Customer Reviews

Off to the Side

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I started reading Jim Harrison in the seventies. I even liked the early books he doesn't. I read his poetry and kept track of his work up through Off to the Side. I subscribe to Esquire and Men's Journal so I read many of the "Raw and the Cooked" pieces and saw early printings of various novellas. (I read "Legends" in Esquire in one sitting at my kitchen table. Hey, I was born poor too) This is some context for my remarks. Who does one write a memoir for? I guess my hope is that a memoir by an author is for his readers. If you are hoping for this, you'll be disappointed. It seems this memoir was for Harrison and probably his family and a few close friends listed toward the end. As for people who have been reading his work, maybe we're just better off reading his work. When a writer writes a memoir, I am interested in understanding what he/she reads and how he/she reads. Harrison mentions a number of writers but he doesn't say much about what he got from them (except near the end when he reveals a bit of what Notes From the Underground meant for him). I am interested in how events shaped writing and thinking. What we get are anecdotes. Harrison knew many writers who I like to read but we learn nothing of interest through his encounters. Ultimately, this memoir seems to me self absorbed. As if it were time to do the "memoir" thing. I guess I was naïve enough to think that writers consider their readers, but I don't think Harrison knows anything about his readers except as schmucks who go to his book signings that he was trying mightily to get out of. (I've never been to a book signing.) Is Off to the Side entertaining? Yes. Is it well written in Harrison's distinctive voice? Yes. Did Harrison have a life interesting enough to write about? Yes. Do we learn anything about his writing or reading or his take on other writers and their ideas? No. The rating is higher than it probably should be, but like Harrison, I hate to admit that something I spent time on reading wasn't worth my time.

When I finished this book, I felt much like the other reviewers. I thought the first half was great, and it finished strong in the very end, but my perception of Harrison was tarnished as one Hollywood name after another was trotted out during the screenplay writing phase. It was as if, caught within a pseudo-fame, he had to ensure his readers (or moreso himself) that he was in the game, whether we knew it or not.

Then, as the book settled in a bit, I began to realize that this was probably a relatively candid look at the man's professional life (I don't know him - I'm only guessing). True to his persona, he didn't fall into politically correct pressure - this time by not being modest about who he knows. Maybe this reveals just another one of his addicitons. The only difference is that the other addictions he talks about have a mythological romance to them, evoking endearment in job-shackled readers and probably selling a lot of books for him. This particular vice repels people.

Nevertheless, whether he intended it or not, I felt the book revealed a man constantly torn between the seduction of Hollywood's powerful, fast pace and his cheap cars and favorite dogs rolling out to a fishing spot before hitting the local northern Michigan watering hole. I can relate.

His language is, as always, poetically beautiful and you can truly feel the passion of somebody who seems fascinated by the simple fact that he's alive.

Out of morbid curiosity, I would have liked to understand more how he maintained his family life with so much wild and carefree excess. But, then again, that's really none of my business.

It's one of the most uniquely American career paths in literature. Boy grows up in the hinterland, discovers that he has received the divine ray of talent, follows his dreams and scrabbles for decades, then finally hits the big time in Hollywood.

The difference is that Harrison never lost touch with the land, much preferring to repair to his favorite hunting and fishing spots, and drink with the locals back home in Michigan, rather than toil away in the studios. Oh, he did lose his church unbringing, and G. K. Chesterton would surely call Harrison's idea of a private religion mere weakmindedness, but Harrison has undoubtedly consumed an adult portion of life, and he's here to tell us all about it.

As a biographical account of his life and career, this is much too misty. The reader must swim open seas of random impressions, interesting anecdotes, and barstool wisdom to get from one fact to the next. And they are not especially sequential, either. I guess that job will have to wait for a professional biographer.

But taken for what it is, this book is enjoyable. There's too much name-dropping in the Hollywood phase, though he is sincerely grateful to Jack Nicholson for his help breaking into pictures. But really--eating sandwiches with Art Garfunkel while betting on which skiers on a slope are going to wipe out? And there are dozens such little passing mentions. Maybe I'm just jealous...

His love of the land, of the countryside, of his hunting dogs, and his unsparing accounts of his own shortcomings and addictions and mistakes make this book one to respect. It may be a mishmash, it may not be the whole or unadulterated truth, but it is visibly a labor of love.

I've greatly enjoyed many of Harrison's novels and novellas (I'm not much of a poetry fan), and although the other reviews were mixed, I picked this up for cheap and started reading it with low expectations.

