A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life

by Jim Harrison

New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison was one of this country’s most beloved writers, a muscular, brilliantly economic stylist with a salty wisdom. He also wrote some of the best essays on food around, earning praise as “the poet laureate of appetite” (Dallas Morning News). A Really Big Lunch, to be published on the one-year anniversary of Harrison’s death, collects many of his food pieces for the first time—and taps into his larger-than-life appetite with wit and verve.

Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Audiobook, Travel, Cooking

275 pages, Hardcover

First published March 24, 2017

About the author

Jim Harrison was born in Grayling, Michigan, to Winfield Sprague Harrison, a county agricultural agent, and Norma Olivia (Wahlgren) Harrison, both avid readers. He married Linda King in 1959 with whom he has two daughters.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

His awards include National Academy of Arts grants (1967, 68, 69), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969-70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).

Much of Harrison's writing depicts sparsely populated regions of North America with many stories set in places such as Nebraska's Sand Hills, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Montana's mountains, and along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Reviews

[Mischenko · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Really Big Lunch is different from any book I've read. Even though Harrison writes well and I found myself turning the pages rather than taking a break, the menu was most unusual and even seemed disgusting at times. I'm not into eating snake, but I still enjoyed reading about his food adventures. This book definitely opened up my mind to new perspectives.

Harrison's belief is simple: Quality of life is more important than quantity and food is one of the ultimate pleasures. Life's short, better start eating now...and don't forget the wine!

4****

Thanks to Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Ken]

I'm sliding this on the "essays" shelf, though it's actually a collection of magazine columns. Jim Harrison, who loved writing poetry best but wrote novels (and obviously columns) for the money, delivers most in the category of voice. What a character. Bigger than life, both literally and figuratively.

As you might expect in a columns collection, some repetition must be tolerated. Jim's favorite foods (weird stuff like animal tongues, brains, cheeks). Jim's favorite targets (rich people, Republican presidents and Congressmen, critics). Jim's favorite drinks (red wine, red wine, and more red wine). It's a wonder JH lasted into his late 70s, given the food and drink he subjected his body to in the name of living the good life (all this topped off with the post-meal cigarettes).

Oddly, I liked least all the descriptions of meals, cooking, and drinking. To him, I would have made a horrible dinner guest, I'm sure. Instead, I found myself panning for gold -- his descriptions of favorite poets (Antonio de Machado and Lorca high among them), his humor (the guy is undeniably funny), his poetry (he drops a few poems along the way).

The kind of guy he is? He actually devoted time and effort -- on repeated trips -- searching for Machado's lost valise of poems somewhere between France and Spain. He so loved Machado's verse, he wanted more -- something one typically doesn't get from dead poets, who are notoriously unproductive when it comes to more verse. This search was noble to the point of naiveté, which I respect. He also thanked France repeatedly because his books sold way more there than in his native homeland, the US of A. Shades of Jerry Lewis, in that respect.

Now if I could find the equivalent of A Really Big Lunch in the form of food for thought, literary servings, poetic desserts along with magnums of the usual red humor. I'm there for that, baby. Feeding my own brain instead of feasting on some poor calf's.

[Jeanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

UGH! Pretentious beyond anything I've read in about 5 years. And I LOVE his novels, too.

From the Introduction by Mario Bartoli, it was NOT at ALL what I expected.

Honestly, he passed away in 2016. And if he would have lived another year or two- I wonder if some of these "sensibilities" would have come home to roost. As it has with some of his story buddies. The kind of crowd the "me too" women attack presently.

The way he talks in related past conversations with his buddies about women in general, and the women they have "nailed" in the past? Ha-ha-ha! It is all a joke! Are you laughing?

And nothing is too good for Jim either. Can you name call 100's of liquor, food, $$$$ level and exclusive top rung celeb perks of every appetite. Accompanied by the name called celeb.

What a real piece of work he was, IMHO. And to expose his own obnoxious brand of smug atrociousness and "style" as he did here?

Sometimes it sure is better to read the author's works and not about the author or his frolics amidst foodstuffs in his own words.

And he wasn't all that "big man" sized either. Everything is truly relative.

[Ruth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m in the midst of this, and deciding if I want to continue. Jim Harrison, novelist, short-story writer, poet, and his stuff is good. And I’m interested in food. Sounded like a winner. Ha. All it’s made me do is dislike the guy. Name-dropper. And then I ate this and then I ate that, no descriptions worth salt. Oh, and do try these fabulous expensive wines that nobody can afford.

[M. Sarki · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/157352...

…Hundreds warned me I was going to die young from smoking and drinking but I disappointed them…

I was thirty-one when I first discovered Harrison’s best writer friend Thomas McGuane back in 1984. There was an article in the Detroit Free Press magazine that dealt with McGuane’s recovery from alcohol addiction and the publication of his new book Something to Be Desired. The next year would find me as well beginning my own recovery from addiction. Religious and obsessive reading of Thomas McGuane led me to naturally segue into Harrison. Both writers were from Michigan which also piqued my interest.

