Iconoclast beguiles Hailey audience
Harrison journeys to ‘literary capital’
By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer
Welcome to the literary capital of the
American West, said Idaho Humanities Council Chairman Marc Johnson.
Johnson made the comment Sunday while
interviewing renowned iconoclastic author and poet Jim Harrison at the Community
Campus in Hailey.
Jim Harrison Express photo by
Willy Cook
Harrison is the author of 10 collections
of poetry, seven collections of essays, eight novels, including "Dalva"; four
volumes of novellas, including "Legends of the Fall"; a children’s book, two
collections of nonfiction, including "The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a
Roving Gourmand"; and a new memoir, "Off to the Side."
The presence of Harrison in Hailey was
cheered as a boon to the Wood River Valley’s reputation as a literary enclave.
After all, Ezra Pound was born in Hailey and Ernest Hemingway, who helped put
Sun Valley on the map, died in Ketchum.
Harrison, who credits Pound with
influencing writers from T.S. Elliot to himself, drove over from his home in
Livingston, Mont., for the talk in Hailey, a dinner at the Hailey Cultural
Center, and a talk with valley high school students.
The event, sponsored by Iconoclast Books,
The Works of Grace Foundation, Silver Creek Outfitters and the Idaho Humanities
Council, benefited the Hailey Cultural Center.
First, a grizzly and impish looking
Harrison admitted he didn’t do public appearances but, "I couldn’t resist Hailey
because of Ezra Pound … They tried to get me to include Boise. No, no, Hailey is
far enough."
Laughing—something he does and inspires
often—Harrison continued: "I’m beginning my book tour in Hailey; it has seminal
importance in American literature." In many of his jokes and stories, he moves
from comic to serious in split seconds.
"Pound is so meaningful to all of us,
Elliot, Yeats, Hemingway … he broke us from the onus of the Victorian era, and
was the influential center of that generation. You really had to rebound from
Pound to function."
Harrison considered his own remark then
added wryly, "He had an improbable brain, but I’ve never looked to writers for
wisdom."
Harrison read from and discussed aspects
of his new novel, "True North."
"I think you might like the book. It’s a
happy book." This evinced a laugh from audience members since the book, albeit
with comic moments, is both tragic and deadly serious about the environmental
destruction caused by early logging tycoons in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
He is already at work on a companion
volume. It is told from the point of view of the Finnish and Cornish miners and
the Chippewa Indians in that same area.
"I am devoured by the need to write novels
and poetry, but I haven’t exactly been a hermit," he laughed. Indeed, Harrison’s
lust for life is one of his most marked characteristics.
Though he jokingly called the French,
"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys," he is clearly fond of France in all ways. His
favorite meal in recent memory was an 11-hour, 37-course meal in France, which,
he said, "doubtless cost the equivalent of a new Volvo station wagon." He is a
best seller there three times over, never having attained that distinction in
his own country, even once.
"In American literature they either think
or act, though not at the same time," he said.
Harrison’s novels tend not to follow that
dictum. A great raconteur, he is deeply, and, at first, deceptively
intellectual. Like a good fish tale, his stories include endless and circuitous
references to philosophy, science, religion and pop culture.
Harrison claims not to be "from" Montana,
though he’s owned a home and lived there off and on since 1968. He first went to
Livingston at the insistence of his friend, author Tom McGuane, to fish for
brown trout. Along with their friend artist Russell Chatham, their main focus
was fishing. Of course, they were all notorious for their wild lifestyles as
well.
"We appointed each other as our
psychiatrmap>" he said. And paused. "Of course, it didn’t pan out."
After the talk and book signing, an
intimate sit-down dinner, catered by an inventive Ric Lum, was held at the Ezra
Pound birth house, now known as the Hailey Cultural Center. Lum served a
selection of Idaho game, produce and native edible plants. Harrison is a well
known gourmand.
"It was big fun," Iconoclast owner and
Cultural Center Vice-President Gary Hunt said. "He was everything that I thought
he’d be and more. I thought he’d be sort of surrounded by the legend and
wondered whether he’d live up to it. But boy he did," Hunt cackled. "And he was
really great at the high school the next day."
On Monday morning, after a late and
decadent night of food, wine and raucous storytelling, Harrison spoke at the
Wood River High School to 60 upper class English students from both the WRHS and
The Community School.
"He was very, very well received," Sarah
Hedrick, event coordinator for Iconoclast, said. "What a great opportunity. That
part was sponsored by Works of Grace Foundation. It was huge gift.
"I don’t think there will be any trouble
getting Jim Harrison back to the valley. He had a great time," Hedrick added.