Harrison, Jim
HARRISON, Jim
Nationality: American. Born: James Thomas Harrison in Grayling, Michigan, 11 December 1937. Education: Michigan State University, East Lansing, B.A. in comparative literature 1960, M.A. in comparative literature 1964. Family: Married Linda King in 1959; two daughters. Career: Assistant professor of English, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1965-66. Lives in Michigan. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1967, 1968, 1969; Guggenheim fellowship, 1969. Agent: Robert Datilla, 233 East 8th Street, New York, New York 10028. Address: Box 135, Lake Leelanau, Michigan 49653-0135, U.S.A.
Publications
Novels
Wolf. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1971; London, Flamingo, 1993.
A Good Day to Die. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1973; London, Flamingo, 1993.
Farmer. New York, Viking Press, 1976; London, Flamingo, 1993.
Legends of the Fall (novellas). New York, Delacorte Press, 1979;London, Collins, 1980.
Warlock. New York, Delacorte Press, and London, Collins, 1981.
Sundog: The story of an American foreman, Robert Corvus Strang, as told to Jim Harrison. New York, Dutton, 1984; London, Heinemann, 1985.
Dalva. New York, Dutton, 1988; London, Cape, 1989.
The Woman Lit by Fireflies (three novellas). Boston, HoughtonMifflin, 1990; London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991.
Julip. Boston, Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, and London, Flamingo, 1994.
The Road Home. New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998.
The Beast God Forgot to Invent: Novellas. New York, AtlanticMonthly Press, 2000.
Uncollected Short Stories
"Dalva: How It Happened to Me," in Esquire (New York), April1988.
Poetry
Plain Song. New York, Norton, 1965.
Locations. New York, Norton, 1968.
Walking. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pym Randall Press, 1969.
Outlyer and Ghazals. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1971.
Letters to Yesenin. Fremont, Michigan, Sumac Press, 1973.
Returning to Earth. Ithaca, New York, Ithaca House, 1977.
Selected and New Poems 1961-1981. New York, Delacorte Press, 1982.
The Theory and Practice of Rivers. Seattle, Winn, 1986.
The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems. Livingston, Montana, Clark City Press, 1989.
After Ikky'u and Other Poems. Boston, Shambhala, 1996.
The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems. Port Townsend, Washington, Copper Canyon Press, 1998.
Other
Natural World, with Diana Guest. Barrytown, New York, OpenBook, 1983.
Just Before Dark: Collected Nonfiction. Livingston, Montana, ClarkCity Press, 1991.
Wolf (screenplay, with Wesley Strick). Columbia Pictures, 1994.
The Boy Who Ran into the Woods. New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.
*Film Adaptations:
Legends of the Fall, 1994.
Critical Studies:
Jim Harrison by Edward C. Reilly. New York, Twayne Publishers, London, Prentice Hall, 1996.
* * *A reviewer for the Times observed that Jim Harrison is "a writer with immortality in him." Archivist Bernard Fontana, of the University of Arizona, has expressed his belief in the quality of Harrison's work in another way: "To read Jim Harrison is to be tattooed." Harrison's early reputation was founded on four volumes of poetry. In 1971, his first novel, Wolf, was published. Wolf is the story of one man's quest for identity and freedom through the primal levels of nature and sex. The novel's themes and northern Michigan location drew critical comparisons to Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories.
Two years after Wolf, A Good Day to Die appeared as a statement about the decline of America's ecological systems. In a blending of Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang and Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, readers are presented with three characters who are launched on a cross-country trek to blow up a dam and rescue the Grand Canyon. A modern day Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and an earthy Becky Thatcher are faced with the bankruptcy of the American dream. The novel also illustrates the author's fascination with Native Americans and begins a thematic interest that is found in other novels.
Farmer is a Lolita -like account of a country school teacher coming to grips with middle age while caught between two love affairs—one with a nymphet student and the other with a widowed co-worker who was his childhood sweetheart.
Harrison's first three novels resulted in many attacks by critics who saw him as a stereotype of the Hemingway myth: a writer obsessed with the macho male activities of hunting, drinking, and manly sex. In later novels Harrison would confront these criticisms head-on.
