Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 802: The Life And Death of Jim Harrison

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Ep. 802: The Life And Death of Jim Harrison · The MeatEater Podcast

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  Speaker 2: All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're doing Joined Today by
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  Speaker 2: UH with no headphones on. I've been pushing the fill
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  Speaker 2: on it.
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  Speaker 3: I'm in full support the headphones. Just for the audience
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  Speaker 3: at home. This is a conversation we've had on my
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  Speaker 3: off mic a lot. But the headphones help guess, especially
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: ones who aren't used to talking into microphones. It helps
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  Speaker 3: them hear their own voice and stay close to the
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  Speaker 3: microphone or else I'll have to yell at them from across.
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  Speaker 2: That makes you, like I always said, it makes you
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  Speaker 2: feel like God's talking to you. So it's gonna be
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  Speaker 2: different now without these headphones on. Join Today by Todd Godder,
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  Speaker 2: who just published a new book about a biography of
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  Speaker 2: Jim Harrison. So any any hunting and fishing type person
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  Speaker 2: who likes to read a lot is of course familiar
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  Speaker 2: with Jim Harrison. If you if you go, if you're curious, like,
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  Speaker 2: who the hell is Jim Harrison, the greatest point of
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  Speaker 2: contact would be what was that? Why'd you make a
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  Speaker 2: ten signal?
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  Speaker 1: Facing the book?
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  Speaker 2: That can people if you're trying to go like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: fucking Jim Harrison, you go, you know, Legends of the Fall,
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  Speaker 2: and people like, oh, yeah, but that's even that's just
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  Speaker 2: barely scratching the surface. I'm partial to the old stuff.
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  Speaker 2: So like Wolf, Brown Dog, He's got a book of
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  Speaker 2: He's got a finalenminal book of essays called Just Before Dark,
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  Speaker 2: which is some of the most beautiful, brilliant hunting and
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  Speaker 2: fishing writing combined with some of the most obnoxious and
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  Speaker 2: arrogant food writing. What are the other oh and then
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  Speaker 2: literature essays? So Just Before Dark is like a complex
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  Speaker 2: Like Jim Harrison was writing about hunting and fishing and
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  Speaker 2: sports Illustrated back in the seventies, and it like collects
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  Speaker 2: all that. It's just really brilliant stuff on hunting and fishing.
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  Speaker 2: He also has all these characters that hunt and fish,
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  Speaker 2: and he has characters that are filled with like environmental rage.
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  Speaker 2: Wolf one of my favorites is a false memoir. It's
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  Speaker 2: like a guy who is wandering around in Michigan's Upper Peninsula,
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  Speaker 2: in the Huron Mountains, trying to catch a glimpse of
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  Speaker 2: a wolf. Later in life he started doing these more complex,
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  Speaker 2: I don't want to call them, like less angry, more
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  Speaker 2: complex works like Dolva, The Road Home God, He's got
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  Speaker 2: a million. How many books does he have?
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  Speaker 1: Don she has twelve novels, nine collections of novella's, something
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  Speaker 1: like eighteen books of poetry, a couple book, collections of
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  Speaker 1: essays like Just before Dark children's book called The Boy
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  Speaker 1: Ran of the Woods. So just an outrageously an outrageous
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  Speaker 1: amount of output.
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  Speaker 2: That, yeah, like everything ranging from like outdoor stuff. Much
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  Speaker 2: of it's tinged with like a kind of a little
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  Speaker 2: bit of an infantile kind of male fantasy kind of
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  Speaker 2: stuff is tied in there. But like a like a
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  Speaker 2: absolutely brilliant writer, like like a technically brilliant writer of
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  Speaker 2: the one of the great writers who's colored by the outdoors,
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  Speaker 2: the worlds of hunting and fishing, very complex kind of
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  Speaker 2: frustrating person full of flaws, which we'll get into, but again,
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  Speaker 2: a brilliant writer. And Todd are our guest. This is
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  Speaker 2: his first book and he's a literary professor at Utah
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  Speaker 2: Valley University and born in Philadelphia. And like, what age
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  Speaker 2: did you start reading or that mcgwain, we'll talk about mcgwain. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: we could write what age did you start reading Harrison? Man?
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  Speaker 2: Like how did you get on to Harrison?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah? I probably started reading Harrison back in my early twenties, honestly,
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  Speaker 1: And I think it began like it begins with lots
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  Speaker 1: of people with Legends of the Fall. I think I
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  Speaker 1: had a friend of mine turned me on to Legends
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  Speaker 1: and when I began college in New York and just
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  Speaker 1: immediately gravitated right to him. I mean, he hoped me
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  Speaker 1: from the start, and from there, you know, I just
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  Speaker 1: went back and started did a deep dive in Harrison.
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  Speaker 1: And I remember, you know, I was trying to get
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  Speaker 1: hold of every book Jim was writing, back to Wolf,
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  Speaker 1: to Warlock, to Farmer or Farmer to Warlock to you know,
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  Speaker 1: all the way up until what Jim had written in
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  Speaker 1: the mid nineties or so, and then really tried to
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  Speaker 1: catch up with anything new that was coming out with him,
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  Speaker 1: you know, ever after and I think I went from
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  Speaker 1: his fiction, then to his poetry, and then to his essays,
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  Speaker 1: and just got completely hooked to by his food and
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  Speaker 1: wine writing, by his outdoors essays, his hunting and fishing essays,
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  Speaker 1: and sort of was off and running. And then got
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  Speaker 1: a few chances to teach him in graduate school, taught
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  Speaker 1: him a few times at Utah Valley University and tried
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  Speaker 1: to incorporate him whenever I could into a class, and
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  Speaker 1: and then you know, just kept rereading him over the
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  Speaker 1: years until I finally sort of got into a position
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  Speaker 1: to write this book.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, Like one thing I haven't gotten into his
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  Speaker 2: is short of outside of like Robert Service, I'm not like,
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  Speaker 2: I'm not a poem guy. Creation of Sam McGee is
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  Speaker 2: like iking genius, you know, But I'm not a poem guy.
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  Speaker 2: Like I never got into his stuff, like his his
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  Speaker 2: I never read his books of poems. But I started
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  Speaker 2: out like we were all when we were young, like
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  Speaker 2: in college from Michigan, we were all way into Wolf,
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  Speaker 2: like way into Wolf and then way into brown Dog
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  Speaker 2: and other stuff like the Michigan stuff. You know, like
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  Speaker 2: pissed off dudes a hunting and fished a lot. That
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  Speaker 2: was our deal, right, like big time. And then later
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  Speaker 2: I kind of like discovered the essays and then I
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  Speaker 2: got really in it. I got for a long time.
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  Speaker 2: I was really interested in food, and I liked all
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  Speaker 2: his food stuff. But for me, it was like he, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: his his hunting and fishing stuff and his environmental awareness
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  Speaker 2: is what drew us in. It was weird though, because,
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  Speaker 2: like you mentioned that, he he wasn't a big game
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  Speaker 2: hunter man. Like he would write a lot about eating venison.
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  Speaker 2: He'd even write about eating roadkill stuff, but he didn't
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  Speaker 2: like any kind of he talked about. He saw a
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  Speaker 2: bear skinned out one time and it looked too much
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  Speaker 2: like a dude hanging there. You know. He was like
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  Speaker 2: pretty particular about what he participated in.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's finny. He loved to eat big game, but
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  Speaker 1: he wasn't a big game hunter. I mean, he hunted
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  Speaker 1: deer when he was younger, you know, and occasionally hunted
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  Speaker 1: deer even even into his thirties and early forties, but
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  Speaker 1: he you know, it's a great story of Jim was
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  Speaker 1: out hunting with a friend of his from Livingston Montana,
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  Speaker 1: and Jim had settled outside of Livingston, Montana later around
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  Speaker 1: two thousand, living in the Paradise Valley, and he went
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  Speaker 1: out to hunting.
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  Speaker 2: We should hit that route, did he real quick? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: Hit like where he was born, Yeah, where he spent time,
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  Speaker 2: and then where he died.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, definitely. So Jim was born in Grayling, Michigan,
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  Speaker 1: grew up in Reed City, and grew up in Hazlet
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  Speaker 1: outside of Lansing, and then settled with his family in
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  Speaker 1: Lake Lelanis in Michigan Lake Leland Peninsula, and then really
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  Speaker 1: lived there for most of his life until around two thousand.
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  Speaker 1: So he's born in nineteen thirty seven. Around two thousand,
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  Speaker 1: he moves relocates out to Montana, where his daughters were
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  Speaker 1: living at the time. Uh settles in the Paradise Valley
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  Speaker 1: outside of Livingston, Montana, and Uh ended up buying a
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  Speaker 1: small casida down in Patagony, Arizona. And so the family
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  Speaker 1: would you know, spend half the year in Montana and
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  Speaker 1: spend the winter in Patagony, Arizona. And that's sort of
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  Speaker 1: the general you know that those are Jim's main places.
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  Speaker 2: Right, and hunting a lot of kail down there.
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  Speaker 1: And hunting a ton of a ton of merns quailed
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  Speaker 1: down in Patagonia.
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  Speaker 2: Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And of course famously he had a cabin up in
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  Speaker 1: the Upper Peninsula which he in gram Ray, just outside
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  Speaker 1: of Gramma Ray, Michigan. And so those are like his
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  Speaker 1: big spots.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: So when Jim moves out to Livingston around two thousand,
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  Speaker 1: you know, he he would go out aid, he would
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  Speaker 1: got bird hunting for hunts and different things like that
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  Speaker 1: Hungarian partridge.
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  Speaker 4: Uh.
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  Speaker 1: But occasionally he go for big game. But there's a
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  Speaker 1: story of Jim going out one time with a friend
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  Speaker 1: of his from Livingston, a guy named Dan Laarn and
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  Speaker 1: he they were hunting antelope and or pronghorn, and they
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  Speaker 1: get finally into a position where Jim can take a
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  Speaker 1: shot and he uh, he passes the gun to Dan
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  Speaker 1: and says, you take the shot right. And of course
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  Speaker 1: he would want to eat the meat. He'd want, he'd
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  Speaker 1: want he had won the animal, but he couldn't actually
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  Speaker 1: pull the trick execute. And I think it comes back
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  Speaker 1: to the you know, the reason you were suggesting partly
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  Speaker 1: is he couldn't he couldn't handle killing animals that were mammals, frankly,
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  Speaker 1: and he thought they looked too much like their insides,
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  Speaker 1: their parts looked too much like humans. And I think
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  Speaker 1: he among other reasons, but I think that was definitely
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  Speaker 1: one of them.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was something of a fly fishing snob. He
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  Speaker 2: wrote a great piece about ice fishing one time, but
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  Speaker 2: was definitely like a fly snob, you know. But he
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  Speaker 2: hated snobs. Yeah, hated snobs, but was a little bit
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  Speaker 2: of a fly fishing snob. One of his many contradictions.
