...My life might be a loathsome mess to an outsider but I cherished the notion that it was honest…
A Good Day to Die by Jim Harrison; Kindle Edition, 176 pages; Published May 3rd 2016 by Grove Press (first published 1973); ASINL: B01FT81SBC
...I WENT BACK to my room and lolled around naked…
Never surprised with an opening like this in a Jim Harrison work of art. I cannot imagine what he was actually like in real life. Perhaps one day we’ll get a closer look at the man. I do know he was much softer than the hardness his work pretends to be. He for sure was a well-read intellect and lover of almost anything fine be it literature, wine, women, food, and any number of things.
...My own wife had driven me to the airport in addition to loaning me the fare, an emotionless process that followed months of talk where no one was really wrong because no one had ever been right…
Let’s forgive his unrevised use of the noun “loan” as a verb. Harrison claims he never revised, wrote longhand, and his oldest daughter transcribed. Not a great way of working as far as limiting mistakes in punctuation or meaning. But let’s segue and focus instead on the fact that most Jim Harrison characters are divorced or going through a divorce. Most are hard drinkers who overeat and indulge in as many vices as possible. Some of these characters begin to get tiring and become retreads due to how many books Harrison has written. But regardless, these reminders of bad behavior are generally good for us recovering fools. And some anecdotes are quite laughable. Generally, at least in his later works, there are characters we can like, or get to know, or feel like we know them. This novel fails to have any characters attractive and interesting enough to be worth knowing.
...My life might be a loathsome mess to an outsider but I cherished the notion that it was honest…
The most redeeming quality of this second-rate novel is the superb title. Hardly a better one in my opinion. Countless options to discover or venture out into with a title as all-consuming as this one. But a good title does not make a good novel. Hardly the case. To think I enjoyed this novel the first time I read it many years ago is some indication on how much I have changed, or grown, or it is hoped, evolved in both my character and discernment of great literature. This book is hardly even good entertainment. As Harrison aged and gained additional friends and life experiences his writing changed as well. As it should. But he had to begin here to get there. And I am grateful he never gave up the pen.
...If I did any good at all it might be to let a few miserable fish swim to that higher, cleaner water where they were surely meant to spawn, as surely anyway as we are meant to die or vote or drink or screw out our torpid days…
Harrison puts his own stamp on what I read. And it was hardly worth the effort to painfully slog my way to the end. But I did. And even in this book’s woeful inadequacies there is every reason to continue to explore all facets of Harrison’s writing. There are rewards aplenty for those of us with staying power.
Thank you for the restack