A Nod To The Gods

Jim Harrison, whose lust for life — and sometimes just plain lust — roared into print in a vast, celebrated body of fiction, poetry and essays that with ardent abandon explored the natural world, the life of the mind and the pleasures of the flesh, died on Saturday at his home in Patagonia, Ariz. He was 78.

The cause was heart failure, his publisher, Grove Atlantic, said on Monday.

In both places, far from the self-regarding literary soirees of New York, for which he had little but contempt, and the lucre of Hollywood, where he had done time as a dazzlingly dissolute if not altogether successful screenwriter, he could engage in the essential, monosyllabic pursuits that defined the borders of his life: to walk, drive, hunt, fish, cook, drink, smoke, write.

A couple of weeks before she died, my mother—so old and sweet—said, “You’ve made quite a good living out of your fibs.”

Legends I wrote in nine days. But that’s the only time it ever happened that well. It was like taking dictation … but it was after I’d thought about the story for five years.

I probably wouldn’t have been a poet if I hadn’t lost my left eye when I was a boy. A neighbor girl shoved a broken bottle in my face during a quarrel. Afterward, I retreated to the natural world and never really came back, you know.

It’s just like when I was twenty and my father and sister got killed in a car accident. I thought, If this can happen to people, you might as well do what you want—which is to be a writer. Don’t compromise at all, because there’s no point in it.

It’s like hunting with Mario Batali. He checked his fancy phone and said, “Fuck. I’ve got 280 e-mails.” And I said, “What do we do now?” And he said, “Nothing” and put it in his pocket, and we went hunting.

I don’t hunt mammals. My friends all do. I love antelope and elk, but I depend on the kindness of friends, because I shot a deer when I was young and it was very unpleasant.

They published my Fireflies in The New Yorker, and they took a sex scene out of it, which irked me at the time. I said, “That was evidentiary to her character!” She’s got to get laid like anybody else at some point.

I don’t know if it was writer’s block or if I just didn’t have anything I wanted to say.

Fifty-four years later and we’re still married. Very few keepers like that.

The interesting thing about Nicholson is his inability to lie about anything. It just doesn’t occur to him to lie, and that’s a rare actor.

It’s overwhelming when you know Indian history. What fuckin’ assholes we were for so long.

I revere bears. I had a big male bear that I used to leave extra fish about a hundred yards from my cabin. I’d leave the fish on a stump and the bear would eat them. When I would come home from the bar, sometimes he would stop me and I would roll down the window, and he would set his chin right on the doorjamb and I’d scratch his head—but that’s stupid.

If you’ve written all day, you don’t want to talk about it at the bar.

My grandmother lived to be ninety-seven, and I would carry her in and out of the house because she was arthritic and I was real strong then. Grandma said, “This has gone on too long, Jimmy.” Ain’t that a great thing to say?

All people disappear.

I didn’t want to die on the Warner lot.

Has happiness changed with age? Yes, I expect less of everything.

No conclusions on time. Other than the old beginning, middle, and end.

You end up missing your dogs.

What’s the meaning of it all? Seems to me nobody’s got a clue. Quote Jim Harrison on that: Nobody’s got a clue.

Now, where did I put my cane?