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  Speaker 1: I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: he was a little bit of a fly fishing snob.
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  Speaker 2: But he hated arrogance, you know, outside of his own you.
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  Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, he for an arrogant guy, one of his
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  Speaker 1: many contradictions. Right, for an arrogant guy. He couldn't stand
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  Speaker 1: there against and other people, right, But he was Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: he was a little bit snobby about fly fishing, but
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  Speaker 1: you know, that came later. I think he grew up
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  Speaker 1: bait fishing and stuff like that and fly fishing too,
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  Speaker 1: but really later in life. He really I think McGain
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  Speaker 1: was very instrumental in introducing him to fly fishing, and
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  Speaker 1: really Jim was already doing it, but really showed him
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  Speaker 1: the ropes.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know what, we were talking about his hangout zones.
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  Speaker 2: We kind of missed like he also like he's one
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  Speaker 2: of these dudes if you look at like Elder Leopold,
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  Speaker 2: Elder Leopold is embraced by Wisconsin and Elder Leopold is
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: embraced by New Mexico. Yeah, Okay, these are like and
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: there's other places embraced Hi because Elder Leopold was like
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: el Leopord, taught in Madison and kind of wrote about Wisconsin,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: spend a bunch of time in New Mexico. So these
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  Speaker 2: guys that has these like these guys a bunch of homes,
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  Speaker 2: you know, or multiple homes. Harrison also for a big
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  Speaker 2: part of the country. Harrison is also like a Key
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: West guy, right right, because he was when when dudes
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: were figuring out down there, like catching permit and catching
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  Speaker 2: bonefish on flies and stuff in the seventies when that
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  Speaker 2: was kind of coming into a thing and tarping and stuff,
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  Speaker 2: like he was there. So it's just yet another place
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  Speaker 2: around the country. Northern Michigan, Arizona, absolutely, Montana, Key West
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  Speaker 2: or all these places that sort of hold a little
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  Speaker 2: bit of a like they kind of hold the Harrison mystique,
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  Speaker 2: you know.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he's like he's like Leopold, but he's
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  Speaker 1: also like Hemingway in that regard, right, Hemingway has his places, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: Michigan is his place. Key West is definitely one of
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  Speaker 1: his places. Cuba's place, Cuba's place, France is his place,
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  Speaker 1: Spain is his place, Italy is his place. He's claimed
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: by all of these different geographical and settled in Idaho eventually.
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  Speaker 1: And and Harrison's very much the same way, right, He's
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  Speaker 1: got these very strong sort of local identifications, right. Uh, Patagonia,
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  Speaker 1: Montana definitely first and foremost Michigan, but also Key West.
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  Speaker 2: One of the things that grabbed like when I say
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  Speaker 2: I'm talking about it just like me and my like
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  Speaker 2: circle of people, and when we just grew up like
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  Speaker 2: you know, like definite didn't like grew up like not
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  Speaker 2: well off, okay, and it grew up kind of not
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  Speaker 2: We grew up not real clear on how the whole
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: like college world worked. Like most of my bodies were
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: definitely like first time people and their families and went
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: to college. You know, my dad didn't finish high school, right,
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  Speaker 2: so it was like we didn't understand the guys I
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: grew up around. We didn't like understand that world of
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: like education, We didn't understand the world that you'd become
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  Speaker 2: a writer. We didn't know about writers, do you know
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  Speaker 2: what I mean? It was like, oh, yeah, everybody's like, oh,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna be a game ward and you know, you
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: just didn't know. Even though we're definitely afraid of game wards,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: people thought like, oh, I'll be a game warden when
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: I grow up. But all of a sudden, like here's
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: this dude who grew up like north of us. And
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: the thing in Michigan is, no matter where you are,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: the real Rednecks are just north of you, do you
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: know what I'm saying? Yeah, So I've talked about this before,
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  Speaker 2: Like if you lived in like where I grew up
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: in Twin lank the real Rednecks were in Holton, just north.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: But if you talk to a dude in Holton, the
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: real Rednecks are just north in Hisspiia. And it like
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: advances up the state. And so here's this guy like
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: two or three clicks north. The people in France are
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: buying his books, and it's kind of like, how does
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: that happen? Do you know what I mean? Like, how
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: is this dude like known and celebrated in France from
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: some redneck ass town north of US? Do I mean?
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Like how like how did he? How did that click?
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: You know? His dad was what his dad was an
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: extension agent.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was an agricultural agent. You're right. I mean,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Jim is an nomally right, He's an extremely unusual in
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: that regard. I Mean, the one thing I'd say is
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: that he came from a family of readers, So his
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: dad was an agricultural agent, you know, went to farm
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: school at m.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: S U.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Still an agricultural primarily.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Was that the first generation in his family to go
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: to college would have been his old man.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: It was his dad, Yeah, his dad, and his dad
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: was driven I think from an you know, from an
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: early age. I think he was extremely motivated by sort
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: of agricultural research and saw himself as something like an
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: agricultural missionary, coming out of sort of the dustbel era
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: where farms were you know, had certain practices that led
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: to environmental sort of devastation of their farms and dust dustbells,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: so that he had.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: That he grew up around that land ethic.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so he grew up around that land. I think
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: he was a big Steinbeck fan, right, and and and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: he came from a family of primarily non readers. And
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: so where Jim's dad, and his dad's name was Winfield,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: you know, got this sort of motivation Winfield. Oh yeah,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I've caught that, Yeah, Winfield. And where he got this
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: sort of motivation to educate himself and read is not
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: entirely clear. He didn't necessarily get it from his family,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: but he had. He was driven, and I think he
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: was driven largely by wanting to learn as much as
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: he could about agriculture, but he also read Steinbeck, and
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: he read literature, and he was really interested in reading.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: And Jim's mother too, was an avid reader. And I
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: think they instilled that in all of their children. But
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the thing is they didn't know any writers either, right,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: They didn't know Jim's brother, David Harrison once told me,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: he said, we didn't know writers. We didn't know writers.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: We didn't know anyone who knew any writers, not let
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: alone us. Right there, stage is removed, Yeah, there's stage
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: is removed. So, you know, being a writer as an occupation,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: as a living, as a calling, as it was for Jim,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: was just unheard of to his parents, you know, and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: so when Jim came home it's age sixteen and said
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I want to be a poet, they just had no
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: idea what to do with him. Right, But how does
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a guy like Jim go, you know, from that background
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: to being sort of read broadly and celebrated in Paris.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a difficult question, right, how does.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: He That's kind of I remember doing a book one time. Yeah,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: someone asked a question, you know, and it was kind
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: of like the whole question was the whole point of
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: the book. Yeah. They'd be like, well, I mean I
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: just spent I mean it's I just spent two hundred
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: and fifty pages explaining that.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Like right, yeah, right, yeah exactly. I mean I can't
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: just tell you. I mean the short answers. He he
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: was incredibly motivated and worked.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I love this description by mcwaine. Mcgwain called and I'm
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: talking about Tom mcgwaan, who is one of Jim's really
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: close friends.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: He's been I don't know, he's been on the show
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: a million years ago.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like six years ago.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Dude. He was old then, and he's got a new
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: book out now. Yeah, he's still still it was the
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: name of the McGain episode. Do you remember, if people
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: want to refer back, we're gonna mention mcgwaine. A number
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: of times. McGain was like a contemporary of I'm sorry,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: go ahead, yeah, well, clonel, dig that up.
