'The Summer He Didn't Die' — by Jim Harrison

What a unique and interesting writer is Jim Harrison.

I've been a fan of his for years, mostly his magazine articles.

Only years after I saw the wonderful movie "Legends of the Fall" did I learn that Harrison had written the novella upon which the film was based.

"The Summer He Didn't Die" is likewise a novella, the first of three in a volume of the same name (above).

I very much enjoyed the second, "Republican Wives"; tonight I'm going to read the third, "Tracking."

But back to "The Summer He Didn't Die."

It takes place in Northern Michigan, an area Harrison knows well, and in a feat that can only be termed magic lets you somehow become a part–Indian man named Brown Dog during one tumultuous season of his life.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

What is life that I must get teeth pulled? Brown Dog thought, sitting on a white pine stump beside the muddy creek with a swollen jaw for company. It was late April and trout season would open in two days. Brown Dog was a violator and had already caught two fine messes of brook trout, not in contempt for regulators but because he was hungry for brook trout and so were his Uncle Delmore and his stepchildren, Red and Berry. Despite this Brown Dog put the highest value on the opening of trout season which meant the end of winter, though at his feet near the stump there was still a large patch of snow decorated haphazardly by a sprinkling of deer turds.

Here I sit in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, one hundred eighty pounds of living meat with three separate teeth aching and sending their messages of pulse, throb, and twinge to each other, their secret language of pain, he thought. Brown Dog was not what you call a deep thinker but within the structure of aching teeth mortal thoughts tended to arise in the seconds–long spaces between the dullish and the electric, the surge and slight withdrawal. Sitting there on the stump he blurred his eyes so that in his vision the creek became an immense and writhing brown snake emerging from the deep green of a cedar swamp. Until the autumn before the creek had run clear even after big rains but the bumwads from the County Road Department had done a sloppy job on an upstream road culvert and now the water was the color of an average mud puddle.

Here's a link to a Salon interview with Harrison.

Here's a link to a site featuring a bibliography of Harrison, including reviews, interviews and other materials, "intended as a resource for both general and academic audiences."

Here's a link to a great interview Harrison did last year with Robert Birnbaum after a reading in New Hampshire.