…Then again, I’ve always been a Luddite, much saddened by the invention of the auto. Many people think a Ferrari is beautiful, but it isn’t if you compare it to a horse.

Regardless of Jim Harrison’s periodic poetic dirges of drivel, he is an American treasure. An iconic figure cut of gluttonous gourmet and storytelling of the first rank. That is, when his writing centers on food, friends, hunting, and fishing. A sad day indeed when it was reported he had died. But we who read him for over forty years knew it was coming. He drank too much and lived too heartily to have lasted even as long as he did. And this fascinating and rewarding book proves it.

…A number of doctors have been amazed that I am still alive…

Developing Type II diabetes is no laughing matter. But for Harrison to continue his gouty ways, and in spite of his unhealthy dietetic preponderance, only furthered his quickened demise. But I am not so sure he would have had it any other way. Seems his eating and drinking habits started at a very young age and were modeled religiously beginning in northern Michigan, a land of excess too evolved to attempt an honest explanation on this page. Suffice to say I grew up there as well, and as luck would have it I escaped with my life by chasing a more healthy and vacationing filly down and into the bluegrass of Kentucky.

…When he reached the gate to Paloma Canyon on a friend’s ranch it was a few minutes before he could remember the lock’s combination because his mind had drifted back to a girl he had seen in a Key West dress shop exactly twenty-seven years before. She had been stooping before shelves of blouses in her white shorts and her butt was a perfect Anjou pear.

The last quarter of this amazing book presents the most humble and loving mind and heart to be found in such a grizzled veteran who squandered the vast majority of his lifetime on the word. And predictably, the penning of all of his work in fiction and nonfiction was based on personal experience. Harrison’s pleasures in his life alone could fill several volumes of autobiography. But these essays provide enough occasion to know the man in sufficient measure to recognize his quality of being, especially as he writes about nearing the end of his long and fruitful life.

…A friend, the novelist Tom McGuane, once said to me, “You can lecture a group of us on nutritional health while chain smoking and drinking a couple bottles of…

In his many resulting infirmities, severely wracked by pain, his sadness seeping through his writing feels in some ways like an apology or an act of forgiveness for not being a better man than most of us generally perceive ourselves. Harrison certainly knows who he is and what he is. And makes no bones about it. Even in his immense and punishing pain he never once complains and accepts his last trial as his personal and distinct cross to bear. And maybe it is my own sadness coming through his writing, but I have watched previously strong and robust individuals slowly lose their vitality and witnessed first hand their sad acceptance of it.

Camus maintained that the critical decision was whether or not to commit suicide and that once you assent to your own survival you must commit to life...

Harrison has always interested me. He is cut from a rougher cloth, but his mind and tastes are refined in ways unimaginable upon first look and rare sighting of this menacing man. And his words are often bitingly direct and presented as tease in order to entertain us as he gooses the less inquisitive minds who live among us. Harrison’s readers being somewhat a sort of privileged society looking down on the powers actually controlling our world these days. I liken Harrison’s work (his fiction and essays) as a treatise against stupidity, even in light of the disparaging of himself and his own mistakes in the process. In other words, Harrison makes reading fun, and for me at least, extremely rewarding and satisfying.

…Everywhere we are witness to the extreme confidence some people have in their stupidities…

Mr. Harrison was definitely a gifted writer. In this book he religiously celebrates the indulgences of over-eating and drinking too much. He not only makes his anecdotal bouts of gluttony interesting but actually champions it. And though his work is interesting to read there is a more responsible and informed part of me who believes his excesses not only killed him, but were sadly used as a way to cover up something. In my own case the villain would have been my many disappointments throughout my life. My frustrations as well as my not getting what I wanted. But learning to deal with these harsh realities has actually been quite freeing for me. Knowing that a richer life is made of frustration and the not getting of what I want has enabled me to learn more about accepting what is. John Steinbeck and his pal Ricketts called this non-teleological thinking. But perhaps I am wrong about Jim Harrison. Maybe over-eating and drinking exorbitant bottles of good wine is the way to true happiness and satisfaction. And living a life of moderation is something I am not expert in either. But I do follow my doctor’s orders and attempt to eat right and exercise to stay healthy. In contrast, Harrison’s explicit reason for taking a two hour walk was so he could drink an entire bottle of wine. For him, perhaps, there was no other way. And because of seemingly undying conviction we have here a pretty fantastic book about food, drink, and friends that only Jim Harrison himself could have written.

…My prodigious napping is caused more by my love of unconsciousness than fatigue…

[Matt Quann · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's kind of a shame I didn't end up enjoying Jim Harrison's essay collection as much as I had hoped. All the same, you shouldn't let my star reading deter you since it is an opinion on the collection as a whole and there's many great essays to be read from this delightful scoundrel.