Harrison is just too good of a writer, and too interesting a person, to write a truly boring memoir. Those who find his references to celebrities intolerable name-dropping may perhaps be envious, or haven't read many memoirs by those who happen to have associated with famous people. If your life has included relationships with such types, so be it; no need to hide it or be self-conscious about it. I didn't find Harrison partularly abusive in his mention of those with whom he has palled around.

Unfortunately, I didn't find him particularly enlightening, either. If you're going to mention, say, Jack Nicholson, who strikes me as potentially intriguing, what's the point, unless you're going to tell me something about Nicholson other than the mere fact that you know him, or that in a certain situation he made some comment that anyone might have made? I didn't learn anything about any of these other people, since Harrision seemed to have no inclination to tell me anything. Is this offensive? Not to me -- just much less interesting than it might have been. But then, it seems Harrison wants to maintain his welcome at the Nicholson digs, which is like trying to have your cake and eat it.

The organization of this memoir is, well, mostly absent. Harrison's initial effort to start from the begining and tell the story of his life quickly degenerates into more or less random vignettes Harrison, or someone, later cobbled together into something book-length. Often he repeats himself in a manner that suggests he wrote one piece either before writing, or without any recollection of having written, the preceeding section, and jumps from one period in his life to another like Billy Pilgrim.

Ultimately, the theme of the book seems to be "How I went from starving Artist to screenwriting Big Shot and then dropped off the merry-go-round -- after I'd made a bundle so I could afford to be an Artist again." Harrison seems not to be fully aware that there's a limit to how much sympathy he can expect from readers who will never earn in a lifetime what he made in a year after he hit the big time with Legends of the Fall; his honesty about his inability to handle all the money is refreshing, but I suspect more than a few readers will feel "Gee, woulda been nice if he could have done something with all that dough besides drink two hundred dollar bottles of wine and pick up thousand-dollar tabs after lunch with the Rich and Famous." Disappointingly, he really does come off as something of a pig, as well as a Hollywood hanger-on who parlayed his obvious, but limited, talent into an opportunity to party with celebrities who were frankly in another league.

Harrison is oddly selective about what he chooses to discuss. He's under no obligation to tell me about, say, his marriage or experiences as a father, but it does seem odd that he'll go on, and on, confessing his weakness for booze and rich food and strippers but say next to nothing about how someone who seems to have spent countless days rambling about, drinking, stuffing his face and chasing skirts, managed to stay married to the same woman for over forty years.

Harrison also tries way too hard to present his musings as something more substantial than they are. I don't demand timeless philosophy from every memoir, but Harrision tries for it, with very spotty results. In the manner of Montaigne, Harrison often makes a series of one-line, abstract pronouncements of purported Truths he's discovered, but too often these would-be gems are obtuse, vague, and frankly pretentious. In fact, Harrison's manner throughout has a touch of pretention about it, with frequent use of words that he rarely, if ever, would use in any of his other works -- lots of "quite," "indeed," and other overly refined language that may be entirely appropriate coming from someone who actually speaks or writes that way, but sounds incongruous from a writer who's made his fortune playing, and portraying, the rough-hewn backwoods rascal. Harrison has written several very entertaining novels (and a few that, IMHO, are unremarkable), but he's no literary giant. One suspects, in reading his memoirs, that he's torn between humility and believing the blurb-hype.

Notwithstanding any of this, though, it really isn't a bad read. It moves along, and Harrison is about as clever as a reader of one of his better writings might imagine. One might be a little disappointed to find, however, that he's not the modern-day Thoreau one might romantically have supposed.

You're at a bar in an airport hotel late at night. The guy next to you has been talking about himself for an hour. At the beginning of his rant, he was sort of interesting, sort of not. He actually says things like "Orson Welles told me once over dinner..." and "My books have been published in twenty languages." And "I stay with Jack Nicholson whenever I'm in LA..." and on and on. At first you were delighted and certainly impressed with who he appeared to know and where he'd been. But after a while as he pompous'd on, you began to look at your watch wondering when you could politely escape.

That's what happened to me reading Harrison's memoir. An interesting life? Sure. But he sure wants you to know it and there's the rub. Way too often he drops the names of the famous like boulders and makes sure you know how glad they were of his company. Or he tells you how thousands of the faithful gather to hear him whenever he speaks in France. And afterwards he's invited to a many course meal at the Crazy Horse in Paris by the owner(of course) and is surrounded by the (naked dancing) girls who want to have their pictures taken with this famous writer... and on and on.

