Off to the Side

In Off to the Side, Jim Harrison writes about his upbringing in Michigan, the austerities of life amid the Depression and the Second World War, and the seemingly greater austerities of his starchy Swedish forebears, who have inspired so much of his writing. He traces his coming-of-age, from a boy drunk with books to a young man making his way among fellow writers he deeply admired - writers like Tom McGuane, Philip Caputo, Peter Matthiessen, Robert Lowell, W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg, among others. Harrison writes forthrightly about the life-changing experience of becoming a father, and the minor cognitive dissonance when this boy from the "heartland" somehow ended up a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. He gives free rein to his "seven obsessions" - alcohol, France, stripping, hunting and fishing (and the dogs who have accompanied him in both), religion, the road, and our place in the natural world - which he elucidates with earthy wisdom and an elegant sense of connectedness. He returns always to his love of literature - from his first awakenings to the power of writing in his teens, and his youthful decision to model himself on Rimbaud, to how books have remained his center, sustaining him during the darkest times of his life. Above all, he delivers a joyful, meditative, candid, and wise book that is a paean to the complex delights of life.