This one was recommended by a friend and, I believe, partially motivated by our shared love of good food and Netflix food documentaries. Indeed, I had sort of hoped that this book was going to be a tour of great restaurants and delicious meals. In many ways, it is that, but I hadn't accounted for Harrison's signature writing style.

His acerbic essays all feature hilarious lambasting of people with whom he disagrees (notably, vegetarians) and detailed accounts of meals consumed. At first I was very taken with Harrison's wit and charm, but his self-referential style does become a bit grating as the book wears on. For instance, do you want to read a long treatise on red wines that cost the same amount as a used vehicle? It is pleasant enough on the first go around, but once every essay starts to delve into his gastronomic excess, it begins to feel like you're being left out of the party.

There's a switch towards the end of the book when Harrison is confronted with the medical consequences of his gluttony. With a sense of misery, Harrison has to steal his indulgences and grave personal consequence. These essays are quite poetic and speak to a man who knows his time is coming. They are perhaps the most accessible in the collection.

Of course, there's a lot of good to be had too. The eponymous day-long lunch is equal parts hilarious, horrifying, and entertaining. Some of the food descriptions are mouth-watering, and Harrison captures some beautiful feelings about food that I too have had, though never articulated so eloquently.

Really, this is a mixed bag. There were some essays I skipped if they were too tedious after a few pages, and I consumed the whole thing in piecemeal fashion. It is not a book I would ever recommend, but it would make for a fun thing to leave around a cottage for visitors to pick at in the sun.

[Tracey · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Goodreads description of this refers to the author's voice as "salty". Is that the polite term for "asshole"? And I don't mean the bit that he expects to offend "certain of your left-leaning, spit-dribbling, eco-freak readers" (well, of course that's offensive - because he intended it to be) so much as what he said after. Just about every word I read of the little bit I read was repulsive. Because he intended it to be. The New York Times and other publications actually licked this excrescence's boots? Wow. The world is weird.

I always make it a point to keep my reviews about the author's work and not the author, but that's a little harder when a book is a memoir. Suffice to say that I wouldn't read more of this book even if paid, and the only reason I'll try to remember the author's name in future is so that I can avoid it.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enormously enjoyable read. Knowing nothing about Jim Harrison going in, other than that he wrote Legends of the Fall, a Brad Pitt movie I barely remember (and which Jim H. calls a lousy movie based on a great book), I wanted to read this book because I love food, and so does Jim Harrison. What I got were wonderful and fascinating essays about food, yes. But also the rich musings of a masterful writer on life-- his own and life in general -- sorrow, aging, love, lust, gluttony, wine, books, people, outdoorsmanship, animals, Zen, poetry of course, and other topics as they happen to hit his brain pan. Which must have been huge, that brain pan. I kept my Merriam Webster app open as I read. I have a pretty fair vocabulary but every page, sometimes every paragraph, I'd stop to look up a word I'd never heard before.

You may have noticed I used past tense, "must have been." Jim died in March 2016, this collection being published a year after his death from a heart attack, on the floor of his writing studio, pen in his hand. Knowing this, as you read the essays presented chronologically from 1982-2015, adds to the power and poignancy. That Jim hated Hollywood and literary readings, and was friends with Mario Batali (he writes the terrific, emotional foreword) and Bill Murray and Anthony Bourdain, comes as no shock. 5 stars, loved it.

[Diane Barnes]

Bored. Cutting my losses. No rating.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

How does someone write a book, including numerous words that I've never seen before, and not sound pretentious doing so?! For the answer, you need only check out Harrison's writing. I really enjoyed reading this collection of essays, talking about food, wine, the great outdoors, and living life to the fullest. Looking forward to reading more from the author.

(I think my favorite new word from this book is desuetude, meaning a state of disuse, as in "Your desuetude repels me.")

[Mmontano · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was a time when Harrison was my favorite contemporary author of fiction. Often misunderstood as being too full of machismo he was, in fact, a champion of strong women while mocking his male protagonists for their false manliness and chauvanism. I lost interest in his fiction when his themes felt repetitious to me. And his poetry never grabbed me.

However, this collection of non-fiction writings is Harrison in peak form. Never pulling any punches, it is certainly the most quotable of his works, full of bons mots and wisdom. "Poets are the anthropologists of the soul." "The days are stacked against who we think we are."

His gastronomic feats are legendary and well documented here. He was an adventurous connoisseur trying virtually anything eatable on the planet. And, it is a must read if you are an oenophile.

He suffered long and hard from a variety of ailments in later life and his meditations on pain, suffering, and aging are comforting.

A Really Big Lunch is like a reference book from his life. I found it a heart-warming farewell reminding me how much I missed him. I will return to it often.

[Robert Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Eat several heads of roasted garlic with a pint glass of Cabernet. Anything less would be cowardly and not vivid.”