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: I mean mcgwaane on the beauty of not knowing.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, what a gentleman.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, great guy, and uh, you know, we
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: can talk about how they're connected and stuff like that.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: But mcgwaine once called Jimmy said he's a country boy
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: who was touched. Oh is how he described Jim. And
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's a really good description. Touched
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: by genius, that is right. And Jim worked extremely hard
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: at his writing and got himself into a position, I
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: mean where he really worked his way into, you know,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: literary culture in America. But I think I think his
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: his sort of rustic identity, right, his what did you
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: say up north? What do you say? He's above north? Right,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: He's way up there, right, as part of his appeal
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: in France. So I'd say, you know, not only did
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: he earn that through his writing, but I also think
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the appeal is partly where he comes from.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Like they recognized him as a country bumpkin.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: They recognized him not a.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Bumpkin, but they recognized him as like a man of
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: the like someone of the land in a way, you know.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I think I think the French associated gym
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: with wilderness, right, the American wilderness, the American you know,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the Great north Woods. Someone who's writing about the sort
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: of land and landscape and history of northern Michigan and
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: of northern America, right, I think that's part of his appeal.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: So his sort of rusticity is part of his appeal
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: in France.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because he never got there's a thing that happens.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: It didn't happen to him. But I remember when I
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: was going away to writing school. I remember like I
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: always read about like trappers and hunters and explorers and shit,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: that's all I wanted to read about when I was
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: a kid, when I was going away to writing school.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: After I got out of regular college, I remember being like, man,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: I should probably remember I went and tried to read
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: James Joyce as dubliners, because like, I should probably figure
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: out what people actually write about, do you know what
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: I mean? And then he gave up on that. He
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: never got, he never fell for that trap because early
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: work was about the people he knew. Like his early
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: work was about the people he knew. You know, he
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: didn't try to be something he wasn't, but he wrote
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: about it with like the skill set of someone who is.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Not that I think that's right. I Mean, he was
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: so well read, and so I think, you know, he's
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: he's coming to his even his early works with this
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: immense body of sort of learning and reading behind him, right,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: But he was smart enough not to fall into that
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: trap of sort of trying to to closely or carefully emulate, right,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: some of the some of the writers that he so admired.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think he really claimed that maybe if
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: he used and borrowed some of the style and was
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: influenced by writers, he really made it his own right,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: and he was going to anchor his books in the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: people he knew, the world that he grew up in, right,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the local details and characteristics of his own specific upbringing
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: right in Michigan. And you know, and he carries that
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: around the country with him and Wolf.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: What's his deal? What's his deal with like his love
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: hate kind of like like he's haunted by Hemingway, haunted
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: by Hemingway. Like what is that all about? Did you
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: ever come to understand that? Like you never tell if
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: he likes the guy or hates the guy.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he was conflicted. I think he wanted
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to distance himself from Hemingway because he had so much
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: in common with heming People would.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Point out the right hanging out the same place. But
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Hemingway's in Illinois, dude, Chicago.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: You're right, yeah, but he but he spent his summers
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: all the time in difference. Man, No, I agree, I
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: won't claim otherwise. Yeah, dad is a doctor or something. Right, Yeah,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: you're right, So his dad's a doctor. He comes from
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a very different background, grows up in Oak Park, Illinois,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: comes from a religious family. His mother was very religious,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and Jim's mother was very religious. But uh, you know Hemingway.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: But Hemingway also, you know, his early books are associated.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: They're said in Michigan, up in Michigan, same rivers he fished, man, Yeah,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I know exactly, the big two hearted in other rivers
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: and so you know, and he's what Hemingway's writes about
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: fishing and hunting. Lived in Paris, right, fished in Key West,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and his associated with Key West was a man of
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: big appetites like Harrison was, and so there's lots of
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: parallels between Harrison and Hemingway.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: They like to pull a cork.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you like to pull a cork from time to time,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to put it mildly. But so I think, on one level, right,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a whole generation of writers coming after Hemingway felt like
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: they had the distance in themselves from him to do
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: exactly what you suggested earlier, right, was to avoid being
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: sort of pulled into his universe, right, become a satellite
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: instead of their own system.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: And Hemingway had that allure, right, he had that appeal
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and that power, And so I think writers went out
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: of their way to distance themselves from him after him, right.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to not be like, you know, guys like Hemingway. Right,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: whenever I'm talking about Harriston, someone says something about him
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: and I just roll my ass like it's not the same. No,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: it ain't the same thing.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: No, it's not the same thing. And he writes extremely,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: very differently than Hemingway. And so I think, you know,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: there's a love hate thing there. I think he tried
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to distance himself from Hemingway and did so successfully. But
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I think he also admired Hemingway, but maybe didn't want to,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: you know, was reluctant maybe to celebrate Hemingway as much
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: as he might have otherwise coming out of his you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: as everyone did, you know, growing up in Hemingway's shadows,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: so to speak. And so, yeah, did I ever get
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: to the bottom of that? I mean, he likes Hemingway, right,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: he admires his writing, and he says it plenty of times,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: but he also says, you know, ah, he dismisses him simultaneously,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and so I think there's a conflict at his court.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, talk about tell everybody about like you look at Harrison,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: like here he is, you know, yeah, on the car,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: I'm holding up the book cover, the book. This is
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: when he's older, just closer to way, closer to death.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: I guess a big thing that comes up in his
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: work comes up. I mean, the guy can't he can't write.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I was gonna saw on a number
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: of pages. I can't do it that way. Harrison Man,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: he was disfigured as a child, and it permeates like
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: it's every it's everything, it's in everything, it's baked into everything.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: He's got what he's got a googly eye. That's his
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: his word, not mine, his word, not mine. It haunted him, dude,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Like it's like it became him. You know, like explain
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: that the folks like how that happened. And in the
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: way that just was kind of like, you know, it
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: was his uh what's that famous uh you know, the
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: the Orson Wells deal, like the fucking rosebud. Yeah, it
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: was his rosebud moment.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: You know, it's his rosebud. I think that's really a
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: good way of saying it. So, you know, it's a
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: spring day in nineteen forty five, I think.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Is that what it was for it? Okay?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was seven years old and he was you know,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: living in Reed City, Michigan. Went down the street and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: he was playing with a young girl and they were
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: in a lot behind a hospital and what exactly in
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: the hospital?
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Reed City? Yeah, you were going to get the wrong
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: picture and they hear behind a hospital.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Well, it was just it was just it was just
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: an empty lot right just down the street from his house.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: You know what, kids playing in back lots and there
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: was you know, some woods behind very old, little small
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: little town, small town, small hospital. Yeah, rustic and he's
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: out back, and what exactly was going on it has
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: never been made entirely clear, but I think they were experimenting,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: playing around, maybe playing doctor, right Jim. Jim would say
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: this himself, right, that they were experimenting, and something happened,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: something clicked. The girl panicked or you know, got scared
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: or defensive, and she grabbed a piece of glass broken
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: from a beaker that was next to them on a
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: trash pile and jabbed it at Jim and caught him
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: in the eye.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: So and and Wolf, what happens to the character who
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: is very much like him, but not him. It's like
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: a broken beer bottle or something, but yeah, a beaker glass, Yeah.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: It was like a beaker glass caught him in the eye,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and immediately, you know, the sort of left side of
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: his face, you know, went blind left, you know, his
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: left his left eye. And so the girl took off
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and he went. He went across the street to his
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: neighbor's house, and the mother was a nurse and she
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: recognized the severity of what had happened immediately, and is
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: you know, everybody freaked out. He ended up in Grand
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Rapids in the hospital for a couple of weeks with
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: bandages on both his eyes, and at one point they
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: tied him to the bed because he was panning and
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: they wanted to keep him still. And this was an
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: incredibly traumatic experience for him, right, and he recalled it's
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: an experience, like you said, it's his rosebud. It's something
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: he would never forget for the rest of his life.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: And all he could really see out of that eye
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: was just sort of like maybe light and shadow a
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: little bit, right, so he could remember seeing a bit
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: of sort of the blur, the vague blur of the moon.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: But for all intents and purposes that I was blinded.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: He'd never get his vision back, and it was incredibly
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: traumatic for him. You know, literally the left side of
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: his his his vision was completely cut off with the.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Rest of it changed how the brother looked man like, and.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: It changed how he looked. He felt, uh, you know,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: sort of freakish. He had a googly eye right his
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: he says, his eye jogged in its socket like a
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: milky sparrow.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: It was uh. And and he you know, he thought
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: he thought he had buck teeth, He thought he had
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: this swarthy complexion he had.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: This comes up a lot as he's like just constantly
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: mentioning the people would think he was people would think
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: he was hispanic or and he's got this crazy eye,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: and they didn't believe that he's from where he's from.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: And definitely, yeah, I mean he was. He did have
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: a kind of swarthier complexion. Part of that was just
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: from being outside. Part of that was just maybe the
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: pigmentation in his skin. He just had a little darker complexion,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, and he really felt like an outsider.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: He felt sort of alienated from those around him. And
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I think if you wanted to sort of draw this
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: back his early to you know, that period in his
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: life he sort of retreated into the woods. And Jim
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: already liked the woods a lot, but this was a moment,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I think when he really developed attachments to the natural,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: non human world, because there he wasn't judged right. He
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: could go out into the woods, you know, observed creatures
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: walk in the woods, things like that, and there became
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: sort of this really stark division between the societal and
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the judgment that he experienced there with his eye and
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: his fireman that I think in his mind was sort
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: of blown out of proportion and.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Amih you get the sense that I always had the
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: sense that he thought when he looked in the mirror, Yeah,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: he saw something a lot worse than what was there. Right.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: You look at Jim at thirty, and you know, you
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: see something askew with his eye. But it's not probably
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: what he am at. He probably you know the way
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I think in some days he thought it was like
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: a monster. Yeah, I think he looked. I think he
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: felt like he looked like a monster. And you know,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the children's book that he wrote, The Boy He Ran
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: into the Woods is really about is exactly about this experience,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and it becomes sort of like an origin story for
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Harrison where he says, you know what sort of this started,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of you know, it was the origin
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: of my sort of interest in and fascination and love
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and devotion to the natural world on the one hand,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: but also to his giving himself sort of an artistic perspective.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he wasn't in it now. He was off the side, right,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: And that's something he would later name his memoir Off
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: to the Side, Right, because of his disfigurement, he felt
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: he he was sort of always off to the side now,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: seeing things differently, literally figuratively right and sort of not
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: part of the crowd, but observing part of the crowd.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And so you know, it becomes this sort of beginning,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: sort of this mythology, right, this origin story of Harrison.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: But you know, and that all may very well be true,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: and I think in many ways it is, but he
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: would still carry this trauma with him for the rest
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of his life. You know, I had real consequences for him.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: There's a story about him walking through the woods one
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: time fishing in northern Michigan and he's with this guy
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: named Mike Ballard, the guy he used to fish with
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: in the Upper Peninsula, and it was getting dark and
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Mike's urging Jim to hurry up, and he says, I can't.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: You know, I can't go any faster. If I get
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: a branch in my other eye, I'm done. And when
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: you stop and think about that, you're like, oh, yeah,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I got it. Like living with one kidney man. He's
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: got that one eye right, because that's all he's got
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: left right in terms vision, And so one of the
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: funny not one of the funnier he's it was.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Also we haven't touched on this. Also, at times a
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: very funny writer. But in one of his bird hunting essays,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: I think he talks about the moment it occurred to
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: him that instead of carrying around binoculars, you could buy
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: a monocular. That's great, Yeah, yeah, a stroke of genius.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: It was to realize you didn't need two things.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: It came with real practical consequences, right.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: And then another big one with being a kid as
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: a and I kind of know the way it comes
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: up and his I kind of know the way it
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: like comes up in his writing and things. But he
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: also like his father and his sister are killing the
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: car accident. Yeah, and that also just lives like it
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: just plays out over decades of writing. You know. It's
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: just it's it's becomes baked into his everything, you know,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: and it's probably kind of like I just said, he's funny,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: he's funny. Oh, also it's his stuff is sad. Yeah,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, I keep talking about wolves Is. It remains
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: my it remains my favorite work of his, not just
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: because of it, like not because of the work. I
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: mean the work for sure, but it remains a favorite
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: of mine because of what it meant to like, what
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: it meant to grow up in those areas and to
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: hang out in the Up a lot, and then here's
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: this guy that like wrote about that in that way,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: it also remains a favorite of mine because, like when
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: I discovered it, I was at that age kind of
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: like at that age of where the of where the
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: narrator is. I remember I saw my first Wolf track
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: in the Up, you know what I mean. It's like,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: so I hold it out as my favorite, not because
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: it's his best work, but it's it's his most meaningful thing,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: you know, and it has I don't want to blow
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: up for anybody. It has one of the most abrupt, sad,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: catatonic like endings to a book. He goes to see
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: his grandma, like stops in at his grandma's and like
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: nothing happens. He just says a couple things about leaving
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: his grandma's house, and it leaves you just gutted. So
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: he's like funny, but it's sad, and like that sadness
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: like his losing his dad and his sister's big for him,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's one of the most remarkable things
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: about Jim that I found writing this book is his ability.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: You know, He's went through incredibly deep depressions throughout his life.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Like how bad would that get for him?
