Yet it is an often fascinating story not easy to articulate. "Tracking," though, beyond covering some old autobiographical ground--education of the hard-knocks and formal varieties, the attention-deficit aspirations and wanderlust--excels at cogently and concisely presenting and exploring Harrison's outlook and influences, the "puzzled trance of hormones and study, reading and fantasy" that went into shaping an intuition-driven, masterful storyteller, one who could delve into the mystery of locations to uncover the half-buried stories just waiting to be seized. All of the underpinnings of life, Harrison offers by way of explanation, "were mythologically oriented rather than drawn to accepted and rather ordinary agreements with what constituted reality."
Facilitated by such transcending a mindset, a sometimes paradoxically earthy and ever-questing writer like Harrison is not so much a creator as he is a discoverer, an ever-evolving explorer of bigger truths and visions explicated with genuine sincerity and compassion. And as indicated by the breadth and depth of issues and ideas in The Summer He Didn’t Die that serve to impart an idiosyncratic version of reality in differing yet quietly inculcating ways, Jim Harrison isn’t just telling stories when it comes to telling stories.
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EXCERPT from title novella "The Summer He Didn’t Die."
They pushed on further than usual to a beaver pond upstream, on the creek. Berry climbed a fir tree on the edge of the deep pond and pointed out the locations of trout she could see from her aerial position. B.D. waded in his trousers because both his waders and hip boots had leaks that exceeded the abilities of duct tape. It was a warmish morning and there was the additional great pleasure of late August fishing without the hordes of airborne biting insects. He tried a fly called a bitch creek nymph but it didn’t work so he tied on a cone nosed rubber bugger a resorter had given him and soon had eight fine trout for lunch. While Berry plaited and wove a grass basket for the fish B.D. sat on a stump where he kept hidden a pint of Schnapps for his fishing expeditions in the area. Strange to say he didn’t feel like a morning drink. His thoughts drifted to the old days when at first signs of trouble he would simply run away as far as a tank of gas would take him, maybe only to Bruce’s Crossing where he’d fish the Middle Branch of the Ontanagon and sleep in his battered old van. What happiness! Sitting there on the stump he was visited by a wave of incomprehension. The sun in the sky wasn’t problematical but who could have imagined water? Berry rolled her eyes when Bitch ate a fat black snake with Teddy pulling on the snake’s tail for portion. Berry was reason enough not to run away. She could talk with her eyes. Far in the distance they could hear the horn of the Chevette beeping and headed for home.
Article comments
1 - John Spivey
It's interesting timing to have a review of Harrison occur at the same time as a review of Peacock considering their close relationship.