“All great things are female, including females”

“It’s always dark before it gets darker”

Still quotable, still off the rails regularly. To much wine bc I don’t know a thing about wine. Harrison becomes more political as he ages... I preferred his earlier voice which seemed to have equal vitriol for all parties involved

[Lotty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, I loved the writing of Jim Harrison and he is sorely missed in this world. I'm reading this book slowly and quickly, alternately delving deeply (reading a word at a time, a chapter at a time) and browsing (reading a paragraph or a sentence, then flipping to examine the photographs, then flipping and reading again). I think it helps me let go. This man lived so big in his life -- reading what he writes makes me re-look, see again, listen closely, inhale deeply, notice the touch of the smallest things (a blade of grass against my calf) and the larger things (bumping into my car's rough tire as I hurry to get to the driver's seat and get to work). Currently I've borrowed it from the library. But when my 3-week turn is up, this one will be purchased as a keeper and will come to live on my shelf with the other Jim Harrison books, pulled off the shelf again and again for the pleasure of a spicy vision of life, of living.

[Bryan Kemper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book single handedly increased my wine consumption tenfold. Great read if you are the type of person that can read a single chapter at a time and put it down.

[Jody Sperling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t say enough how exceptional this book was. Laugh out loud, cry, rage, think, it covered the whole spectrum. One of a few I’ll reread.

[Matt Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I have gout, high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes and severe kidney stones. I have also had some success that I have learned to view as a disease."

Jim Harrison published his first novel during the Nixon administration -- and yet the first I heard of him was while watching a decade-old episode of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations."

Shot in Montana, where Jim lived during the temperate part of the year, the episode stood out in my observation for the reason that Bourdain seemed genuinely in awe of, even intimidated by, Harrison's presence. And this was the same Bourdain who had already penned a New York Times best-selling memoir of his own. He's not one to be tongue-tied and deferential to the point of embarrassment -- but so he was in the presence of Jim Harrison.

I filed the observation away -- but I'll shamefully admit that it did not prompt me to read any of Harrison's books. Not "Legends of the Fall" -- of which everyone is familiar. Not his poetry -- his favorite medium. Not his food columns -- which appeared in various magazines. My loss.

Finally, while perusing stacks at Denver's famed Tattered Cover Book Store, I came upon "A Really Big Lunch" -- published last year (posthumously, I regret to say) -- an anthology of food columns, musings and journal entries from this self-proclaimed roving gourmand.

Who am I to review a legend like Jim Harrison? Even if the writing were lacking -- which, I assure you, it is not -- I'm reluctant to speak ill of the dead. I can tell you that his style is unique -- masculine, dark, unfiltered -- with a dusting of the Beats and generic 1960s countercultural angst. Regarding word economics, he was a saver and not a spender.

This particularly collection of essays -- many of them previously published as food columns in obscure magazines -- appear to be arranged chronologically (dates would have been a welcome addition). As a consequence, the reader ages with the writer and notes the changes in voice and perspective brought on by age, infirmity, political upheaval, loss.

Harrison died of a heart attack in 2016 at his winter residence in the border region of southern Arizona. For 78 years, he ate and ate well. From fussy feasts featuring dozens of courses, to simple eat-what-you-kill rustic suppers, Harrison enjoyed food's full spectrum. That enjoyment is chronicled here in this poignant compendium. Well worth your time, served best alongside your favorite red.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I am interested in food and wine and I had heard that Harrison was a good writer. The book also seemed to be a refreshing antidote to the current American obsession (at least in some circles) of denying oneself all culinary pleasures - in particular, gluten, sugar, dairy and alcohol.

Indeed, Harrison is at the opposite end of the self-denial and discipline spectrum. The quantity and content of what this guy ate is astounding: buffalo tongues, head cheese, wild pig rillettes, rattlesnake, calves' ears, woodcock, blood sausage...not to mention the two or three bottles of wine and packs of cigarettes he consumed each day. Even more astounding is the fact that Harrison lived to the ripe old age of (almost) eighty on this diet.

Those who find find themselves drawn to writers like Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer and Charles Bukowski probably will like Jim Harrison. Harrison even mentions some of these names in this book, though often disparagingly - calling Bukowski "ugly" and Hemingway a "ninny". The fact that, in later years, Harrison and Mario Batali were BFFs tells you a lot about Harrison's proclivities. Feminists, vegetarians, teetotalers and Republicans will want to steer clear of this book.

While I did not enjoy this collection of essays and would not recommend it to anyone but arrogant, sexist men who enjoy the sound of their own voices, I do agree with Harrison's general outlook on life: "Life is short, why would you not eat well or bring others to the pleasure of your table?".

