We wanted to take a moment to note Jim Harrison’s birthday, and while he’s not exactly a fly fishing specific writer, he’s still one of the handful of writers who loom large over the fly fishing landscape.
(Interestingly, it’s Thomas McGuane’s birthday too, who is one of the “other” writers who looms large.)
From the Writer’s Almanac site comes this little passage about Jim Harrison’s life::
He had a couple of major accidents that ended up changing his writing career. When he was seven years old, he was playing with a friend and she accidentally cut him across the face and he went blind in one eye. And he felt like that set him apart from other kids, and he started turning to nature, to the woods and creeks and fields. And then, when he was in his 30s, he hurt his back badly while he was hunting and he was confined to bed. He was an active person, loved to be outdoors, and he didn’t know what to do with so much time.
His good friend, the novelist Thomas McGuane, suggested he try working on a novel. In 1971, he published Wolf: A False Memoir, and he has gone on to write many more novels, novellas, and books of poems. But for a long time he thought of himself as a poet more than anything else, and said about his novels: “They sometimes strike me as extra, burly flesh on the true bones of my life though a few of them approach some of the conditions of poetry.”
Two monster writer birthdays on one day calls for a little “bad boy” literary celebration. In that spirit, we urge you to shoot your TV tonight!
See you loading the shotgun, Tom Chandler.
You know who Tom’s fly fishing brother in law is that he met in Key West is, right?
Dan(Quote)
Old Parrotface himself. Maybe we need a McGuane trivia quiz…
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Have you watched Tarpon? 70′s in Key West with fiberglass rods…. Damn! Jimmy hits the Rockies for trout, but keeps his fly fishing and fly tying gear in his Goose. That way he fly over the ocean and find the bone fish schools and the poon, land and fish. He does the same for salmon. Bastard! *envious fins*
A quiz is better than a test, right?
Dan(Quote)
Shot the tv in 2001 and have never looked back. Used my .45 and emptied the clip. Saw Jimmy land the plane in Kalispell once dropping the wife off to see the folks in Bigfork. She’s a beauty.
Mark(Quote)
Two of the absolute greats! Never knew they shared a birthday; interesting coincidence that I’m sure made for some wonderful celebrations back in the Key West days. All of their work is wonderful reading – preferably under the glare of a head lamp camping in the outdoors after a day of great fishing. I’m not one to purchase much poetry but – Harrison’s is fantastic!
Trout Buddha (www.zentrout.com)
Trout Buddha(Quote)
In Thomas McGuane’s latest novel, Driving on the Rim, I got to check in again with a writer I’ve been following since we were both much younger, less seasoned and more full of it. I can’t decide which of his early novels is my favorite, maybe The Sporting Club, maybe Something To Be Desired. Doesn’t matter. They’re books you can reread and see the author and as a younger man and writer. You also get a chance to see yourself again as you were when you first read the novels and measure yourself against them. In Driving on the Rim, you get to see the writer in complete control of his medium and the man fully formed. Not perfectly formed, mind you, but a much more sophisticated a creature than his younger self. You sort of hope that you have developed similar layers of complexity.
So what’s it about? This guy, a fly fisherman and outdoors guy, who’s avoided growing up as much as possible while engaging in all of those activities–marriage, parenthood, divorce, career building and career flailing–that should signal maturity. It’s quixotic and cynical and funny in the way his first novels were. It’s also as serious as any novel written in the last dozen years or so.
Driving on the Rim is an extremely satisfying novel by a mature writer at the top of his game. That you’ll get the idea you know the protagonist and the novelist is a bonus.
Brad121(Quote)