The English Major

A less positive thought on The English Major -- and not my college degree, which I have no regrets about at all, unless you count not dropping the class with Cowboy Hat Lady, but the Jim Harrison novel.

One of the blurbs, this one from Publishers Weekly, claims that "Harrison is consistently witty and engaging as he drives home his timeless theme: that change can be beneficial at any point in life."

Seriously? "Change can be beneficial at any point in life"? That's it? That's the "timeless theme" that Harrison explores in the book? That's what we should take away from our reading? "Uh, change is good, kids. You know, like, change. It's good -- the change thing."

And I bother to insist, in class, that any discussion of a work's ideas, any exploration of a novel's questions, can (and, perhaps, should) extend beyond platitudes and cliches? Beyond easy-to-digest bromides?

I know that Publishers Weekly is probably not a forum for the working out of ambiguity or difficulty, but, still, that's the best you can do, guys?

June Books

Not to be confused with junebugs.

It's been a hit-or-miss month for reading, and here are some brief thoughts:

Warlock, by Jim Harrison. Didn't like it. I mean, it's Jim Harrison, and from back in 1982, so its protagonist drifts, drinks, cooks lavish meals, and sleeps around, all while considering just how it is that he's supposed to live his life. But that was it.

Checkpoint, by Nicholoson Baker. I liked Mezzanine. I liked Room Temperature. I'm intrigued by the sound of Human Smoke, but this was a waste of 90 minutes. It's short, obviously, and reads more or less like a play -- but it's also the kind of self-indulgent, self-righteous sanctimonious nonsense that I would have written at age 17, if I actually knew how to write. I'm obviously not claiming that Baker can't write, or that he writes like a teenager, or that I could have done better, or even that I disagreed with anything in the book. Still, what's the point? You're upset with the administration. Not exactly a lonely position, is it? You think Donald Rumsfeld is an idiot. Daring, no? You think our country has committed atrocities overseas that our population is all too willing to ignore. Is this news? Are we supposed to be shocked (or tickled) that one of the two characters is actively considering assassination as a rational act of protest? And are we supposed to care?

Little, Big, by John Crowley. Now, this is much better. The first time I read it, I liked it, but didn't pay much attention to it. This month, I allowed myself to sink into it much more deeply, and was rewarded for it. It's good. Even really good. It has its indulgences, sure (come on, try to make an argument that Moby-Dick doesn't, right? "Cetology," anyone?), and its insistence on referring to The Tale every four pages gets tiring, but it holds together to present a world that is simultaneously beautiful, in its own way, and heartbreaking. Make your own comparisons to life from that, if you wish.

All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy. I want to reread the Border Trilogy this summer, so I (obviously) started with this one. No particular surprises on this, maybe the sixth or seventh time through it. I've never read all three of the Border novels back to back, though (and don't remember liking Cities of the Plain much at all), so we'll see how this goes. At least in this rereading, sans the other two books, I'm still convinced that everyone who reads this as some great Western Romance has got it completely wrong.

Harrison Knows Teaching

Okay, so one more little thing from Harrison's Off to the Side, which is all too relevant at the moment. In a section describing a year spent teaching composition, Harrison writes off how he accumulated student paper after student paper, could hardly stand to look at them, had no idea how to deal with them, and finally piled them into his car and hauled them to the dump.

Jim Harrison's Eye

Some of the great writing in Off to the Side finds Jim Harrison writing about losing his eye as a child and the attempts to restore sight to it.

Here's a poem I wrote that is, I guess, as the title suggests, about that eye.

Jim Harrison’s Eye

A writer I’ve never met
Living in Michigan
Lost an eye as a child
And now sees grace, bones, and spirit in
Immigrants and mountains.

He can sing of oxygen felt
Humming through his heart
On Lake Superior, northern
Lights sent spinning green
Across the sky.

I kept both eyes, grew up easy,
Hunted imaginary deer at dawn,
Pushed slow through November
And crouched behind great rolls of hay,
The straw sharp against my face.

I kept both eyes, tried to forge
Wisdom out of complexity,
Waited for grand visions,
Awe and wonder,
Invented scars to impress the page.

I misled myself and missed
The falling stars and the
Muffled white of winter,
The freedom that rubs
Raw stones, forests, and soil.

Jim Harrison's Memoir

Parts of it are great. Most of the first half, childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, is fantastic. A couple of the "obsession" chapters are great. The Hollywood segments get tiring. Even Harrison seems bored by a lot of the Hollywood stuff and writing about how much money he made and when he made it and what he did with it and who he had dinner with in Aspen, for the writing slips off into repitition.