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Harrison lived as he wrote, vividly. When his overtaxed heart finally gave out last year, he left the world with an amazing collections of books including Legends of the Fall, among many.
A Really Big Lunch is a compilation of the authors nonpolitically correct meditations on food, wine, writing, and aging. I probably would have given this book five stars if I shared even a small iota of the author's passion for wine.
Although Harrison is genius in his knowledge of all things fish and fowl, he is the utmost opposite of a food snob, and has outward distain for the yuppie vegetarian-vegan-paleolithic- carb free or any other type of diet that limits the celebration of eating good food.
Few recipes are given in the book, but I felt sheer delight when I read the cooking directions for a pork rib stew that ended with the line "discard the excess fat or ingest it through a straw". I also loved that he specifically said to not change or substitute any of the ingredients in any of his recipes.
A Really Big Lunch is a Really Amazing novel, an oh boy, what a way to go out.....

[Allison Floyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not since H. L. Mencken have I stumbled upon a contrarian whose use of language has the power to render one giddy....

[Jackie O'callaghan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretentious, Irresponsible and Disgusting.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book and audible book was published in 2017. The author died in 2016. The chapters of this book were previously published in a pretty wide variety of locations. They suffer the usual liability of such ratings in that there is a considerable amount of repetition of detail that you might not notice if you read the articles over several years in a variety of publications. But when you put them together in a book, they sort of stick out. But they are not so large as to be a heavy weight.

I have read quite a few Jim Harrison books but was surprised to find in this book that he was and primarily he considers himself a poet and has published poetry. He sort of acts like his novels are how he earned his living monetarily but his poetry is what really counts. Like I said, I never knew he was a poet.

This collection of stories pretty much tracks through the period of the authors increasing health problems. The last few stories are focused on death. He died the same year my father died 2016 but my father was born about 20 years before him.

This is a good book to listen to in the audible format because there is an incredible amount of French language used in describing food and wine. We of course assume the person reading the audible version was a competent person in pronouncing what is written. This is not necessarily always the case but most of us will never know.

This book is filled with humor. It is also filled with references to the authors history in the upper peninsula of Michigan which is how I first came to know about him. However during most of this book he lived in Montana for half the year and in Arizona near the Mexican border for the winter months. If you are a sensitive vegan or vegetarian you may find it difficult to hear him talking constantly about being a hunter and Fisher and killing and eating wild game. If you are a sensitive eater you will even have a harder time reading about all of the parts of animals that he eats that you would possibly rather not know about.

There is also a lot in the book about drinking wine. Many of the stories focus on the culture and habit of drinking wine.

[Tom Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best appreciated when savored with a bottle of fine wine!

A fun and amazing compilation of Memorable Recipes complemented with Nuggets of Wisdom by one of my favorite Poets and Storytellers.

While the raspy narration may have approximated Harrison’s own tone and attitude I found it grating particularly during the reading of Lists of favorite chefs and recipe ingredients.

Four Stars for the Wisdom,
Three for the Narration.
****/***

[Joanne Clarke Gunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Harrison was such a great writer. And such a great lover of life and good food and great wine and close friends. It is most unfortunate that there will be no more books written by him.

[Jacob Toczko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tales from the salad days consisted of very little salad.

[Richard Canale · Rating 4 out of 5]

a refreshing collection of his essays on his pursuits of pleasure and gluttony. As the reader follows the inevitable demise of his body to age and high living, Harrison has no regret.

[Ryan]

Jim Harrison can sometimes be coarse and crude, but underneath, particularly as he aged, is a wisdom of life and joie de vivre that I have found in few books. He has certain idioms and tropes that show up throughout, and I enjoyed the first half of the book far less than the second half, but the second half is well worth the read and the wisdom and writing therein. I've also removed the star rating for reasons you'll see below (at least for this book).

Some quotes:

P. 43 “The total check for the Iraq war and restoration will be six hundred billion dollars. If only this much money had been spent on French wines for our entire populace, there would never have been a war, only well-oiled diplomacy.”

P. 46 “With good food and company the numerical absurdities become more so, a 90 wine becoming a 95 because wine doesn’t exist in the vacuum of charts but at the center of our lives. The professor who marked your essay 78 after a bad dinner may have given it a 91 after a good lunch. A book that is thought a classic in the western states is utterly ignored in Gotham’s verminish cement canyons. To rate either wine or literature as if we were scientists is frivolous. Both are in the humanities not the sciences.”

P. 49 “I’m fairly sure that the numerical system of rating wines was not devised as a marketing tool but that’s what it has become. The truly great Russian writer Dostoevsky insisted, ‘Two plus two is the beginning of death.’ Aesthetic values are decidedly non-digital and can no more fairly be applied to wines than to a thousand or so ‘top’ books a year. I could rather freely trust Parker in most areas but I would prefer a comment to a number. After Parker, however, the food chain descends toward the Proterozoic. Since this isn’t a science, how does a judge become qualified? In my years in Hollywood I watched hundreds of cads pass themselves off as ‘producers’ to young starlets. Both in the press and on television news there are hundreds of pundits who assume that talking is thinking. Evidently pundits are pundits because they say they are . . . .”