After Farmer, Harrison entered into an unusual contract with the actor Jack Nicolson. For $15, 000 in advance of writing and publication, Nicholson purchased half the film rights to Harrison's yet-to-be-written project. Harrison produced three novellas which were published in book form under the title of Legends of the Fall. The first novella, "Revenge," is the story of a love affair between Cochran; an ex-fighter pilot; and Miryea, the wife of a Mexican gangster. "The Man Who Gave Up His Name" chronicles Nordstrom's divorce, his run-ins with the New York underworld and his attempt to form a new life built around a new identity. Legends of the Fall is an epic story that spans fifty years and tells the tale of William Ludlow and his three sons. The story is filled with beautiful characterizations and with great action from its beginning, when the brothers ride out to Calgary to join the Canadian army and fight in World War I; to its end, when Ludlow confronts Irish bootleggers who have come to kill one of his sons.
Published in 1981, Warlock parodies nearly everything for which critics had taken Harrison to task. Johnny Lundgren, a.k.a. Warlock, becomes a private detective after he loses his job as a foundation executive. Unable to handle women, earn the devotion of his dog or remember to load his pistol, he bumbles through a series of adventures on the behalf of a deranged physician. Sundog, subtitled "The story of an American foreman, Robert Corvus Strang, as told to Jim Harrison," is a piece of fiction presented as a true tale. Strang recounts the story of his life, his several marriages and children, dozens of lovers, and his work on giant construction projects around the world.
Dalva, which was published in 1988, contains two stories: a tale of a middle-aged women's search for her out-of-wedlock child as well as her tribulations with her almost-boyfriend professor; and a story of her pioneer ancestor, an Andersonville survivor and naturalist whose diaries vividly tell of the destruction of the Plains Indian way of life by Anglo invasion.
The Woman Lit by Fireflies is a collection of three novellas. The first, "Brown Dog" is the comic memoir of an ex-Bible college student who loves to eat, drink, and chase women and his discovery of an Indian chief submerged in Lake Superior. "Sunset Limited" concerns a group of 1960s radicals who reunite to rescue an old friend held in a Mexican jail. "The Woman Lit by Fireflies" is the story of a woman who walks away from her husband at an Interstate Welcome Center near Davenport, Iowa and is a tale of transfiguration and discovery.
A complex work that recalls aspects of Dalva —not least by bringing in characters related to those in the earlier novel—The Road Home uses several narrators, takes place over wide stretches of time, and emphasizes the interdependent quality of all life. One of the central figures is John Wesley Northridge II, Dalva's grandfather, who is told by his granddaughter, "When you tell me stories about your life, why do you always pretend you were such a nice person? … Everyone in town says you were the scariest man in the county …. So I wish you wouldn't just tell the good parts about yourself." The novel, as it unfolds, reveals much more than just the "good parts," and does so with Harrison's usual masterful touch.
—Tom Colonnese
Harrison, Jim
HARRISON, Jim
Nationality: American. Born: James Thomas Harrison, in Grayling, Michigan, 11 December 1937. Education: Michigan State University, East Lansing, B.A. in comparative literature 1960, M.A. in comparative literature 1964. Family: Married Linda King in 1960; two daughters. Career: Assistant professor of English, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1965–66. Lives on a farm in Michigan. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1967, 1968, 1969; Guggenheim fellowship, 1969. Agent: Robert Datilla, 233 East 8th Street, New York, 10028. Address: RR 1, Box 135, Lake Leelanau, Michigan 49653, U.S.A.
Publications
Poetry
Plain Song. New York, Norton, 1965.
Locations. New York, Norton, 1968.
Walking. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pym Randall Press, 1969.
Outlyer and Ghazals. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1971.
Letters to Yesenin. Fremont, Michigan, Sumac Press, 1973.
Returning to Earth. Ithaca, New York, Ithaca House, 1977.
Selected and New Poems 1961–1981. New York, Delacorte Press, 1982.
The Theory and Practice of Rivers. Seattle, Winn, 1986.
The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems. Livingston, Montana, Clark City Press, 1989.
After Ikkyu and Other Poems. Boston, Shambhala, 1996.
The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems. Port Townsend, Washington, Copper Canyon Press, 1998.
Screenplays: Revenge, 1988; Castledge, 1990; Wolf, 1992.
Novels
Wolf. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1971; as Wolf: A False Memoir, New York, Delta, 1989; London, Flamingo, 1993.
