Jim Harrison: A New Novel and the Salon Interview

October 14, 2008 By: Marshall Cutchin

I often find myself referring to a 1998 Salon interview with Jim Harrison — who at the time was on a book tour for his novel The Road Home — because interviewer Jonathan Miles gets the jumper cables so firmly attached to the novelist’s battery. “We met slightly prior to Harrison’s strict 4 o’clock cocktail hour — the only pinch of discipline, he says, that he regularly upholds. A few minutes into the discussion, however, Harrison ordered a glass of Côtes du Rhône.”
Harrison’s latest novel The English Major (Grove Press, 304 pages), just out in October, involves a 60-year-old protagonist who sets out to rename all the states and official state birds to something more meaningful. As Publisher’s Weekly says, “In Harrison’s funny, spirited latest, Cliff, a 60-year-old former Michigan high school teacher, bids adieu to his inherited family farm (lost in a shady real estate deal); his wife, Vivian, of 38 years (who has been cheating on him and orchestrated the deal) and dear departed dog Lola (the truest woman in my life); and sets off on a yearlong, countrywide jag.”
The English Major: A Novel on Amazon.