Pp. 53-54 “I also admit that I reached full sexual maturity at age seven, about the same time that many began to caution me about my gluttony. One afternoon, I caught and ate ten nice trout and felt a bit ill--but not too ill to climb a dozen trees that evening to peek in the windows at the members of the high school cheerleading squad whose high-kicking antics drove me into a batty sexual froth. More than once, I was caught by a puzzled father.
“Jimmy, why are you up in that tree?”
“I’m picking walnuts for my mom.”
“But that’s a pine tree.”
“Nobody told me.”

P. 116 “Existence is grounds for dismissal. It has only recently occurred to me that I might not be allowed to eat after I die. This is discouraging.”

P. 145 “Of course death is a black door without hinges and opens in only one direction. Death is our ultimate safety net but until that moment our only option is ‘resist much.’ A secret brotherhood insists that there is no God but reality, but I have doubts about this when I read that a single teaspoon of a neutron star weighs a billion tons. Who wants to become yet another conscript in someone else’s world of limited ideas? This Sunni-Shiite quarrel has been going on since 632 A.D. and the Catholic-Protestant silliness has been behind centuries of bloodshed including ignoring the first signs of the Aryan binge. The Hitler-Stalin Pact was mere pro forma and earlier the more than three hundred thousand who died in ten days at Verdun had no real idea of the bottomless hole they had marched into. The pathetically undereducated members of the Bush administration and the U.S. Congress now say re: Iraq, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ In any of the dozens of countries I visit, people indicate to me the sense that they are being led by low-rent chiselers.”

P. 146 “Back to the singular figure of Penelope Cruz, who has expressed dismay that viewers are distracted from her acting abilities by her attractiveness. This is certainly not true for me as I’ve long considered her among my top three favorite actresses in our solar system and at the moment I am reviewing twenty of her films through Netflix for my project. In short, I want to secure a double suite at the Hotel Canal Grande in Modena. Italy, near which there is one of the best markets in Europe. I am a Christian gentleman so the door between the suites will be operable only on her side. I will have a simple kitchen installed in my portion of the rooms and in a mere thirty days I guarantee I can put thirty pounds on her delicate frame thus making her safe from the loutish misunderstanding of movie reviewers. I am already a Quasimodo in a world without bells and these thirty days of hard cooking would help fulfill my calling as an artist. Doubtless Penelope Cruz will read this piece and either pick up the gauntlet or ignore it. She would emerge from the hotel plump but not dumpy. Maybe we would go to Cannes where I refused to be a judge last year and wear his-and-hers skimpy bathing suits and be amused by the way people would avert their eyes. Penelope would startle the press by saying, ‘There is no more grotesque misunderstanding of life than to murder people in the name of ideas.’”

P. 155 “But do dogs have souls? Of course they do for reasons I have delayed. Many scientists like myself have wondered at the sheer number of androids that have infiltrated our population. The obvious test is the absence of the belly button but a primary diet of fast food is also a good indicator. You can also add as evidence the reading of fast food-type books--99 percent of all published books here in the United States--and the predominance of television in their lives. The average bitch mutt is an absolute Emily Dickinson of the soul-life compared to the large android portion of our population.”

P. 169 “I have heard that in our current recession the rich are washing and carefully drying their used tissues. Americans have endured another major financial swindle, likely the largest in our history, and as I write we sit around dumb as dogs on hot August afternoons. Of course dogs are smart up to a point and many of my friends who crave a natural state of envy the spontaneity of dogs. However our dogs, Mary and Zilpha, love to eat green apples despite the ensuing stomach distress. Zilpha will swallow deer hooves and live gophers. She hails from northern Scotland, hence is a Celt, a group not known for moderation. It is fair to say that our hunger and greed have brought us to a sad state. The free-market economy is a leashless Labrador who will eat anything.”

P. 171 “Yes, our prayers and bestiality can emerge from the same neural cluster. A certain amount of money buys food and shelter, not to speak of the drip-drop leakage of wine into a particular portion of the brain that consequently leads to the world of the spirit and arts. And a tent in the woods is not enough when winter arrives. I recently pointed out that the millions of foreclosures coming from the subprime scandal will lead to suicides far outnumbering the 9/11 death toll. Those in banking and real estate in America are better at filing their teeth than members of al-Qaeda.”

P. 195 “What are the precise mental changes that occur with advanced aging?
“Frankly, many of our concerns vaporize. Ambition drifts away like a floating casket in a severe flood. The contents and scheduling of meals become far more important than bad reviews. The literati are slow to admit that what their god Kafka really wanted to do was to start a restaurant. His mistress was a fine cook and he was excited about being a waiter rather than a beetle with an apple stuck in its back. You publish a novel then sit around naked and unarmed waiting for what I call ‘the attack of the air guitarists,’ those who flail you with metal ships and burn your house down.”

P. 196 “To say the arts is too much for any mouth to honestly manage. I practically faint from irritation and must run to the refrigerator for a snack or to the window to see a dickcissel. Even worse is the NEA motto, ‘A great nation deserves great art.’ They got that one backward.”

