The Best Jim Harrison Novel
I found the author Jim Harrison because the movie Legends of the Fall was such a fantastic film. If you haven’t seen it, then you owe yourself the treat. It is truly a classic, epic American film. As usual, if I see a great film, I do a little research and try to find out if the movie was based on a novel—even loosely.
This is a great way to find good reads, even though I’d prefer to read the book before I watch the movie. Nonetheless, it turns out that Legends of the Fall was based on a novella by an author I had never heard of before: Jim Harrison.
By this point, he had quite the list of published novels, short-stories, novellas and books of poems. So I went to the bookstore and purchased the Legends novella and read it in a sitting. It was a very good read. The next day I went and purchased another of his books. This time it was a short novel called Wolf. The contrast from Legends was palpable and it really showed the literary range of this great American author.
I knew I would be reading his works in their entirety.
And so it was. I read them all. And as he released new books, I read them too. If you haven’t read Harrison before, then it is hard to describe. It definitely counts as literature. Great literature. But it’s raunchy at times, but not gratuitously so. It fits the narrative, the character, and from what I gather, the author himself.
It is just the type of writing that I can relate to and can read without putting down. A mix of Hemingway and Bukowski, maybe. But with a little more humor mixed in.
Unfortunately, Jim Harrison passed away several years ago. I have found myself re-reading his works lately and it is difficult to say which one is the best. Clearly a subjective task at best.
When it comes to the pure literary task of writing a novel, then I would have to say that Returning to Earth is Jim Harrison’s best novel. It just captures everything good about his writing talent and puts it into a story that is captivating and very deep on a spiritual, humanistic experience. Nothing short of reading the novel itself would do it justice.
If you have read Jim Harrison novels before, but haven’t read Returning to Earth, then you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to experience it for the first time. And if you have never read anything by Harrison, then this novel is a great place to start.
Book Synopsis:
In the universally-praised Returning to Earth, Jim Harrison has delivered a masterpiece—a tender, profound, and magnificent novel about life, death, and the possibility of finding redemption in unlikely places. Donald is a middle-aged Chippewa-Finnish man slowly dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. His condition deteriorating, he realizes no one will be able to pass on to his children their family history once he is gone. He begins dictating to his wife, Cynthia, stories he has never shared with anyone—as around him, his family struggles to lay him to rest with the same dignity with which he has lived. Over the course of the year following Donald’s death, his daughter begins studying Chippewa ideas of death for clues about her father’s religion, while Cynthia, bereft of the family she created to escape the malevolent influence of her own father, finds that redeeming the past is not a lost cause. Returning to Earth is a deeply moving book about origins and endings, making sense of loss, and living with honor for the dead. It is among the finest novels of Harrison’s long, storied career, and confirms his standing as one of the most important American writers now working.
Top Reader’s Comments:
“Jim Harrison inspires ever so many with his evocative use of language and his deep knowledge of whatever he writes. He inspired my son to start reading; challenges confirmed bibliophiles; and sometimes beginning creative writers think twice about crushing their keyboard or burning their pencil. But they resist, as they should, and try to create something that will move a soul somewhere. I met Mr Harrison at a creative writing gig at Florida State University, introduced by an equally adept soul mover, Robert OlenButler. I introduced myself as a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and we had a great chat about grouse hunting and the tasty Italian restaurants of Iron Mountain.
This trenchant work, Returning to Earth, tackles death, final wishes, Chippewa culture, and dealing with the endgame. He captures the U.P. like no other. Fires and lilacs are enduring images.”
“Jim Harrison is, quite simply, American's finest contemporary author. Few writers can craft a sequel that stands alone as a fine work of literature, but for Harrison it's a regular exercise. Harrison's characters are so well developed and completely compelling in their humanity, and the quality of his prose and the inventiveness he employs is remarkable. Harrison proves that we are a nation of interesting mortals whose lives are worthy of review and reflection and not fantastic superheroes doing the ridiculously impossible. At some point in the future historians and others interested in late 20th century Americana will turn to Harrison in general and "Returning to Earth" in particular to see how it really was. Excellent read.”