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: All right? Would it make it that he couldn't work ever?
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I mean he's so prolific, you know.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Later in life, really, after the death of his father
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: and sister, he would work through the deepest of depressions
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: and somehow his poetry would help to sort of lift
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: him out of it. Right, But before he really really
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: started writing, before his his before the deaths of his
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: loved ones, he wouldn't necessarily write, and he would fall.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: He would fall into the deepest of depressions even as
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: a young man, right Like while he was in the
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: years that take place in the novel Wolf, and he
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: would come close to sort of nervous crack ups.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Really serious. Tell a story of how of the of
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: the car crash. Yeah, so I don't even know the
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: I don't even know the deal, the win or where.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know that.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: So Jim was in his in his in his twenties.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I think it happened in nineteen sixty two, and it
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: was Thanksgiving weekend, and Jim was married to his wife Linda,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: and they were visiting with his parents. They were in
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Haslet and Jim's father, Winfield, and his sister Judy were
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: going to go on a hunting trip, your hunting trip,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: as they did annually, and Judy would go along, she
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: was a hunter too, and Jim was sort of wavering
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: on whether to go with them. Right that day and
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: he was sort of hanging around the house. He'd just
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: gotten home from a trip with his wife and sort
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: of decided at the last minute that he wasn't going
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: to go, and Judy and Winfield took off and for
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: their trip. Jim went over to Linda's parents' house right
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: down the street, not too far in Lansing, And later
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: that evening, Norma called the King's house, which was Linda's
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: parents name, and Bil King picked up the phone and
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: sort of had a stricken look on his face and
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: pulled Jim aside and told Jim that there had been
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: a car accident and that his father and his sister
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: were killed. So unbelievable, right, a incomprehensible sort of information
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: being conveyed to Jim. It turns out that what happened
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: was that they had headed up north and on their
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: way they were coming down a two lane road a
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: car was backing out onto the highway and a car
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: that was coming the other direction swerved to miss the
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: car that was backing out and hit them head on
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: and they were both killed instantly. And as you can imagine,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, the trauma of that is unimaginable, learning of
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the sort of sudden deaths of two loved ones, and
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Jim was so close to his father and even closer
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: to his sister arguably, I mean, Judy and Jim were
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: like twins in their connection, and so it absolutely devastated Jim.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: And on top of that, compounding things was the fact
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: that Jim felt somehow responsible because he had sort of
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: delayed their departure by thinking whether or not maybe I'll go,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: maybe I won't, And so he was tormented by the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: fact that if he had decided a few seconds earlier,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: a few minutes earlier, or a few minutes later, they
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: would still be alive. And so he really blamed himself
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: with the timing of that. And you know, that was
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: an event. Really that's another sort of if you want
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: to call it that, I mean, as horrible as it is,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: it's also a kind of origin story for Jim's writing.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: And I think that was absolutely definitively the catalyst that
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Jim needed. As dark as it was, he just absolutely
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: devoted himself to his writing after that. He was already
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: interested in writing before that, but he was really having
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: trouble getting pen to page and make, you know, actually
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: having some kind of productive output. But after that, I
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: think Jim's world changed. I think he thought, if this
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: can happen, and death is that close and so sudden
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: and unpredictable, that there's absolutely nothing left to do but
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: to do what you absolutely want to do. Uh, no
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Plan B for Jim, right, there was not going to
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: be a plan B. He there was plan A. He
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: was going to be the writer that he wanted to be.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: He was going to be a prolific writer, and he
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: was not going to look back. And that was it.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: And he started writing after that. He says, at one
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: point he says, I found a new voice. He says,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the truth is always new wine right, he had somehow
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: been gifted, he found he thought, with sort of the
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: gift of speech, right, and all of a sudden he
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: could begin writing. And he really never looked back from that.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: But I think you're absolutely right. That story permeates everything
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: he wrote after that and defined the rest of his life.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, hmmm, what was how did it come to be? Like,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: like when did he start becoming friends with all these
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: with with like these other writers. Let's let's just I
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: guess we'll focus on instead of saying these other writers,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: will focus on what we'll talk about mcgwain, because here's
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: this other great writer, another Michigan guy, another guy like
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: obsessed with hunting, obsessed with fishing, transcended that world. Neither
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: of these guys. No one would call Harrison or mcguain
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: an outdoor writer. No one would call him a hunting
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: and fishing writer. But their writers that hunters and anglers love.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: But they they way, they overshot any kind of definition
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: like that, they became like literary figures, right, you know, yeah,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Like how at what point did he start to be
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: that he was going to be with writers and associate
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: with writers and join the kind of like literati you know.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so you know, Jim, like like we
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: were saying, I mean, Jim didn't grow up knowing writers.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: It wasn't really until he got into college and he
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: began like you know, getting to know professors and things
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: like that. He really didn't get to know some professional
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: writers until you know, I think he ran into Jack
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Kerouac once at a bar New York and so that
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: was like the first writer I'd ever met. And Jack
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Kerouac was at a jazz bar in a village and
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: he was apparently really drunk, and Harrison says he met
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: him and sort of got to know him. He says, well,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: that was the first writer I ever really got I met.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: But you know, he really became he really got to
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: know and sort of become part of the literary scene.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: At one point, he was invited by a professor at
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Michigan State University who got to Stonybrook University on Long Island,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: and there Jim got to know a lot of poets, right.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: He was partly in charge of inviting writers to the
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: department to get to you know, to for talks and
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: readings and things like that, and sort of met the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: whole literary world there, at least in the world of
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: poetry time, right, And I think so that got him
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: to know a lot of writers. And then you know mcgwuaine,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: who had gone to school with at Michigan State University,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: reached out to him, you know, around this time, and
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: they didn't know each other. That well at MSU, but
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: mcwi reached out to him and they began this sort
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: of decades long correspondence and deep friendship that would develop.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: And it turns out mcwaine was, you know, incredibly invested
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: in writing too, and was very active in writing and publishing,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: and so all of a sudden, Jim started to have
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: a literary community, right, And it was mcwaine in many
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: ways introduced Jim to lots of his good friends who
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: would later become good friends, like he.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Became friends with buff Jimmy Buffett and Jimmy Buffett.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Gee Delaval then, right, who was a French count who
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: he met fishing in Key West.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: That's one dude. I'll never understand. What did that dude do. Well,
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: he's always like they're always bringing him up that they
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: just like him because he's a French count.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Well he was his deal, he was, he was, He
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: was an avid fish. He's dead now. Yeah, I did get.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: To always talking about that guy. I never got it.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Gee, I mean gee was he name again?
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Gee?
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: G Delaval? Dad?
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: I think I met his great his uh not grandson
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: or yeah, we hunted in Scotland together and word all
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: about Gee.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't mean he like disrespect the dead.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: But whenever those dudes, like either of them just talking
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: about that guy, I'm like this guy.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Again, who is this guy?
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: He was important to that though, you know, yeah, like
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: I never got it because he had like he could
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: afford the good wine definitely part of it, but they
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: paid for everything or something. Yeah, he had money. I
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: think they genuinely really liked him. He was he was
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: He was an excellent fisherman, right. He was one of
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the people that mcgwaine met down fishing in Key West
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: and was one of the only people, I mean very
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: few people in the island who understood tarp and fishing.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: The French dude he did, oh yeah, extremely serious fisherman
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: and bird hunter, right, and so they had that in common.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: And then maybe it was jealous and then he was
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: who wouldn't be, right, Yeah, who doesn't want to be
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a French count? He had He grew up with a moat.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know who can say I ever understood
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: like he just like having a googly eye and having
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: your dad and sister dying a crash, Like there's like
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: those things and you go, like what else permeates? Harrison's
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: work like the French count right exactly right, right? How
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: would you put Like there's a songwriter like a lot
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Evan Felker from Turnpike Troubadors, and we're talking about he
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: he puts honey and fishing in his music. But he
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: does in the way that you know it's legit, okay,
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: like you can from a mile away smell when someone
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: is just inserting stuff they don't understand. Well, it's like
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: his references are very good, like you know, it's legit.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: And he said, why don't I only think of it
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: like it's not it's not what the story's about. I
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: just need them to have a thing to do, Like
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: they're gonna the characters in the songs. They're gonna interact
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: and say the things they need to say, or the
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: story is that. But then well what are they doing?
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Why are they there? And he goes, in my head,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing when I think of like where do I
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: put them? That just tends to be where I put them.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: But it's not what it's about. It's just where I
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: stick them, you know what I mean? Like like this,
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: I'm doing a horrible job of like putting it. But
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: that's like he's not trying to write like a song
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: with like a hunting reference. He just doesn't know what
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: to have him doing or whatever. So oftentimes they're doing
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: stuff with horses, or they're doing stuff with guns, or
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: you know whatever. Yeah, So, how like, how after doing
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: all this work and spending all these years on this,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: and I'm saying it says a guy like I wouldn't
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: if he wasn't into hunting and fishing, I wouldn't have
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: discovered him, and I wouldn't read them. But like, how
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: do you think of the role j I mean, like,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: if you look at like all these poems and all
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: these books and novella's and essays, how do you describe
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: what those things meant to him? You know? Yeah?