By the end, you're pulling your tie away from your neck and glad as hell when you can finally get away from him and back to the silence of your room.

Jim Harrison, Off to the Side: a Memoir

Atlantic Monthly Press

reviewed by Sean Aden Lovelace

Jim Harrison has often said he's horrible at titles. I'm not sure that's true (excluding his novel SunDog, neither of sun or dog, and possibly A Good Day to Die, which smacks of Elmore Leonard, or one of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns), but then again few writers have had such literary prolificacy (28 volumes and counting), and thus an ongoing need for titles. And so what of Harrison's 2002 memoir, Off to the Side? I suppose it depends on your definition of title. Is it a key to a door, or the door itself, opening into the rooms and hallways of a writer's memory? Or more a structural device, a textual map, guiding us along? Or is it simply a disarming introduction, a gesture of the hand, an invitation to pull up a chair and gather round the fire, to sit right by the storyteller-right off to the side.

I'd say the answer is yes.

The book does indeed begin with memory, section one, "Early Life," a brief review of parental courting, family life, Harrison's youthful days of fishing and hunting and scraping by in rural Michigan, and though admittedly a life of poverty- "catsup sandwiches" and "plates of beans"-never a hint of self-pity. Primarily through lively imagery and lyrical description (Harrison is also an accomplished poet), the author expresses a certain calm and simplicity in a caring family and rural environs. He writes of waking in the morning: "There had been a little rain in the night and I could smell the damp garden, the strong winey smell of the grape arbor, the bacon grease from the kitchen below." In short, his childhood embodies the poetic idyll, and Harrison never takes for granted this fortunate reality.

Yet, like childhood, Harrison's Eden quickly gives way to the pain of knowledge, and "Early Life" shifts in tone and mood. Off to the Side becomes a title of the artist's first identity as outsider, and this alienation is no garden variety adolescent angst-Harrison's abstract loss and longing can be traced to a concrete source. At age seven the author is partially blinded when a playmate jabs a glass bottle into his left eye, permanently disabling him. (Interestingly, the writer James Thurber also suffered a childhood blinding in one eye, and was likewise a prolific and imaginative writer.) Harrison must now adjust, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. His perceptions change; his life now a type of inward synesthesia: "You have the idea you can actually hear color." Later, Harrison spends the money he has saved for months-$1200 earned at the rate of $1.50 per hour-on a quack physician who promises to repair his eyesight. Harrison's eyesight is not repaired; in fact, he is totally blinded for a time, as he feels a "hot nail in my eyeball." To put it plainly, he feels foolish, hopeless, and alone. He yearns for escape, "for the places you read about..." And so he leaves his home, and childhood, behind.

Section Two of Off to the Side is clearly segmented, a sometimes forced arrangement of heavily modified deadly sins, the modification a bit ironic (and playful-a Harrison trait), in that the sin is to omit these activities from a full life. Harrison labels these topics as "Seven Obsessions." At this point, the book's title might refer to a whiskey chaser on the side (obsession one: alcohol), a woman on the side (strippers), a sidearm, or sidearm cast (hunting and fishing), a spiritual side (private religion), a side of roast pheasant and truffles (a tour of France), the side of a highway shoulder (the road), or possibly an empathetic and holistic side (nature and natives). To summarize this delightful section of writing would be akin to wading through one of Harrison's famous (or infamous) 37 course gourmet meals, yet I would implore the reader to never dismiss the seriousness the author allows these sensory pursuits. Each "obsession" is followed with insightful reflection, its demerits and merits, even the likely consequences of excess. All of Harrison's activities-from the primarily hedonistic to the often spiritual-are undertaken with one purpose: "a willingness to be conscious."

Memory knows no true chronology, and the final section, "The Rest of Life," is an often random medley of recollections: some tragic, some elated, some a bit repetitive, some fresh and startling. We get the soaring events of Harrison's first literary success, and also the sodden (and brief) days of his teaching in academia. We experience yet another sudden act of devastating violence, a list of the author's pernicious phobias, but then gentle, often intimate, reflections on the role of husband and father. We eavesdrop on the intellectual subtleties (and often intriguing arguments about the state of writing today) of living among artists such as Brautigan, Auden, Lowell, Capote, and Ginsberg, but also the freewheeling immediacy (as in partying) of Harrison's screenwriting days in Hollywood, with the likes of Orson Welles, Jack Nicholson, Jimmy Buffett, Danny DeVito, and Sean Connery. (Harrison has been criticized for dropping names; and for mimicking the life of Hemingway, a man who was himself a celebrity. Both complaints are, of course, absurd. A writer of memoir has the right (the duty?) to mention his fellow human beings. And I've never understood an attack that uses a Nobel Laureate as its foundation.)