A Good Day to Die. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1973.
Farmer. New York, Viking Press, 1976.
Legends of the Fall (novellas). New York, Delacorte Press, 1979; London, Collins, 1980.
Warlock. New York, Delacorte Press, and London, Collins, 1981.
Sundog. New York, Dutton, 1984; London, Heinemann, 1985.
Dalva. New York, Dutton, 1988; London, Cape, 1989.
The Woman Lit by Fireflies. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1990; London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991.
Sunset Limited (three novellas). Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
A Good Day to Die. London, Flamingo, 1993.
Julip. New York, Washington Square Press, 1994.
The Road Home. New York, Washington Square Press, 1998; London, Picador, 1999.
Other
Natural World, with Diana Guest. Barrytown, New York, Open Book. 1983.
Confusion Reigns: A Quick-and-Easy Guide to the Most Easily Mixed-Up Words, with illustrations by Kimble Mead. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1987.
Just before Dark: Collected Nonfiction. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
Raw and the Cooked. New York, Dim Gray Bar, 1992.
*Critical Studies: "Poets from East and West" by Syed Amanuddin, in Creative Moment (Sumter, South Carolina), 1 (2), 1972; "Jim Harrison: A Checklist" by Tom Colonnese, in Bulletin of Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut), 39 (3), September 1982; "'"Natty Bumpo Wants Tobacco': Jim Harrison's Wilderness" by John Rohrkemper, and "'"A Good Day to Live': The Prose Works of Jim Harrison" by William H. Roberson, both in Great Lakes Review (Mt. Pleasant, Michigan), 8–9 (2–1), Fall 1982; "Myth and Reality in Jim Harrison's Warlock" by Thomas Maher Gilligan, in Critique (Washington, D.C.), 25 (3), Spring 1984; "The Man Whose Soul Is Not for Sale: Jim Harrison" by Hank Nuwer, in Rendezvous (Pocatello, Idaho), 21 (1), Fall 1985; "'"Macho Mistake': The Misrepresentation of Jim Harrison's Fiction" by William H. Roberson, in Critique (Washington, D.C.) 29 (4), Summer 1988; "Brown Dog's Insight: The Fiction of Jim Harrison" by Robert Johnson, in Notes on Contemporary Literature (Carrollton, Georgia), 27 (1), January 1997; "E.M. Cioran and 'The Man Who Gave Up His Name' by Jim Harrison" by Aleksandra Gruzinska, in her Essays on E.M. Cioran, Costa Mesa, California, ARA, 1999.
Jim Harrison comments:
I write free verse, which is absurdly indefinite as a name for what any poet writes. I consider myself an internationalist and my main influences to be Neruda, Rilke, Yeats, Bunting, Lorca, and, in my own country, Whitman, Hart Crane, Robert Duncan, and Ezra Pound. Not that this helps much other than to name those I esteem and, perhaps vacantly, wish to emulate. Most of my poems seem rural, vaguely surrealistic, though after the Spanish rather than the French. My sympathies run hotly to the impure, the inclusive, as the realm of poetry. A poet at best speaks in the "out loud speech of his tribe," deals in essences whether political, social, or personal. All of world literature is his province, though he sees it as a guild only to be learned from, as he must speak in his own voice.
* * *The work of Jim Harrison is imbued with a deeply rooted sense of place, and that place is in the middle of America in northern Michigan, "the only locus I know." In "Ghazals" he writes, "And I want to judge the poetry table at the County Fair. /A new form, poems stacked in pyramids like prize potatoes," and with their stark, simple images of rural life, his volumes comprise a county fair of delights. Poems such as "Young Bull," "Lisle's River," and "Dead Deer" are Harrison's songs of the plains.
From the poet's sense of place comes an understanding of nature's way. "I insist on a one-to-one relationship with nature," he says at one point, later adding, "I want to have my life /in cloud shapes, water shapes, wind shapes, /crow call, marsh hawk swooping over grass and weed tips." In poems such as "Cold August," "Natural World," and "February Swans," the shapes of nature are quietly celebrated. Consider "Dusk":
Dusk over the lake,
clouds floating
heat lightning
a nightmare behind branches;
from the swamps
the odor of cedar and fern,
the long circular
wail of the loon—
the plump bird aches for fish
for night to come down.