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, uh, you know I I think it's you
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: did describe it nicely. I mean this idea that you
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: might be writing about death or mortality or you know,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: consciousness or these other things. But but what the characters
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: are doing are hunting and fishing rights. And that's what
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Jim knew, right. I mean, he grew up with hunters
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: and fishers in his family. You know what that means
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: to him? I mean it meant everything to him, it's
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: it was how he grew up, it's what his family did,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: it's it's what he truly enjoyed to do doing, right,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: And so you know, and I'm not talking just about
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: hunting and fishing, but I'm talking about being out in
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: the natural world, right in the non human world, whether
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: it's floating a river and fly fishing or bird hunting,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: which Jim genuinely loved to do, walking fields. He just
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: loved to walk through the woods.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: And so he's a great observer, a very astute observer
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: of nature. In one of his frustrations with a lot
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: of hook and bullet guys, and one of his big
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: frustrations with like a lot of outdoor writers is they
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: were only interested in animals insofar as like how best
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: to kill them? Yeah, and it like he did. It
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: infuriated him, like it comes up references again and again,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: like they weren't students of nature.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think Jim was an
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: incredible student of nature, right he uh, and hunting and
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: fishing was part of that to him, but it was
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: not the only thing to him, right, He was incredibly observant,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: as you said, he's.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: Like he probably I don't know if he called himself that.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: He's definitely like a birder, you know.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and not just a bird hunter, but a birder.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: He'd loved to just you know, like his mother, he
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: loved to go out and birdwatch, right and he you know,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: would go you know, he knew a huge range of birds.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: You know, we could talk about them fluently. But you know,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Jim was famous for just going out and sitting on
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: a log right in the middle of the woods, and
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: he would just sit there and he would sort of
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: melt sort of melt in into the into the into
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: the stump he was sitting on as the sort of
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: natural world around him came alive around him because he
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: no longer posed a threat. He was this sort of
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: you know, inanimate sort of object or animate object that
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: had become one with his surroundings, and he would just observe.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: And I think, I mean that meant everything to him.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: It was it was his spirituality. It was a very
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: deeply spiritual practice for him. Uh, and he would connect
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: with that, you know, in a classic sort of romantic
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: romantic way. Even though I don't think Jim ever romanticized nature,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: he knew I think he knew what the wild was. Yeah,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: but I think in a spiritual sense, I think he
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: found sort of spiritual sustenance there. I mean it was,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: you know, not to use a cliche, it was like
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: his church. Right, he would go into he would go
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: into the into the wild, into nature just on even
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: just sort of small walks. But that's where he got
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: his ideas for literature. That's where he'd do his thinking,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and that's where he'd do was sort of meditating. And
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: so you know, it was such a large part of
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: his life that what else would he write about, right,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: I mean a large part of his work has to
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: deal with that huge factor that's in the middle of
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: his life.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, I don't think he ever had like a
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: main character that didn't respect nature. It was like a
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: prerequisite to be a character, is like you had to
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: respect nature else you're not allowed.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're certainly not a good guy right in his work, Right,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: they're bad characters writers who are you know, exploitive And
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: that was Jim's one thing, right, He really could not
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: stand people who hunted to excess or fish to excess,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: almost in a sort of greedy sort of way, with
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: you know, taking much more than they would eat or
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: kill or any reasonable person could possibly want to take
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: out of take out of the wilderness, and and or
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of malpractice in fishing and hunting, snagging
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: fish and other things. You had zero patients with that,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: as I'm sure you know, right, and just incredibly you know,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: dislike that to his core. Yeah, what uh?
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: How did he cope with? Or you know, somewhat like
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: I said, like a lot of his work is like
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: angry about like wealth, angry about people like just getting
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: things without working for them, you know what I mean.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: Like he's got like he like prides people with work ethics,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: like his good characters work hard. But then all of
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: a sudden, like later he kind of becomes like like
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: early he's sort of looking into the fish bowl, do
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean? And in the fish bowl
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: is like wealth and wealth and privilege and elitism. But
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: then later he's kind of in the bowl, right, Like
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: what was that? Like? What do you think that was like?
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: For that guy?
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: It was a conflict and a struggle for him. You know,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: he grew up his parents, his dad, and his parents
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: say he was you know, we're sort of you know,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: they respected labor leaders, right, to come from real working
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: class to call their democratic families sort of like a
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Butte Democrat, but Montana Democrats who were, you know, very
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: invested in the labor movement. And Jim grew up in
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: that setting. He grew up around people who worked hard,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: outdoor labor, hard work, right, And and his dad wasn't
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: you know, his dad was always going out farms, and
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Jim was always meeting farmers, and so he deeply respected,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: you know, people who you know, weren't weren't didn't have
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: easy wealth, right, right. And then later, you know, but
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: I think Jim also, I think this is why he's
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: a contradictory and complicated person. I think Jim liked nice things.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: He liked the things that he could get with his buddy,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: the French count, right, And Jim seemed to sort of
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: gather around him people of means throughout his life. And
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: then once he published Legends of the Fall, which was
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: a really big hit, and then started getting movie deals,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: he started making a ton of money, and I think
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: he enjoyed the money. He liked the wine certainly, right.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: He liked some of the other fruits of his money wealth,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: good food certainly, and even some cocaine from time to time,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: or maybe more than from time to time. And I
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: think I think he enjoyed that, but I always think
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: he became deeply conflicted about that. On the one hand,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: he feared that he had lost track of who he
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: once was to some extent, right, and he laments this
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: fact in his poetry and his fiction. I think, you know,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: he has an image in one of his poems of
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: like feeding at the bourgeois trough. Yeah, right, and he's
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: like leaning into it and just and he knows that
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: this is highly problematic. And it's problematic for him because
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: it's distance him from I don't know, a certain kind
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: of consciousness that he thought was necessary to be a
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: writer and a poet, right, And it also distanced him
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: from the sort of values and things things that he
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: valued and the people who he valued. And I also
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: think it was a conflict for him because what he
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: had to do to make that money repeatedly took him
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: away from his first love, which was poetry, right, And
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: so no one was going to get rich writing poetry,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: but poetry he was sort of in his core, right,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: and every time he was.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: Going he describes himself as that all the time It's
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: funny because I never read a look of that stuff.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, you know, he says it was
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: the true bones of his life. It was poetry, right,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: And every time he had to go out to Hollywood
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: to work on a screenplay, or go to New York
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: to meet with film producers, or do all the things
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: that you know, or go on tour for even a novel,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: all that was constantly taking him away from what he's
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: viewed as his calling, right, which was I won't say
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: fiction wasn't a calling of his, but his poetry was
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: his core, and I was always taking him away, right,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: So sort of that conflict was twofold, right. It contrasted
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: with the values he'd grown up with of sort of
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: just rural simplicity, right, and simple pleasures, And it conflicted
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: because it took him away from his art.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, I've hit you with a bunch
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: of like things that I regard as I don't know, man,
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: like like themes of his work and things I pull
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: from it in your book, Like what are some of
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: the things you pull at outside of what I've asked
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: you about? Like what are some of the you know,
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: the through lines or the discoveries you found that help
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: kind of explain him as a as a writer.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean you hit on
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of the key themes I think that I
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: do explore in the book as a writer. I mean
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: as a human. Friendship was one of the sort of
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: through lines.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: In this book. So he was a good friend.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: He was a good friend. I think he was. He
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: could be a difficult friend. We seem to have friends.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: He had friends for long times, man, which I respect
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: me too.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you hear so much about sort
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: of the crisis of male friendship and loneliness in the
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: US today, and Jim, in some ways, I mean, model
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: a sort of life that was very different from that.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Here is like masculine guys, outdoor guys who you know,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: were not solitary people. They were communal people. They love
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: to be around other male friends. And Jim cultivated not
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: just male friends, female friends too. Jim really worked at
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: building friendships, yeah, and sustaining them over decades. I mean
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Tom mcgwain and Jim Harrison wrote for five decades to
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: each other two letters a week. I mean that alone,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: is that's insane.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: So foreign, Like I know, I'm still buddies with guys
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: I knew growing up. There's some as I grew up
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: with them, still budies with But like, there is no
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: way in the world I'm gonna pen them a letter.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: It's just not gonna happen, right, I mean.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: Letters of Steven Ronella's just.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Not I'll shoot him a quick text.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Somebody some day is gonna want to publish your collected letters.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: You have to collection a chance, yea over that way, Okay.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: The should be published into like a coffee book because
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: they're so funny. The random text you get from Steve.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: That's funny. Yeah. And Jim, you know, you could collect
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: his emails to friends too, But I mean he would
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: handwrite letters to to mcguaine for decades and decades, you know,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: but he would.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: Were they doing it like knowing it would be collected?
