Coming-of-old-age story

A conversation with Jim Harrison is like opening a box ofCracker Jacks. You get to nibble through the delightful crisp kernelsknowing a prize awaits: You just won’t know what it is until you getthere. His books always hold similar delights, and both his newestnovel, “The Great Leader,” and his poetry collection, “Songs ofUnreason,” are super-sized and filled with prizes where you leastexpect them. 

About this time each year Harrison, 73,  comesforth with a book or two, one fiction and a book of poetry. This year,both books are dripping with rich passages about Michigan, his formerhome, until he skedaddled to Montana and Arizona in corpus only. Muchof his heart is still in Michigan. The back of the poetry book’s jacketbegins with this excerpt from a poem: “In the Upper Peninsula ofMichigan and the mountains of the Mexican border I’ve followed the callof birds.” 

Another poem, a haunting piece of verse about his sister,Judith, killed by a drunk driver in 1962, will leave you with a tinytear. In part:  “You wereburied at nineteen in wood with Daddy. I’ve spent a lifetime trying tolearn the language of the dead.” A handful of other poems salute thedogs of his life and a poem, “Anniversary,” is a present to his wife,Linda, on their 50th wedding anniversary.

You shouldn’t get the idea his book is maudlin in anyway. Harrison’s wit, which draws on his experiences and those of hisfriends, can be found throughout the nearly 70 poems. In “Corruption”he writes: “I know a man, happily married who bought a girl a hundreddollar pair of panties. I was stunned. For this price I buy a wholelamb each fall.” I’ll save the punchline for the reader.

It goes without saying that an inordinate number of poemstouch on what Harrison calls his “lifetime obsession with water.”Harrison blames his uncle for buying a cabin on the lake, in which “thesound of water could be heard ‘round the clock.”

 In his mostrecent novel, “The Great Leader,” Harrison places his protagonist,retired state police detective Sunderson in Marquette where, besidesfishing the streams and ponds, Lake Superior is his siren call.

Although publicity has called the book a noirish mystery,it is much more a coming-of-age tale: old age, in this case. Sundersonhas lost his dog and lost his marriage, but is able to find an endlesssupply of whisky to get him through the nights. He’s afloat, but barelytreading water.

Not to worry — readers soon learn he hasn’t lost his sexual drive. His neighbor, Mona,  a16-year-old girl, becomes a willing target for Sunderson’swindow-peeking. It’s clear early on that his critics, who claim hiswriting is sexist and that he relies on lust and libido too much, won’tbe disappointed.

The author, with his usual frankness, addresses his critics: “I don’t give a fuck. I’m a writer.”

Harrison said he decided to write the book for a lot orreasons, but most important, he said, he was “tired of melancholy” andhe “had never written about trashy culture.” He also wanted to explorecults that prey on young girls, the appropriation of the AmericanIndian culture (which he has written about many times and has aspiritual respect for) and, as he describes it, the “two- or three-yearhole — a bomb crater” that divorce leaves within you. He accomplishesall these goals with vigor in “The Great Leader.”

He said he has run across cults in the Southwest and Leelanau County that are “sicker than horse turds.”

Sunderson, with the aid of his next-door neighbor, beginsto investigate a cult, which leads him to Arizona. After Sunderson isseriously injured, revenge becomes the end goal.

The plotline has drawn comparison to the works of CormacMcCarthy. Harrison thinks the comparison strange and reminds readersthat McCarthy was accused of borrowing from Harrison’s “Revenge” in “NoCountry for Old Men.”

Harrison says revenge and Mexico are always linked. “Anywhite guy who goes to Mexico —well, he’s in for it,” recalling a timewhen a drug lord in Mexico gave him his business card with instructionsto show it to anyone who gave him trouble: “The drug lord told me theywill run off pissing down their legs.”

He said his wife has taken the card away from him. “It was for the better.”

Harrison said he also wanted to explore in the book whathappens when, as a homicide detective, “you look through shit-stainedglass. It’s a very rough life. Many detectives become excitementjunkies.”

In “The Great Leader” Harrison offers a lot of lessonsfor those growing old and for younger ones watching. In his book ofpoetry he describes his thinking as “atavistic, primitive andtotemistic.” 

Harrison, who turns 74 next month, is not slowing down.His excitement comes from writing, and he’s just finished anotherinstallment of his famous “Brown Dog” novellas, the latest of whichfinds Brown Dog back home in the U.P. 

Harrison also spent a week earlier this year in Leelanau,meeting with his good friend Mario Batali, the celebrity chef. He saysthey are collaborating on a book that will explore what “we find mostreal in American food.” Harrison once wrote a monthly column forEsquire magazine on food and cooking; they are collected in “The Rawand the Cook.”

After great French wine, which is Harrison’s drink ofchoice (he thinks every state has a right to bad wine), food is hispassion. His describes a particular delight, a dish served by one ofhis French friends: a stew made of 50 baby pig snouts, all “staring atyou from the top of a steaming pot.”

That’s almost as good as the column he wrote for Esquireon how to make head cheese, which begins, “Take one pig’s head, boilfor 24 hours.” 

In many ways the recipe is a description of his writingstyle, which is both complex and simple, but always boiling when ithits the page.