature (1990), and induction into the American Academy of Arts & Letters (2007). Harrison wrote that "The dream that I could write a good poem, a good novel, or even a good movie for that matter, has devoured my life."

Biography

Harrison was born in Grayling, Michigan, to Winfield Sprague Harrison, a county agricultural agent, and Norma Olivia (Wahlgren) Harrison, both avid readers. Harrison was born 18 months after oldest child John, with whom he was close. His younger siblings are Judith, Mary, and David.

Harrison became blind in one eye after a childhood accident. He wrote about this in an early poem:

Harrison graduated from Haslett High School (Haslett, Michigan) in 1956. When he was 24, on November 21, 1962, his father and sister Judy died in an automobile accident.

In 1959, he married Linda King, with whom he had two daughters. He was educated at Michigan State University, where he received a B.A. (1960) and M.A. (1964) in comparative literature. After a short stint as assistant professor of English at Stony Brook University (1965–66), Harrison started working full-time as a writer. His awards include National Endowment for the Arts grants (1967, 1968, and 1969), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969–70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2007).

His work has appeared in many leading publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Outside, Playboy, Men's Journal, and The New York Times Book Review. He published several collections of novellas, two of which were eventually turned into films: Revenge (1990) and Legends of the Fall (1994).

Much of Harrison's writing is set in sparsely populated regions of North America and its West. Many stories are set in places such as Nebraska's Sand Hills, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Montana's mountains, and along the Arizona–Mexico border.

Harrison lived in Patagonia, Arizona, Livingston, Montana, and Grand Marais, Michigan. On August 31, 2009, he was featured in an episode of Anthony Bourdain's television show No Reservations, which took place in and around Livingston. He also appeared in season 7 of Bourdain's CNN series, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, in an episode which first aired on May 15, 2016.

Harrison died of heart failure at his writing desk at home in Patagonia, Arizona on the morning of 26 March 2016 (Easter Saturday), while drafting a poem; the last (unpunctuated) line he wrote was "Man shits his pants and trashed God's body".

Prose works

Early career

Harrison said he became a novelist after he fell off a cliff while bird hunting. During his convalescence, his friend Thomas McGuane suggested he write a novel, and Wolf: A False Memoir (1971) was the result. It is the story of a man who tells his life story while searching for signs of a wolf in the northern Michigan wilderness. This was followed by A Good Day to Die (1973), an ecotage novel and statement about the decline of American ecological systems, and Farmer (1976), a Lolita-like account of a country school teacher and farmer coming to grips with middle age, his mother's dying, and complications of human sexuality.

Harrison's first novellas were published in 1979 under the title Legends of the Fall. The actor Jack Nicholson, a close friend of Harrison's whom he had met through Thomas McGuane, played a peripheral role in the creation of that book. When Nicholson heard that Harrison was broke, he sent $30,000, which allowed Harrison to write Legends of the Fall. The title novella is an epic story that spans 50 years and tells the tale of a father and three sons in the vast spaces of the northern Rocky Mountains around the time of World War I. Referring to the title novella, Harrison said:"I wrote Legends of the Fall in nine days and when I re-read it, I only had to change one word. There was no revision process. None. I had thought so much about the character that writing the book was like taking dictation. I felt overwhelmed when I finished, I needed to take a vacation, but the book was done." The novella format would become an important part of both Harrison's future reputation and his output. Following Legends of the Fall, seven more collections of novellas appeared over the course of Harrison's lifetime: The Woman Lit by Fireflies (1990), Julip (1994), The Beast God Forgot to Invent (2000), The Summer He Didn't Die (2005), The Farmer's Daughter (2009), The River Swimmer (2013), and finally The Ancient Minstrel (2016), the latter appearing just before Harrison's death in March of that year.