P. 197 “I wrote a little verse that works equally well for fiction writers.

Poet Warning

He went to sea
in a thimble of poetry
without sail or oars
or anchor. What chance
do I have, he thought?
Hundreds of thousands
of moons have drowned out here
and there are no gravestones.

"Here as an appendix is the recent menu. The artful chef, Mario Batali said, ‘My art turns to shit by the next day.’”

P. 212 “Only humor and humility allow you to endure life as a senior with its clear view of a mile-high, neon-lit exit sign. I offer suggestions in the spirit of one building a rickety bridge across a deep ditch full of venomous snakes. At dawn tomorrow drop your cell phone in the toilet during your morning pee. In 1944 people averaged forty phone calls a year and now they’re over five thousand. Your cell phone time can be spent growing vegetables and learning to cook. Keep your lights turned off. All these electric lights are heating up innocent nature. Look out the window on a night flight and so much is ablaze for no valid reason. The world is running out of potable water, or so we are told. When you pour a glass of water finish it even if you have to add whiskey to manage. Fire a large-caliber bullet into your television screen. Avoid newspapers and magazines and movies, all of which have been unworthy of our attention. I will allow fifteen minutes a day of public radio news so you won’t lose track of the human community. I want to say to give your excess money to the poor but other than being generous to my larger family and friends I can’t seem to manage this, so ingrained is my greed. Naturally we all fail.”

P. 221 “The immediate lesson of being in the kitchen with a fine or great chef is humility. You properly want to go hide behind the woodpile until the dinner bell. You are a minor tennis club player from South Dakota in the presence of Roger Federer. What astounds you other than the product is the speed and dexterity with which they work. You feel like a sluggard because you are a sluggard. I can truthfully say that I wrote my novella Legends of the Fall in nine days, but by then I had twenty-plus years of practice. The same with chefs. There are no accidents or miracles, there is just hard work accompanied by taste.”

P. 222 “Cooking becomes an inextricable part of life and the morale it takes to thrive in our sodden times. . . . Glue yourself to any fine cooks you meet. They’ll generally put up with you if you bring good wine. Don’t be a tightwad. . . . Your meals in life are numbered and the number is diminishing. Get at it.”

P. 234-35 “I do know that in the entirety of human history pain is by far the biggest question mark. We humans sit in a beleaguered circle rotating toward our ends knowing that whatever pain we’ve had we’re likely to get more toward the end. We are protein for the gods and are devoured by the wholeness of the earth. The specifics are always unthinkable. During a recent illness of my wife I visited her in intensive care for sixty days. The feeling in this ward is one of total incomprehension. My shingles became not much more than raindrops until I went outside and saw pain descending like a thousand firebirds. Once on the way back home to care for the dogs, one an old cripple, I stopped by a huge river, got naked, and threw myself in but then I’m too good a swimmer to go this way. Besides, the dogs would have become depressed by their hunger as they do.”

P. 244-45 “I made some notes on log sitting. . . . Here goes perhaps nothing:
“Approach the log cautiously with proper reverence as if you were entering a French cathedral or the bedroom of a nude girl or a nude man if you’re a girl. If it’s warmish, over sixty, inspect the lower sides of the log for a Mojave rattlesnake. They can kill people, horses, and cows. You don’t want that, or do you? Just recently I have been reading a natural history memoir of my friend Harry Greene, a herpetologist. An appalling number of herpetologists have been killed toying with these creatures. Vipers don’t want to be our friends. Now examine the log closely for the most comfortable place to sit, usually away from the sun. Sit down and stay for forty-five minutes to an hour. Empty your mind of everything except what is in front of you, the natural landscape or the canyon. Dismiss or allow to slide away any aspect of your grand or pathetic life. Breathe softly. Avoid a doze. Internalize what you see in the canyon, the oaks and the desert willows, the rumpled and grassy earth, hawks flying by, a few songbirds. When you get up bow nine times to the log.
“Easy does it. Three logs a day is generally my maximum. When you get in your car it will seem as wretched as it is. A horse would be far better. For hours your mind will still be absorbed in the glory of what you saw rather than mail, e-mails, cell phones, TV, etc. Hopefully log sitting will allow you to change the contents of your life. You will introduce yourself as a ‘log sitter’ rather than a poet, novelist, or mortician. You will walk more slowly and perhaps your feel will shuffle like mine.”

Gramps Le Fou - read the entire story - pages 252-61

P. 263 “I’m also in favor of a high tax on poets for their poetry. We abound in the mediocre and somebody has to do something about it, though it might deliver us into the hands of rich poets.”

