Off to the Side: A Memoir (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Norma Olivia Walgren met Winfield Sprague Harrison in 1933 at the River Gardens, a dance hall just north of Big Rapids, Michigan, on the banks..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Key West, Stony Brook (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Rarely does one encounter a memoir so filled with the details of a life lived. Whether recalling bits of his past as a depressed child, manual laborer, Hollywood screenwriter, aspiring poet, novelist, or alcoholic husband, Jim Harrison pauses to analyze these moments--the cause and effect--and the choices that have made him who he is. Loosely divided into chapters, Off to the Side is somewhat rambling, and Harrison's opinions and conclusions occasionally remain obscure ("nearly everything you hear about Mexicans in the great north is utterly untrue")--but, to the benefit of readers, Harrison is never at a loss for ideas.

The solace Harrison finds in the natural world is most compelling, and it could be said he, too, shares Frost's "lover's quarrel with the world." After losing an eye at an early age and sinking into melancholy, Harrison's father advised that "curiosity will get you through hard times when nothing else will. Your curiosity had to be strong enough to lift you out of your self-sunken mudbath, the violent mixture of hormones, injuries, melancholy, and dreams of a future you not only couldn't touch but could scarcely see." These words were not lost on Harrison. With "no expertise outside of [his] own imagination" Harrison plays to his strengths in Off to the Side by setting down the events, experiences, thoughts, and feelings that have shaped his quite literate, truly American life. --Michael Ferch --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

"I'm not sure I'm particularly well equipped to tell the truth," writes Harrison. But with such a colorful life, there's not much need to tell lies. Bus boy, gardener, gourmand, novelist, screenwriter, drunkard-Harrison has done it all. Now add successful memoirist to that list. After a rugged outdoor childhood in Michigan, where an accident left him blind in one eye, Harrison moved to New York with vague ambitions to be a poet. Denise Levertov soon recognized his talent and launched Harrison on a literary career that eventually included teaching at SUNY Stony Brook, writing for GQ and Esquire, authoring several popular novels (The Road Home; Legends of the Fall) and writing Hollywood screenplays. Throughout, Harrison befriended an impressive gang of fellow free spirits: Jack Nicholson, Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane, among others. He swingingly recounts trout fishing with Richard Brautigan, bingeing with Orson Welles, arguing gay poetry with W.H. Auden and drinking with just about everybody. Alcoholism, Harrison writes, was his constant enemy, the writer's "black lung disease," as his friend McGuane once said. But he had other vices, too: strippers, cocaine, hunting, long walks in the woods by himself-all of which fed into Harrison's characteristic mix of freewheeling boho sensibilities and earthy western melancholy. A man as willing to shoot a grouse as trip on psychedelics-he claims to annually experience God-like visions and swears that he was once transformed into a wolf-Harrison is never less than intriguing. This fine memoir is a worthy capstone to a fascinating career.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (August 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802140300
• ISBN-13: 978-0802140302
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #390,900 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Who does one write a memoir for?, November 18, 2002

By	Michael Moore (Statesboro,, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Off to the Side: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars in praise of the candid, January 14, 2004

By	Glen Sooter (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

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.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the exit?, December 6, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Off to the Side: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.