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Tom and Jim were.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they were like writing out so that someday
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: there'd be a record of themselves.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: I suspect that someday they suspected someone like me woul
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: spending like six months in an art times somewhere reading
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: every letter they ever wrote, so I could write a
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: biography of one of them. I do think that's true,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: and I think at first it was aspirational. They were like,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: we're going to be famous, right, We're going to be
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: great writers. We're gonna be famous writers. And then at
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: a certain point they were like, wow, we're pretty famous writers, right,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: and this came true, and we're doing this for posterity.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: And so you know, there's a level of sort of
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: performativity in the letters right with they know definitely, I
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: think there's an eye they know people are going to
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: be reading these letters. But I but in spite of themselves,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: they're always lapsing into real periods of honesty and being
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: incredibly supportive of each other in their correspondence. Early on,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Tom and Jim saw each other a lot. They'd see
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: each other in Montana all the time, yearly, for sometimes
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: weeks and months at a time. They go fishing together
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: in Key West all the time, so they did spend
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of time together physically in the same place.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: Later that became more correspondence. But no matter how busy
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Jim was, and he was extremely busy, he would always
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: carve out time for friends, you know, for gee until
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: well then right for Russell Chathams or you know Buffett
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: for and a lot of Jim's professional relationships became friendships.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: He would hang out with his psychiatrist, you know, they
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: woul write letters to each other and spend time together
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: when they were in New York, right. You know, his
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: publishers and his editors and his producer friends, they would
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: all become friends. And so Jim, yeah, really went out
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: of his way to cultivate friendships. And you know, Gee
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: and those other guys would come up to Lake Lelanod
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: and they'd hunt every fall. They'd come up to Montana
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: every year for bird hunting season. Right, they'd all congregate
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: and meet at early on. They'd all meet at mcwain's
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: ranch in Paradise Valley and they would all hunt together
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: and then they would create. They would cook these big
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: feasts of everything they caught, right, the fish and the
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: birds that they shot, and they'd create these elaborate meals.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: And that was very much part of their life.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: That's one of the through lines of this book. That
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: and it's one of the big surprises for me, just
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: how dedicated Jim was to cultivating and sustaining friendships.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: One of his bodies. So for years, let me explain
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: this to listeners, not you is, if you go by
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Harrison's books, the covers are Russell Chatham paintings. If you
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: want to watch a great movie, go watch Rivers of
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: a Lost Coast. It's a very obscure film about the
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: Steelhead Runs of Northern California. Kind of about the death
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: of the Steelhead Runs of Northern California, but like the
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Steelhead Heyday of Northern California and Chatham, this painter, Chatham
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: kind of carries this documentary but also does these beautiful landscapes,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: and Harrison always used them. Did that just stay true
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: all the way to the end. No, I guess some
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: of his covers weren't Chatham paintings, but you know, I mean,
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: like all those covers were those like very moody, dark
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: landscapes by Russell Chatham.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely, so yeah, I mean Chatham. Uh, Chatham
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: is a fisherman, right, and I've seen.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Them the Bay Area.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Oh dude, it's an unbelievable movie, Rivers of a Lost Coast.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to see it now, classic man, like
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: no one, no one knows about that movie.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm totally gonna watch that. Yeah, I mean Chatham.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: It's funny I was. I was talking to Chatham's daughter.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't know.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Did he pass away? He did, Yeah, yeah, because he
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: started that restaurant kind of like that went a little
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: tits up and then like yeah, I mean he was
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: a cool restaurant.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He started all sorts of ventures, publishing house, Clark
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: City Press and Livingston and then open Livingston Bar and grill.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we go there a bit man. Yeah, but I
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: mean those long time I was back in like around
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: two thousand or something. Yeah, that was a long time ago.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Even today, Leah Chatham, Russ's daughter, says that if you
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: ask someone in town in Livingston, Montana, who Russ Chatham is,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: half of them will say, oh, he's that famous fisherman,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: and half of them an artist which really speaks volumes, right,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: the guy with the restaurant. Some of them would probably
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: definitely say that too. But I mean, I think he
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: holds he held the record for the largest stripe maass
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: caught on a fly for a long time, if not
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: still so Okay, So I'm losing track of where I was,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: But so, Jim and Chatham became close friends beginning from
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: Key West fishing days.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: That's how they met. They met in Key West, got
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: it and they just into that fishing scene down there.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Chatham had also a bad eye. Yeah, he
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: had no depth perception. He's an artist, the landscape artist
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: with no depth perception. Apparently he went a tarpeid Fishermen,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: which and it is a death perception game. Yeah. So
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: somehow Russ managed to like not only like fish tarpin
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: and spot him and cast him, but also to paint right.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: And he was apparently a really good pool player to boot.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: So I don't know how deficiency and he had the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: same eye injuries Jim not done, you know, for the
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: same reasons. But he had a bad eye. And it
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: happened around the same age as Jim, maybe the exact
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: same age as Jim. So they were like they saw
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: each other at in Key West and they were just like, oh,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: we need to be friends, right, and they just hit
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: it off from the start, right, and uh, I can't
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: remember exactly when it began, but Chatham Jim started using
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: hair Chatham's paintings on the covers of his books, and
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: really that would that would and then eventually, you know,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: Chatham would go back and create covers for his like
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: sort of back list of books. And so now pretty
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: much if you go into any bookstore and pick up
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: a Jim Harrison book, you're going to see a Russell
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Chatham painting on the cover, and you know, in their
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: beautiful covers. A lot of people have told me that
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: they picked up a Harrison book because of the cover
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: for the first time. Sure, right, because it's such a
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: striking cover. And they became sort of inextricably linked, right,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: complementing each other, right, larger than they would be individually, right,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: And so yeah.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: They really you know, there's a documentary if I don't know,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: it's not even really fair to call it a documentary.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: It's more like a compilation of clips of that seventies
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: era of fly fishing in Key West with those guys
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: all in it. It's not Chasing Silver. No.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Well, the original documentary that Gee made right of fly fishing,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: of those guys fly fishing in Key West was called Tarpin,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: and that is if you haven't seen.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: That's not I have that. Yeah, I have that on DVD.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah really cool. Yeah, great thought.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: Which is impossible to play, but I own.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: It, yeah, exactly. And then someone recently made a documentary
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: of that documentary. Is that what you're talking about.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about Tarpin.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: You're talking about Tarpa specifically.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that's in my DVD pile, but that's not
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: it Rivers of the Lost Coast and tarp and Tarpin.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that documentary Tarpin, I mean just really
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: sort of tried to capture a sort of you know,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: the wonder and amazement of of you know, pulling a
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: skiff around the flats off of Key West, right and
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: casting you know, site casting to Tarpin, and then with
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: amazing sort of photography, right, they captured these tarpin you know,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: coming up out of the water, under the water, you know,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: being caught in the sort of electric experience of catching
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: the tartan. Yeah, and then it brushed, you know, to
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: a decent amount. I also explored sort of the nightlife
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: that those guys explore the Key West, but maybe a
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: lot less. So I think it's a lot more about
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: the fishing.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: We get to send to the nightlife aspect.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: You know, another guy, another outdoorsman right that definitely transcended
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: the world, is Richard Broadigan. So Richard Broadgan wrote trout
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: fishing in America, which is not about people fishing it.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: But it's not about trout fishing in America, but it
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: has one of the greatest fishing lines ever. Is Broadigan's
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: talking about fishing a stream that was so narrow and
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: so brushy and hard to fish. She said you had
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: to be a plumber to fish that creek, which all
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: is the greatest thing. But like Broadigan kind of like
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: Broadigen later shoots himself.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you know is it true?
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: Like Chad, like Russell Chatham kind of wrote this thing
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: and it was kind of from hanging out with Broadigan
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: and Harrison and all that. Is it true that broad
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: Agan like maybe killed some kid with a twenty two
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: when he was young. Are you familiar with that?
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know that story.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: No, possible because it made like like he's talking about
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: they would get together to hunt birds. Yeah, and Chatham
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: wouldn't hunt or sorry, Broadigan wouldn't hunt, wouldn't go hunting,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: but talk about one time he shot it hole through
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: the TV with the gun. Yeah, and he talks about
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: I understand why you would shoot zenus but not pheasants.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: It was kind of about like broad against torments you know,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: but like killed himself.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Right he did. Yeah, And you know he had a thing,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: you know, he had a thing with guns, sort of
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: shooting them off indoors. He had you know, he did.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Lots of stories of of Brodigen, uh who. And Brodigan
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: eventually bought a sort of small farm in Paradise Valley,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Montana too, right, not not, Yeah, in that same seventies
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: there off of East River Road, in the same area, Yeah,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: same era, right when mcgaine and all them were there.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: And Whoopie Goldberg for a minute.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and everybody right in la who was like
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: setting it. Yeah, it was the new place to be.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: But Brodigan lived there for a while. Yeah, and he
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: would hang out with all these guys in Paradise Valley.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: But there are lots of stories of sort of you know,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: unfortunate sort of drunken late nights with you know, forty
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: four magnum that that brought him would carry around and
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: he would there's a story of him shooting out a
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: clock like that was on the wall and he shot
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: around the clock in a circle, you know, until they
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: could push the clock out of the wall.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: There's another one of him shooting up through the ceiling
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: and then him going to bed and waking up in
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: the morning and coming downstairs and having splinters and stuff
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: all on his back because the bullets had gone through
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: the roof into the bed, through the bed and his
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: mattress and had shot splinters up into the match and
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: came down with splinters in them. So yeah, yeah, I
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: never heard that story about him having shot somebody.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: Man, Like, I feel like, I'm maybe I should have
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: brought I should have checked him that before I brought
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: it up.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: But you know, I know he loved the fish and
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: he would get fishing with those guys all the time. Yeah,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: and he would He didn't cook, but those guys would
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: go over Broughtigan's house and they cooked big, elaborate meals
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: at his house and they would host big parties of
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: her Broughtigans. And there are some funny stories in the
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: book about Jim and brought Again in their funny relationship together.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Jim taught his daughter to fly fish, brought Again's daughter
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: to fly. Yeah, and Brogan was very much part of
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the community and Broughtigan's in Tarpin what state? Did he
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: kill himself in California?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: Does it ever surprise you? It wouldn't have Like, had
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: I read that Harrison killed himself at some point, I
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: would not have been surprised. Doesn't seem like he would
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: have been a dude who would killed himself.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe he came really close, I mean because of his depressions.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: You know, in his thirties, he hit a depression of
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: all depressions basically, and you know, and contemplated suicide very seriously.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: His daughter, I mean said repeatedly that they would just
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: she was reading his poetry a lot at the time,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: but everywhere she looked she saw thoughts and ideas of suicide.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: And Jim came extremely close. He was writing a collection
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: of poetry called Letters to You Senen was Sergey you
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: Senen was a Russian poet, and Jim was called the
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: collection you know, Letters to You sent, and he was
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: literally writing letters to this dead Russian poet, right. But
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: he credits that book with really sort of pulling him
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: out of that deep depression, right, and sort of poetry
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: helped him sort of gain his footing and recover himself,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: right in writing to this poet. And it turns out
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Sergey U Senen had committed suicide, hung himself. Wrote his
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: last letter out in his own blood or a poem
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: and then you know, really gruesome stuff. And Jim recovered,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: you know, some sort of recovered himself through through the
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: writing of poetry. But I mean something we never got
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: at earlier, which we were talking about, was it, you know,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: despite all of the other big through line through this book.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: And what always amazes me is that despite these epic
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: depressions that Jim would go through, he had these unbelievable
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: store of humor. And you know, it would be a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: mistake to paint him as this really dark, sure troubled figure,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: which he was, but he was also this guy with
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: this just endless sense of humor and sort of zuberants
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: for life and viv right that he never seemed to lose.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: You know, it had been flowed, but he would always
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: recover himself. Even in his darkest times. He'd make jokes.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: You know what we're talking about, the Hemingway deal. He
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: he Harrison.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: I can't remember where he was, right, but Harrison had
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: talked about, you know, you know that ritualistic suicide like
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: is Harry carry.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah your sword kind of death before well you
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: disemboline tool yourself, right, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: The reason one of the reasons I always picture that
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: he might be that that would have been how he
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: would have died. Is he he seemed to struggle with this,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: like like death before dishonor, but dishonor would have been senescence. Yeah,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like would you really let
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: yourself get old and senile? Would be better to like
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: go out on your own terms? And that's kind of
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: he seemed to. That's like a reference he seemed to
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: make fair bit And that was like the Hemingway deal
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: because I think that when Hemingway shot himself, like Hemingway
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: was supposed to be contributing like a sentence to a
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: Kennedy memorial. And my understanding is maybe this is like
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: a little bit of a you know, maybe it's like
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: an apocryphal story. But but like he couldn't come up
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: with a sentence for Kennedy's memorial or something, and felt
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: that it was like he was tapped out.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: And you know, maybe that's what kept kept Jim Jim
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: in this world, is he never ran out of words.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think the closer he came to death
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: and dying, he wrote more and more and you know,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: a language. You know, he felt sometimes trapped in language,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: you know, ironically, maybe I think he felt that he
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: had been a slave to language his whole life, and
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: he started to feel that later in life. But it
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: was language that really never abandoned him.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: He would sometimes lament that he had no mechanical capabilities.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, Yeah, I mean his physical cap is that
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: what you mean, like physical capable?