Then it becomes so dark
and still
that I shatter the moon with an oar.
At the end of the sequence called "A Year's Changes," looking into a pool of black water, the speaker thinks that
It appears bottomless,
An oracle I should worship at; I want
some part of me to be lost in it and return
again from the darkness, changing the creature,
or return to draw me back to a home.
In the reflections of nature Harrison looks into his own soul. His work is shallow, though, when nature is not there to provide a mirror or a muse. Outlyer and Ghazals is a disjointed and dispirited volume that includes poems praising whiskey and women "pliant as marshmellows." "All my poems are born dead," Harrison writes here. "I'm a bad poet." But he also writes, "If I clean up my brain … the Sibyl will return as an undiscovered lover."
The prophetess does indeed return with the 1973 Letters to Yesenin, a profoundly powerful and affecting work. Harrison's long prose poem sequence is not only an homage to the Soviet poet Sergei Yesenin but also a meditation on such topics as life, love, freedom, the poet's craft, and, of course, nature. This "suicide note to a suicide" is a "record of agony" in which Yesenin's sufferings in totalitarian Russia are juxtaposed with Harrison's pains in rural America. The self-pitying and egocentric tone of Outlyer is replaced here with compassion for all humanity. "A good poet is only a sorcerer bored with magic who has turned his attention elsewhere," Harrison writes, and here is a subject worthy of attention.
With this volume and those that followed, Harrison "returned to earth," finding the sure ground that is his proper subject. The example of Yesenin gives Harrison the power to shake off the suicidal musings of Outlyer and to choose life, with all of its elaborate sufferings and simple joys. Harrison closes his collected poems with "After Reading Takahashi," and he closes that poem with a characteristic passage in which by looking at nature he is able to look past himself:
I've been warned by a snowy night, an owl,
the infinite black above and below me to look
at all creatures and things with a billion eyes,
not struggling with the single heartbeat
that is my life.
—Dennis Lynch
Harrison, Jim
Harrison, Jim
PERSONAL
Career:
Music editor.
Awards, Honors:
Golden Reel Award nomination, best sound editing in television, 2002, for Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows; Golden Reel Award nomination (with Richard Belgardt), best sound editing, 2002, for Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
CREDITS
Film Music Editor:
National Lampoon's "Class Reunion," Twentieth Century-Fox, 1982.
Lone Wolf McQuade, Orion, 1982.
Eyes of Fire (also known as Cry Blue Sky), Vestron Video, 1983.
Tai-Pan, DEG, 1986.
No Way Out, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1987.
Homesick, 1988.
Christmas Vacation (also known as National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation" and National Lampoon's "Winter Holiday"), Warner Bros., 1989.
The God's Must Be Crazy II, 1989.
The Handmaid's Tale (also known as Die Geschichte der dienerin), Cinecon International, 1990.
Only the Lonely, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1991.
White Sands, Warner Bros., 1992.
Stay Tuned, Warner Bros., 1992.
The Crush, Warner Bros., 1993.
Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, 1993.
The Little Rascals, 1994.
Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, Miramax, 1995.
Incognito, Warner Bros., 1997.
Escape from Dino Island, Iwerks Entertainment, 1998.
Lost & Found, 1999.
Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (also known as The Klumps), Universal, 2000.
Dr. Dolittle 2 (also known as DR.2 and DR2), 2001.
Like Mike, Twentieth Century-Fox, 2002.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (also known as Harry Potter und die kammer des schreckens), Warner Bros., 2002.
Bruce Almighty, Universal, 2003.
Grind, Warner Bros., 2003.
Mean Girls, Paramount, 2004.
Christmas with the Kranks, Columbia, 2004.
The Game of Their Lives (also known as The Miracle Match), IFC, 2005.
Chicken Little, Buena Vista, 2005.
The Ant Bully, Warner Bros., 2006.
Barnyard (also known as Barnyard: The Original Party Animals and Der tierish verruckte bauernhof), Paramount, 2006.
Idlewild, Universal, 2006.
Primeval (also known as Kiss), Buena Vista, 2007.
Norbit, Paramount, 2007.
The Reaping, Warner Bros., 2007.
I Know Who Killed Me, Sony, 2007.
