false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172625065m/199853.jpg 199853 4 At 67, Norman Arnz is well aware of his narrative limitations: "I dare say that no one understands more than the part of the story that is directly contiguous to them." Yet the conjunction of placement and perception is crucial to both him and his tale. The title novella in Jim Harrison's <I>The Beast God Forgot to Invent</I> takes the form of Arnz's written report explaining the death by drowning of a lifetime resident of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Slow, different, backward--Joe Lacort had been labeled all these and more since a car accident illustrated "the Newtonian principle that an object in motion (your head) tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced or unequal force (in Joe's case, a massive gray beech tree)."<p> What Arnz realizes, to his dismay and envy, is that this man "had crossed over a line into an <I>otherness</I> of perception that was unavailable to the rest of us," that his "sense of time has become hopelessly round while ours is linear." Joe's story, told as Arnz circles back and back, questing for original cause, is the story of mapping oneself and one's place in a profoundly captivating--and dislocating--universe. "Maybe," he ponders, "the world really doesn't look like the one I've been seeing all along. That was one of the questions Joe offered." These questions, and answers, are relayed by an astonishing voice: Harrison gives his narrator an oddly intoxicating blend of E.B. White's wry irony and perfectly matter-of-fact precision and Humbert Humbert's solipsistic bravura and edgy suspiciousness. <p> And the other two novellas are equally engaging. In "Westward Ho," a Michigan Native American finds himself on a quixotic quest through Los Angeles in pursuit of a stolen bearskin. An assortment of jaded Sancho Panzas aid (I use the term loosely) Brown Dog in his search. Sentimental without being trite, the story soars easily above potential "small-town Indian, big city" limitations. "I Forgot to Go to Spain" returns to a first-person narrator, a glib biographer suspicious that "the language I was using to describe myself to myself might be radically askew."<p> Harrison is a rare beast, an author whose ideas are at once grand and simple. His prose is so tantalizingly <I>right</I> that you might be tempted to gather his sentences and fling yourself into their midst, just for the sheer pleasure of it all. <I>--Kelly Flynn</I> 424038 2000 The Beast God Forgot to Invent: Novellas total:192|5:5|4:5|3:0|2:0|1:0| 192 759 265 14 4 0 false false Wed Nov 11 11:54:30 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 11 14:58:25 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Aug 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 21 12:35:02 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 21 13:13:18 -0700 2008
A man has a head injury and veers off into another reality, one where he lives in...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Jan 23 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 07 10:15:17 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 23 09:51:23 -0800 2009
The title story was honestly a bit gru...more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Jul 18 12:25:26 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 08 07:38:55 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Mar 29 16:49:52 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 16:52:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Dec 02 17:31:14 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 02 17:31:37 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Wed Jan 30 10:52:58 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 31 08:25:17 -0800 2008
3 novellas, the above from Westward Ho and another on on I forgot to go to Spain and the Title novella about care ta...more...]]> 0 0 false false Tue May 20 14:17:05 -0700 2008 Tue May 20 14:18:36 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 06 11:21:43 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 16:00:38 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Nov 13 12:23:58 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 30 09:52:02 -0800 2007 4 0 false false Tue Jun 03 11:17:26 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 03 11:18:54 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Tue Jan 22 09:44:58 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 22 09:51:57 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Sun Dec 09 09:31:16 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 09 09:31:29 -0800 2007 5 0 false false Mon May 26 20:34:13 -0700 2008 Mon May 18 13:55:59 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Nov 25 19:52:43 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 25 19:52:43 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Tue Nov 24 13:52:31 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 24 13:52:31 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Sat Nov 14 19:56:09 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 14 19:56:09 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Tue Nov 10 16:17:35 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 10 16:17:35 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 07 02:51:10 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 07 02:51:10 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Mon Oct 26 18:50:23 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 18:50:23 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=199853