Memoir-if written with skill, care and seriousness-surpasses and transcends the life of any one writer. Jim Harrison's finest wisdom is found midway through: "What you get in life is what you organize for yourself every day." Well said, and yet another way of nudging the reader to embrace life, but never just with the physical, always with the cerebral along for the ride. Jim Harrison engages life in all its arenas, and then he writes what he sees and hears and touches and feels, with all of his considerable energy and ability, either head-on, or yes, Off to the Side. Yet another point of the book's title? Possibly. Does it matter? Possibly not, but you should, if paying attention, already know the answer; and you won't find it in a book review. Go outside, get the book, read it, and then you decide.

I remember walking into the Crawford County library in Grayling, Michigan over thirty years ago and reading a poem by Jim Harrison, thinking that he had completely restructured the way I thought about language. That began a thirty year obsession with Harrison and his work, especially the poems which I read almost daily.

He has illuminated my own writing career, such as it is. When I thought I was paying attention to the natural world, his work would remind me that I truly wasn't as perceptive as I imagined. Now, his interior life, which has always ridden close to the surface of his work, has been exhaustively mined and offered up to those of us who use Harrison's work as one might use a compass.

For me OFF TO THE SIDE is like getting a topographic map of a heart I have long admired. Poet, shaman, Zen fool in the tradition of Ikkyu, Harrison is the best antidote to a world ever-filling with greed, stupidity and blindness.

Jim Harrison passes on reflections on his life to readers of Off to the Side. I don't think he tries to accomplish any goals of self revelation or sequential order in this book. He merely shares episodes of his life and work, as well as thoughts on a wide range of topics like strippers, religion, nature, literature and Hollywood. Harrison could write a description of a coke bottle and make it eloquent and enjoyable to read. His writing skill and literary talents are at the top of the bar, so readers will appreciate even his writing about day-to-day events.

Harrison writes in-depthly about his childhood and early family life, but then departs from writing much about his adult family to share more about his Hollywood interactions. Similarly, he shares early inspiration by literary giants and unknowns, then later in the book delves into episodes with drinking buddies and Hollywood cronies.

This book is at its best when Harrison is revealing significant stories about family, nature and literature. It devolves as he spends considerable pages repeating the frustrating stories of trying to turn novels and novellas into successful screenplays. He drops many big names but rarely reveals much about them.

It seems like Harrison writes some of this book to cater to what he thinks readers will want to read about like Hollywood and drinking in Key West with Jimmy Buffet, but the real richness is in Harrison's tales of writing and trying to make it as a writer in the solitude of his cabin or small home with a young wife and new baby. He returns again and again to his calling and his passion for writing that sometimes comes to him in dreams and visions. I think the treasure of this book lies in his accounts of the challenges, rewards and heartache of responding to the deep call to write.

I would like to know after reading this book about the author's family life as a husband and father while he was continually off on hunting, fishing or Hollywood endeavours. Did the wife and kids come or were they content to let him go for months at a time each year?

These questions may have to wait for answers from a biography of Harrison written by someone else. For now, Off to the Side serves as an enjoyable and at times revealing and enlightening memoir of a called and committed author who did the work required to bring his gift to life.

Shakespeare On Spirituality: Life-Changing Wisdom from Shakespeare's Plays

Jim Harrison's memoir, Off to the Side, is just as gritty, scrutinizing, and lush as his novels and novellas. Harrison's life of the mind makes excellent reading, and he doesn't seem to make any excuses for his failures or take too much credit for his successes.

Harrison's work in Hollywood gave him access and interesting insight into show business during the eighties and nineties. His reflection on those times and his utter distaste for his life then is filled with witty observations and candid appraisals.

His writing has always been filled an intoxicating blend of wine, food, sex, and natural history. Harrison's descriptions of his life and his process will be valuable and heartening to any aspiring writers. But more importantly, he reflection on a life lived with gusto and exuberance will be inspiring to any anybody who wants to live a life that is passionate and full of wonder.

Another great read from Jim Harrison, certainly one of our finest and most accessible writers. Every time I return to one of his books, and I often do, I always find fresh perspectives, new insights, and fine writing.