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: No, I mean like wasn't like he wasn't like like
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: fixing stuff and all that mechanical stuff. Yeah, he would
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: make jokes about that he was, you know, like not
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: not in some capacities handy at like vehicle repair or
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: whatever I do or whatever. Like he was a man
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: of words.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I don't doubt that at all. Yeah, I
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: don't think Jim ever, like he wasn't the kind of
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: guy who's going to call under, you know, a hood
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: and you know, get greasy death. Although you know maybe
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: when he was younger a little bit, but he wasn't
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: yeat mechanically inclined. Yeah, he wasn't that guy. But language
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: never abandoned him, you know. And he died writing a poem.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: He was writing a poem the day he died, and
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: so till his very last breath. I mean was sitting
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: at his desk with the poem in front of him
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: and a cigarette smoldering in an ash tray. Huh when
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: he died And yeah, he had a big pilot of
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: cigarettes on his desk and one was smoldering. Or I
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: mean the day he died and he basically fell over
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: after writing his last poem. So you know, maybe who knows,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: maybe if language had abandoned him, he might you know,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: where would he have been.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: Talked about that you take a lot of naps. Yeah,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: but he said he didn't count it as a nap
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: unless he took his socks off. That life.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: In a classic Harrison right, Yeah.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: The one caveat that hangs over this and like the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: one reason and I hate it, like I wish it
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: wasn't true, because the one reason I can't be like
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: that I love him, you know, and like I said, man,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: he did me a good turn, like he blurbed a
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: couple of my books and right helped me out. But
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: like a thing that keeps me from being like I
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: love the guy is like I don't understand how he
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: could how he would just like humiliate his wife like that,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: do you? I mean, like I'm like I've been married
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: for seventeen years, right, there's just no way. There's no
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: way I'm going to humiliate my wife. Do you follow me?
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: But he would so freely humiliate his wife, Like what
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: is all that about?
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: You mean by carrying on with carrying on with other.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: Fantasize about women carrying on with other women? Like how
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: could you like do that to somebody like habitually, dude,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: and then not only that, but then like go home
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: and face them, you know what I mean? Like like
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: I don't talk like if like I can't be Like
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: one way to get like majorly like ot seed out
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: of my circle would be to like like dudes that
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: humiliate their wives or just like out of the club.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: Do you follow me? So like makes it that I
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: can't like I want to be like, oh he was great,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: but I'm eh, like what was that about? Yeah?
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: I mean that's that's tough. What is that about? H
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: I think I think Jim and his wife, I mean,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: so there's no there's no excuse for humiliation. I think
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: Jim loved his wife very much. I don't have any
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: doubt about that, and I think she loved him very much.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: I think Jim became so difficult to live with for
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: other reasons later in life, because of his alcoholism and
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: his you know, the sort of things that had happened
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: is his ability to sort of comprehend the consequences of
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: his actions. And I'm not talking about affairs now. I'm
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: talking about smoking cigarettes around his wife when she was
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: suffering from asthma and lung problems later in life, and
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: he could be incredibly self centered and self focused in
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: a way that seemed incredibly frustrating to people around them
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: because they knew that his smoking was hurting his wife
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: and such. And I think that eventually sort of his
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: wife became increasing intolerant of him. I think earlier when
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: Jim was having affairs and you know, you can't really
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: make excuses for him. You're right, it was a humiliation.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I think it's one that Linda realized what she was
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: getting herself into very early on.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he wasn't even bashful about it.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: He wasn't bashful about it. And she was smart, his wife,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: she was incredibly smart, incredibly perceptive. I think she knew
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: very I know for a fact that she knew very
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: early on how Jim was going to conduct his life
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: and I think Linda was an adult, and I think
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: she chose to stay in that relationship for you know,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: reasons of all sorts of complex reasons, right, because she
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: valued that relationship, She valued Jim. She accepted explicitly, if tacitly,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: if not explicitly, the terms of that relationship, right, they're
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: very from a young age. McGain once wrote to a
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: friend and I write about this in the book, and
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: he said, you know, there's only really two paths with marriage,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: and he says, one is at least this was his perception,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: and he was speaking about Jim's infidelity specifically, and he said,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: you know there's one where, you know, you conduct your
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: business in private, you go and have ilicted affairs, you
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: hire sex workers, you do this or that all like
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: in closed private spaces behind your wife's back. And the
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: alternative is sort of having an open relationship, right, And
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: he says, Now, I don't know, he says, And at
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: the time mcgwaine said, well, and we know Jim. You know,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: McGain himself had gone through a series of relationships with
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: their own sort of levels of complexity, and one of
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: them was a relatively high profile, even relatively open relationship.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: But he said, you know, the trick to that and
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe it's doomed to failure open relationships to begin
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: with by definition, maybe they're unsustainable.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: Oh it's like, just as a side note, people to
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: act like that's gonna fly. Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: it's like such a joke and be black like, oh, no,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: we have an understanding. I'm like, you don't. Yeah, you
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: might think you do, Yeah, you don't. Yeah, And it's
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: not a two way understanding, right, you have an understanding
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: with your desires. But that's about that's the limit, right there,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and McGain recognized that, and he said, you know,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: but the trick to doing that, and maybe it's impossible anyway,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: the trick to doing it is to extend the privileges
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: to both people, fully right, you can't have one side.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: It has to extend it to and Jim, you know,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: there was no there's no evidence that they had that
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: sort of agreement.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but she wasn't a big swinging dick writer either.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: You're right, you're right. But she was also very attractive
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: though she was a beautiful moment or something, and she
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: was she was intelligent, she was beautiful, but I mean,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. Mcgwaine went through several relationships,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: eventually settled in what it is a very happy marriage
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: now to Jimmy Buffett's sister. But Jim, you know, Jim
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: and Linda stayed married when a lot of other their
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: friends got divorced throughout the years. And man, they were
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: they were together up until the end.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: And you know, it's something I'll never understand, man.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: And I think for someone who wrote poetry, for someone
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: who was so sensitive, someone who was a student of
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: consciousness and you know, and and and looking at the
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: world honestly, to be able to still do what he did,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a contradiction and it's a complexity. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: It's almost speaking ill of the dead, Like if he
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: was alive, I would be uncomfortable bringing it up. And
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: I didn't, yeah, you know, like because we had mutual
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: associates and mutual friends and stuff, and like I just
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: always I was always like why you know, you know,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: I mean it's like a like, who's who's that culture
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: that used to make Who's a culture that make rugs?
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: And they'd put imperfection in the rug because because it
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: was hubris to to make it perfect, like in the
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: eye as a god, you'd intentionally make it imperfect. M right, Yeah,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: And it was like he had this like glaring imperfection
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: that he has always bugged me.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: Man, he did have a glaring imperfection more than one.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: We all do. I mean we all do. But it
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: was like celebrated. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: like when I was young, it didn't occur to me
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: to be it didn't occur to me to look at
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: it from two sides.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: Only later that I'd be like, man, like you know, yeah,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: like I have somewhat of a you know, like I
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: have some of a public profile, Like I have somewhat
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: of a way to go out and meet people and
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: have adventures that like isn't like readily available to my
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: wife taking care of the kids that we had together.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: You become aware of that, like there's just a baked
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: in dude, I don't want to call it an imbalance,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: but there's like a baked in something that you can take,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: that you can exploit. And then later when I became
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: aware of that that there is a thing to exploit.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: When I became aware of it, maybe very judgmental about
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: someone that takes the bait.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: I think it was baked in. Yeah, it was definitely
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: baked in for Jim two. You know where he grew up,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: the people he grew up around and with from a
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: very young age. I think a lot of that, you
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: know that the way of thinking about you know, male
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: female relationships and marriages. I was baked into him from
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: a young age. And and I think it was it
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: just it always just remained a sort of like Fisher
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: in his identity. Right, this this uh, this contradiction, right
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: that he could be as sensitive as he was to
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: people's suffering. He could write novels in women's voices in.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: Ways, dude, like so sympathetic man.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: So sympathetic, Dolva and women lit by firefly.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: Like in a way you wouldn't be able to do now,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: Like you couldn't. He would have if he'd have written
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: if he'd have written a novel from the perspective of
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: a female Native American in twenty twenty, dude, they would
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: have murdered him. Yeah, they would have hung him from
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: a tree, do you know what I mean? Yeah, he's like,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: I got an idea. I'm like an old white guy.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: I even read a book where I'm a Native American woman.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know he might he might have gotten away
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: with the woman, but not the Native American woman, right, Yeah,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: he got away with it in France, he would have
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: gotten away with it.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: But I'm not saying he shouldn't have done it. Like,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: that's not my perspective. I don't think that. I don't.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: I don't look at it like I don't think that
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: you can own I don't believe in in I understand
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: the arguments for it, but I don't believe in people
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: being like that, that you can make it that other
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: people can't think about certain things, you know, I mean
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: I I don't. I don't. I don't like that. I
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: understand the argument, but I don't.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: I don't. I don't like live by it. I completely
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: agree with that. And it's funny, you know. I just
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: read teaching, you know, and I just read three books
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: in a row where the man wrote a book from
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: a woman's perspective, and then the two women wrote two
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: books from his perspectives. And these are all in the
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: past five years. So I'm like, Okay, well, yeah, we
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: haven't you know fully, you know, people are still experimenting
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: with you know, and whatever experience they have.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: We live in a little bit of freer time right now.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: You know. You know the writer Larry Brown, Uh yeah,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: a little bit big bad love.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: He died young. He had a heart attack. He was
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: from Mississippi. He was a fireman.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: He wrote seven books. He wrote seven novels for he
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: had a novel published. Wow. He uh. He became like
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: a very like he sold some of his stuff to
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: He did stuff had in movies, like the Coen Brothers
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: bought one of the things. He became a big, pretty
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: big writer. He was the first guy. This is the
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: last thing I'll say about this thing with marriage and stuff,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: is uh. When I was in writing school, Larry came
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: and did a he like came for semester or something
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: up from Mississippi. Dude never went to college nothing. Man.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: He taught himself to write like between calls at a firebarn.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: But became a very celebrated novelist. You know. Uh, I
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: mentioned him. He knew Harrison hung out just in the
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: literary circles. And he was the first guy that like
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: said to me. I brought him up and he said
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: something about like like eye roll because he was a
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: very faithful, loyal family person. He had like an eye
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: roll about like, oh him and his starlets, do you know?
