A01=Jim Harrison
Allen Ginsberg
Author_Jim Harrison
Category=DNB
Dalva
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fatherhood
Great Depression
Hollywood
literature
obsessions
Peter Matthiessen
Philip Caputo
road trips
Robert Lowell
Swedish
Tennessee Williams
Tom McGuane
Truman Capote
W. H. Auden
World War II
Product details
- ISBN 9780802140302
- Weight: 311g
- Dimensions: 139 x 209mm
- Publication Date: 25 Sep 2003
- Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Off to the Side is the tale of one of America's most beloved writers. Jim Harrison traces his upbringing in Michigan amid the austerities of the Depression and the Second World War, and the seemingly greater austerities of his starchy Swedish forebears. He chronicles his coming-of-age, from a boy drunk with books to a young man making his way among fellow writers he deeply admires including Peter Matthiessen, Robert Lowell, W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg. Harrison discusses forthrightly the life-changing experience of becoming a father, and the minor cognitive dissonance that ensued when this boy from the "heartland" somehow ended up a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. He gives free rein to his "seven obsessions" alcohol, food, stripping, hunting and fishing (and the dogs who have accompanied him in both), religion, the road, and our place in the natural world which he elucidates with earthy wisdom and an elegant sense of connectedness. Off to the Side is a work of great beauty and importance, a triumphant achievement that captures the writing life and brings all of us clues for living.