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Universal, 2008.
Film Supervising Music Editor:
Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984.
The Heavenly Kid, Orion, 1985.
The Mosquito Coast, Warner Bros., 1986.
Clean and Sober, Warner Bros., 1988.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (also known as Elvira), 1988.
Renegades, Universal, 1989.
Road House, United Artists, 1989.
Short Time, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1990.
Betsy's Wedding, Buena Vista, 1990.
Soapdish, United International Pictures, 1991.
Frankie and Johnny, Paramount, 1991.
If Looks Could Kill (also known as Teen Agent), Warner Bros., 1991.
Look Who's Talking Now, TriStar, 1993.
Father Hood (also known as Desperado, Honor Among Thieves, and Mike Hardy), Buena Vista, 1993.
Cops and Robbersons, TriStar, 1994.
Thumbelina (also known as Hans Christian Andersen's "Thumbelina"), Warner Bros., 1994.
The Jerky Boys, Buena Vista, 1995.
The Amazing Panda Adventure (also known as The Amazing Panda Rescue and Little Panda), Warner Bros., 1995.
Tin Cup, Warner Bros., 1996.
My Fellow Americans, Warner Bros., 1996.
The Mighty, Miramax, 1998.
Payback, Paramount, 1999.
Play It to the Bone (also known as Play It), Buena Vista, 1999.
Molly, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1999.
My Dog Skip, Warner Bros., 2000.
Here on Earth, Twentieth Century-Fox, 2000.
102 Dalmatians, Buena Vista, 2000.
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, 2001.
Crossroads, Paramount, 2002.
Dragonfly (also known as Im Zeichen der libelle), Universal, 2002.
Payback: Straight Up-The Director's Cut, Paramount, 2006.
Film Work; Other:
Assistant music editor, Weird Science, Universal, 1985.
Additional music editor, Dark City, New Line Cinema, 1998.
Assistant music editor, Screwed, 2000.
Television Work; Movies:
Music editor, Cry for the Strangers, 1982.
Music editor, Double Agent, Disney Channel, 1987.
Supervising music editor, Extreme Close-Up (also known as Home Video), NBC, 1990.
Supervising music editor, Gepetto, 2000.
Music editor, Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, ABC, 2001.
Television Work; Series:
Music editor, Remington Steele, 1984-86.
Music editor, Moonlighting, 1985-87.
Music editor, Private Eye, 1987.
Television Work; Specials:
Music editor, A Very Retail Christmas, NBC, 1990.
Television Work; Miniseries:
Supervising music editor, Gore Vidal's Lincoln, NBC, 1988.
Television Work; Movies:
Music editor, The Town Bully, ABC, 1988.
Sound editor, Mr. Rock 'n' Roll: The Alan Freed Story, NBC, 1999.
Harrison, Thomas
Bibliography
Colvin (1995);
Country Life, cxlix/3853 (15 Apr. 1971), 876–9, 3854 (22 Apr.), 944–7, 3856 (6 May), 1088–91, 3862 (1 Jun.), 1539;
Crook (1972a);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Harrison, Thomas
Clyde Binfield; and Professor J. A. Cannon
Harrison, Jim
HARRISON, Jim
HARRISON, Jim. (James Thomas Harrison). American, b. 1937. Genres: Novels, Poetry, Novellas/Short stories. Career: Former Assistant Professor of English, State University of New York, Stony Brook. Publications: Plain Song, 1965; Locations, 1968; Walking, 1969; Outlyers and Ghazals, 1971; Wolf (novel), 1971; A Good Day to Die (novel), 1973; Letters to Yesenin, 1973; Farmer (novel), 1976; Legends of the Fall (novella), 1979; Warlock (novel), 1981; New and Selected Poems, 1982; (with Diana Guest) Natural World, 1983; Sundog (novel), 1984; The Theory & Practice of Rivers (poetry), 1986; Dalva (novel), 1988; The Woman Lit by Fireflies (novella), 1990; Just Before Dark (non-fiction), 1991; Julip (novellas), 1994; After Ikkyu and Other Poems, 1996; The Road Home, 1998; The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems, 1998; The Beast God Forgot to Invent, 2000; The Boy Who Ran to the Woods, 2000. Address: Box 135, Lake Leelanau, MI 49653, U.S.A.