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: I mean it was the first time I heard someone
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: like do like a condemnation and it was like dismissive,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: you know, man. It wasn't even that long after that,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: Larry Brown died of a heart attack. Wow. What was
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: like when Harrison died? What was sort of going on
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: with him? You know, like where was he at right
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: with his work? And he had like he didn't he
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: have had to have like bad health problems and things.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he was sort of ravaged physically, right,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: he is He's still sharp though he was, he still sharp.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: He still had the capacity to write and write poems.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: And I think fiction had become difficult for him. He
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: just couldn't sort of sustain the attention to detail that
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: was required for fiction, right. I think he was at
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: that point in his life. Right before he died, he
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: began a new novella called A Woman Who Loved Trees,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: I think, and it was about his wife, about Linda.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: And so the important thing to know is Linda died
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: about five months prior to Jim, and so when Jim died,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: he was extremely lonely, right, he was sort of living
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: in Montana, but then when he died, he died in Patagony, Arizona,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: and he was just didn't know what to do with himself, right,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: because he had been married since nineteen fifty nine to Linda, right,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden he was without her, and
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: so there was this huge gaping, you know, hole in
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: his life. But in the sort of waning months of
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: his life, I mean, he he could write poems still,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: there was still that sort of compression and smallness of
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: it that he could get his mind around.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he you know, he was sharp enough to write.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: I think his mind was very sort of beclouded by
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: sort of all the alcohol that he was drinking, right
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: from years and years and years of alcoholism, and I
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: think it had taken a real toll on him mentally intellectually.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: But you know, he's he had his humor, he had
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: he had it still, like a decent life going on,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: so those friends and things like that. But I think
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: in the absence of Linda, it seems.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: He really could got start to fade.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: It's not an exaggeration to say that he faded, you know,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: in the absence of his wife, you know, died from
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: a broken heart in some ways, right from the loss
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: of Linda. He couldn't go on after that, but he
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: was still writing, I mean up until he died.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: He wrote.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: There was a collection of poems published right before he
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: died called dead Man's Float, And actually the soft cover
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: came out after he died and includes the last poem
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: he was writing when he died.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, dude. When you look at him, like
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: especially on the cover here, and you listen to it,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: like clips him talk and you'd form sort of an impression,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: and then you go read some of the sentences he
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: wrote and you're like, how could that sentence? Like how
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: did those sentences come out of that guy? You know,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: it's like so unbelievably talented and smart. Man, Yeah, it's
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: so talented.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: Gary Snyder write the poet from California, Beat Poet, Nature Poet,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: was walking across the campus one time in California with
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: his wife and saw Jim Harrison was coming across the
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: campus and she turned to Gary and says, I cannot
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: believe that's the man who wrote Dolva. So similar similar idea. Right,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: you look at Jim on the cover that's in. Yeah,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: he doesn't scream sensitive poet right.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: Some greasy sweatshirt and stuff. It's just like, yeah, he
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: lived eight cigarettes hanging out of his mouth just but then.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: Just so brilliant man lived a long, hard life. Yeah,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: and it shows on his face.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: So it took you. You spent five six years on
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: the book and talked to how many people do you interview?
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, well over one hundred different interviews for the book,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: sort of all over the place, from Montana and Michigan
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: to New York and LA to France, you know, Florida
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: obviously Arizona took a solid six years. But from like
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: the first phone call I made to publication date, probably
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: seven years total. So it's been a long journey.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: And no, and you beat everybody to it. No one's
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: done a no one's done like a full biography of
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: Jim Harrison.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, couldn't believe it. I mean that I'd be worried.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: While you were working on that someone else is going
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: to quick kick one out. I was you caught wind
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't think they get it done before me, necessarily,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: but I was ill. Yeah, when I first started, when
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: I first sort of zeroed in on on writing a
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: biography of Harrison. I was shocked that no one was
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: already doing it.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: I had some dudes calling me that were kicking around
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: making a documentary about his life.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you were involved in that or not.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: No, No, I'm not. There's Yeah, there's been a number
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: of just sort of people circling the documentary of Harrison,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: and I think there should definitely be one.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: They had asked whoever it was, I don't remember. I
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: don't even know if I'd be able to even find anything,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: but we spoke on the phone and they were asking
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: me about if I would do like a little talking
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: head bit in it. But I don't know what came
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, people people have been circling a documentary, but uh,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: and I sort of thought someone would start to not
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: start one while I was writing it. Sure, Yeah, I
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: don't think anyone did, not that I heard of.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when they were asked me there that it was
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: like not as someone that knew them, but just someone
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: was influenced by the work, right, righteah? Right? Or is
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: that were influenced by the work, Yeah, for sure. And
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: then I was kind of I didn't get you know,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: I definite didn't get the sense that there was a
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: done deal on being in it. I was like, sure, whatever, yeah,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: but I kept kind of I still kind of keep
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: my eyes out expecting the movie to come out.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it would be great.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: But the fact that you managed to get like a
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: big ass book done before they could get a documentary
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: done is impressive. What year did he die in?
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: Twenty sixteen? March?
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you didn't get Crank until he was dead.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't, right, Yeah, So you felt.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: Phony doing it while he's alive.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: I don't think so now I don't think. I think yeah, yeah,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: I think I would have. I think there's you know,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: I would have loved to have interviewed him for the book.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, there's it's also
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: sort of liberating to do it when they're not alive too, Yeah.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: Because when they're alive a matter of written biography, but
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: well I've written like biographical sketches, but I think when
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: they're alive, I've it just becomes different because their own
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: their own mythology is right, someone's own mythology is part
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: like in an interview, as you're getting the mythological version
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, totally unless they're just done
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: in the guards down, you're gonna get like, here's how
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: i'd like you know what it is. Yeah, here's how
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: I'd like to be remembered totally.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you would have to really filter for that, right,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: You'd have to like take everything they excited with a
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: grain of salt. But I mean there were enough like
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: friends and family members still live and are still alive
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: now around Jim's in Jim's world that you know, I
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: don't know if I would have written it differently than
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: they've been alive, because I'm still writing, you know, with
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: the idea that it's still very much living story, right,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: And so you have to keep that in mind, I
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: think when you're writing biography. Well, congratulations on it, man,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: thank you.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to I'm excited to dig in and rito
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: I just I mean, I just took possession of my
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: hardcover right now.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: Wonderful. That's great. I'd like to have.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: You sign it for me. I would love to again.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: The title is Devouring Time Jim Harrison, A Writer's Life
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: by Todd Goddard. So if you're a fan of Harrison's work,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: and I know there are many out there more than
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: any of the people of the writers that sort of
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: touch on and swerve in and out of the worlds
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: of hunting and fishing in nature. Like, I think that
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: he's the most celebrated. I don't think anybody comes close.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: I agree entirely. Yeah, I don't think anybody comes close.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: In their manner, something for everybody. There's something for everybody, which.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: Is, if you're like a little too eighty HD for
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: a novel, try a novella.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a short novel and Jim was a
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: Jim had mastered that for him. I mean, he's known
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: for that.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: If you're like, dude, I don't have time for a novel,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: the novella.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: Take a novella, right, exactly?
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: What's that term for a really long essay, not a
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: man not a memo, like a monograph.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Well, it's been real honored to be invited on here.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: So thank you.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: So I love it. And again, man, you can tell
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: that I'm like, I'm a Harrison fan. I'm haunted by Harrison.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: I get mad thinking about him. I love his work. Yeah,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: to reread his books, dude, he's like, he's like, uh,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: you know, I guess he's to me what Hemingway was
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: to him.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right, contradictory and like he just like like
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: a not a dark cloud, but a cloud in the sun,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: He's just there, right, and.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: I turned back to him for nourishment in some way, right,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Jim said this great thing in tarpin.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: Actually he says, you know, you go fly fishing, you're
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: tarpin fishing. He says, because catching a tarpin gives you
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: a jolt of electricity, the fresh and the feeling of
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: being alive. And I think Harrison does that. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: go pick up a food essay, one of his sports essays, right,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: and you know you'll be freshen you know, your feeling
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: of life will be freshened. And Harrison's so good at
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: doing that. You know. I can't turn back to him
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: enough and not feel that.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: The thing we didn't touch on, and I'll just mention
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: it is he was a lifelong, unapologetic environmentalist. Definitely unapologetic. Yeah,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: he didn't care if that shit was in fashion or
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: out of fashion. That dude was an environmentalist, yeah, you know,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: and he probably would have said that he maybe he
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: used that word. But he was like he was a
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: clean air, clean water, wildlife guy through and through.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: No one had to ever wonder what he thought about
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: the habitat and you know, in degradation and the kind
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: of people that degrade. Yeah.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he never lost sight of like, you know,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: you know, the people who work in that world. You know,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: he never had an unrealistic view of the fact that
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: humans go into the natural world and have an impact
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: on it. Right. He was never one of his people
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: who was going to say, you know, everything needs to
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: be preserved in a pristine state where you know, people
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: can't go in and work in those environments. But he
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: had a strong environmental convert.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: No, he knew it. It's an occupied landscape that has
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: to be taken care.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: Of, that's right. Well yeah, but he cared about it, right,
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: and he knew we had to take care of it.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 4: Well.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on, Todd, Thank you again. Devouring time.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: Jim Harrison a writer's life. Fascinating guy. I can't wait
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: to read the book.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: Steve