AMERIKAANSE SCHRIJVER EN DICHTER JIM HARRISON (78) OVERLEDEN

De Amerikaanse schrijver Jim Harrison (1937 – 2016) overleed op 26 maart 2016 in zijn huis in Arizona. Harrison, geboren in Grayling, Michigan, werd gerekend tot een van de grootste nog levende schrijvers. Zijn vrouw, Linda King Harrison, overleed afgelopen najaar na een huwelijk van meer dan vijftig jaar.

Harrison schreef romans, verhalen, kinderboeken, filmscenario’s, poëzie en essays. Zijn romans werden in meer dan 25 talen vertaald. Harrisons werk werd vaak vergeleken met dat van William Faulkner en Ernest Hemingway. Harrison was (net als Hemingway) een bevlogen jager en visser. Veel van zijn verhalen spelen in dunbevolkte streken in het westen van de VS waar de natuur overheerst.
Twee van Harrisons romans kregen een vervolg op het witte doek: Legends of the Fall (1994) en Revenge (1999). Zijn meest recente werk is The Ancient Minstrel (2016), drie romans over een oudere schrijver.

“In fact he was as lovesick as a high schooler of an especially sensitive sort who wonders if he dare share a poem with his beloved or whether she will laugh at him. He does read her the poem and her feminine capacity for romanticism for a moment approaches his own and they are suffused in a love trance, a state that so ineluctably peels back the senses making them fresh again whatever ages the lovers might be.”
― Jim Harrison, Legends of the Fall

Beknopte bibliografie
Fiction:
Wolf: A False Memoir (1971)
A Good Day to Die (1973)
Farmer (1976)
Legends of the Fall (Three novellas: “Revenge,” “The Man Who Gave Up His Name,” and “Legends of the Fall”) (1979)
Warlock (1981)
Sundog: The Story of an American Foreman, Robert Corvus Strang (1984)
Dalva (1988)
The Woman Lit By Fireflies (Three novellas: “Brown Dog,” “Sunset Limited,” and “The Woman Lit by Fireflies”) (1990)
Julip (Three novellas: “Julip,” “The Seven-Ounce Man,” and “The Beige Dolorosa”) (1994)
The Road Home (1998)
The Beast God Forgot to Invent (Three novellas: “The Beast God Forgot to Invent,” “Westward Ho,” and “I Forgot to Go to Spain”) (2000)
True North (2004)
The Summer He Didn’t Die (Three novellas: “The Summer He Didn’t Die,” “Republican Wives,” and “Tracking”) (2005)
Returning To Earth (2007)
The English Major (2008)
The Farmer’s Daughter (Three novellas: “The Farmer’s Daughter,” “Brown Dog Redux,” and “The Games of Night”) (2009)
The Great Leader (2011)
The River Swimmer (Two novellas: “The Land of Unlikeness” and “The River Swimmer”) (2013)
Brown Dog (2013)
The Big Seven (2015)
The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas (2016)

Poetry:
Plain Song (1965)
Walking (1967)
Locations (1968)
Outlyer and Ghazals (1971)
Letters to Yesenin (1973)
Returning to Earth (Court Street Chapbook Series) (1977)
Selected and New Poems, 1961-1981 (Drawings by Russell Chatham) (1981)
Natural World: A Bestiary (1982)
The Theory & Practice of Rivers (1986)
The Theory & Practice of Rivers and New Poems (1989)
After Ikkyu and Other Poems (1996)
The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1998)
Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry (with Ted Kooser) (Copper Canyon Press, 2003)
Livingston Suite (Illustrated by Greg Keeler) (2005)
Saving Daylight (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)
In Search of Small Gods (Copper Canyon Press, 2009)
Songs of Unreason (Copper Canyon Press, 2011)
Dead Man’s Float (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)

Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. (. . .)

[Jim Harrison: from SONGS OF UNREASON, Copper Canyon Press, 2011]

In Memoriam: Jim Harrison, 1937–2016

fleursdumal.nl magazine

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