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Title: Conversations With Jim Harrison (Literary Conversations Series (Paper)) by Robert J. Demott, Jim Harrison ISBN: 1-57806-456-2 Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi (Trd) Pub. Date: May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great for fans and for inside info about the lit scene!
Comment: I'm glad I found this book. I also bought the new "True Bones." You know a writer has finally made it when "they" start publishing books ABOUT him, eh? Very good!
Jim is a great writer, poetic in a totally accessible way. Don't like poetry? Read his and you'll be a convert. I've read nearly all his work.
Jim is a GREAT conversationalist. This book lets you into that world for the first time. (Well, the interviews are reprinted and gathered from other sources, so perhaps you've seen them already.)
I'm looking forward to "True Bones" as well: the bio-pics section of those longhair 70's days is just great! I see they now have a Jim Harrison Society, too. Cool.
For such a huge talent, I hate to say anything at all detracting, but we fans have our rights. : ) We might hold our heroes too highly and so feel overly free to grump about them on occasion. But artists aren't always the sweetest about their fans either! Each side says "Nag, nag, nag, it's always something." : ) Anyway, I have one complaint: he let some of the usual obligatory Hollywood vibes into his books. The old geezer gets the hot babes thing. Sure, it makes the Homer Simpson in us go "Wooo! Wooo!" And of course he writes it well. But I consider that his ONLY limitation. But Jim has always been up front about his need to pay the bills and play the ONLY game that writers are allowed to play if they don't want to teach or starve: the game with Hollywood. It's either feast or famine. (Something must be done to change this!)
His only other limitation isn't hardly his fault perhaps. And actually it's of course just as exciting to read about as is duffer-babe stuff. (--Until one senses the HABIT behind it.) Anyway, it's this jet-set stuff. Maybe it's unavoidable when H-wood is writing the checks. Hey, I don't know that world. Jim does the pinnacle of Everyman very well: but he loses it when he laterals into aristocracy. His dualism of cabin/mansion, stew/caviar is cute and he does work hard to confront it, but it's a slight sticking point.
Still, for me, he goes farther than others, so who could hold it against him.
In "Conversations" we get great insights into the guy and the game. How many top writers today hammer at MFA's like he does? He's pretty honest about Hollywood as well. Hey, his pals there helped him when others wouldn't. He's up front about that and about the banality of the place. At the same time, he gets high on the power, the talent and the $1000 dinners. Who wouldn't? He keeps the books as open as anyone anyway. And I really appreciate him for that.
We have to admit in this country that if someone wrote the actual literature that would keep our culture alive THEY WOULD STARVE TO DEATH. I think Jim is very clear about this. I'm not sure how many other writers who 'made it' are as candid. But he's a 'flyover' and values candor like so many here do.
American literature isn't dead. And it has a LOT MORE still to do. Well, of course, ALL the work that hasn't been done since the era when Jim and a few of his pals were in their prime. Maybe Jim has already hit his fiestiest home-runs. He has a champions legacy to lean on (even if it won't pay the bills!). But there are writers out there who have picked up the ball and have been moving it further all these years. They just haven't seen print yet. Due to the MFA lock. But not for long! "Flyover" spirit lives! Uh, not to doubleplug but: http://.....com .
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