P. 275 “We should sit after the fashion of Dogen or Suzuki Roshi: as a river within its banks, the night sky in the heavens, the earth turning easily with her burden. We must practice like John Muir’s bears: ‘Bears are made of the same dust as we and breathe the same winds and drink the same waters, his life not long, not short, knows no beginning, no ending, to him life unstinted, unplanned, is above the accident of time, and his years, markless, boundless, equal eternity.’
“This is all peculiar but quite unremarkable. It is night now and the snow is falling. I go outside and my warm slippers melt a track for a few moments. To the east there is a break in the clouds, and I feel attended to by the stars and the blackness above the clouds, the endless blessed night that cushions us.”

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

In addition to being a poet and novel writer, Jim Harrison was a voracious eater and drinker with a passion for food and wine. For many years, he wrote articles and columns about his culinary adventures including the title piece about a 37-course lunch he enjoyed in France (he is quick to point out there were only 19 wines). Now gathered together, these pieces, often filled with humor and passion, are a celebration of a literary life, of poetry, food, and wine.

[I received an advanced e-galley of this book from Netgalley.]

[Monica Tomasello · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a love-hate relationship with this book. I didn't really enjoy reading it or even like Harrison's writing style, but I must admit that he was an interesting character and I highlighted more quotes in any book than I have since my college days.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can a book be loud and obnoxious?
This book is more about gluttony and drunkenness than about food and wine.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I miss Jim Harrison; he died of old age in 2016. Best known for his fiction, though he published numerous books of poetry, some essays, a memoir, and for a while made big bucks in Hollywood writing screen plays. He is a native of Michigan, a former student of Michigan State University, a long-time resident of Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula, an Upper Peninsula cabin owner, and during his last twenty-five years divided time between Pantagonia, Arizona and Livingston, Montana during the warmer months. His stories collected in ‘A Really Big Lunch’ published in 2017 originally appeared in bi-monthly Smoke Signals, The Magazine of Outdoor Cooking and Entertaining; the Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant newsletter; Brick; The New Yorker; Martha Stewart Living magazine; Playboy; Edible Baja Arizona, and a few other publications.

Jim loved food, wine, literature, poetry, music, certain people and many places, though not all places. To him, life boils down to a struggle for gathering funds to cover one’s vices. His motto: Spend as much as possible on good food and wine. Though, he and Ted Nugent are far from two peas in a pod, he claims to have killed much of what he ate, such as ducks, quail, deer, grouse, woodcock, trout, salmon, and bluegills. He had an unending appetite and was in tune with the distant cry of the loon over the lake while fishing on a lazy Tuesday morning.

He raved about Muscovy duck roasted just short of twenty-five minutes at super heat in his forced-air oven or until their flesh is a deep pink. He provided simple recipes that readily appeal to most men, such as Caribbean Stew and Duck Scaloppine with Dried Cherries and Grappa. He writes of black truffle honey, duck breasts in green peppercorn sauce, and a simple dish of fresh pasta made out of rabbit, pheasant and sausage.

He shamelessly promoted ‘Clancy’s Fancy’, a hot sauce manufactured by Colleen Clancy of Ann Arbor; widely available at your neighborhood hypermarket. Additionally, he liked ordering food by mail from Zingerman’s delicatessen, also of Ann Arbor.

Jim was not all Zen and lacked patience, especially when it came to details of food orders and was once observed gruffly sending chicken back to the kitchen when legs were missing. His favorite rule of thumb is: ‘moderate to excess’. And use of garlic and wild leeks are no exception. He mildly makes fun of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese along with Tastee-Freeze food.

Brief descriptions are provided of his meals with other famous big eaters like Orson Wells, Jimmy Buffett, and Jack Nicholson. He likes the racial mix in Brazil and mentions seeing vast tonnages of grass fed beef roasting on wood fires. He was in to sometimes expensive vivid food, as opposed to diets heavy on rice, beans and fruit. Yuppie nightmare foods unsettled him.

He mentions his youngest daughter’s several-day wedding party, in Montana, of 100 to 150 guests. He said, ‘Whenever life begins to crush me I know I can rely on Bandol (a red wine), garlic, and Mozart. He mentions having drunk a hundred bottles of Cayron Gigondas, as a nostrum for blues and fatigue in Paris or anywhere.

Jim observes that we certainly don’t celebrate the Eucharist with white wine and he agrees with his Seattle-based wine expert that common white wines (< $20) tend to be flaccid. Once when giving a poetry reading he was handed a glass of cheapish California Chardonnay and he said, “This might be good on pancakes if you were in the wilderness” and promptly proceeded to chew on the tip of a cigar to cleanse his mouth. He knows that both Dionysus and Beethoven drank only red wine while Bill Gates and a hundred thousand proctologists stick to the white. Though he does mention affection for Meursault when eating a simple stir fry of sweetbreads, fresh morels, and wild leeks.

The later stories of this collection describe, in some detail and with humor, his array of old-age health issues, many with long, difficult to pronounce names. Some, like shingles and associated post-herptic neuralgia, involved unrelenting pain over considerable time. He enjoys recounting searching for the doctor’s cure and connecting with nonconventional healers. Steroid shots into his spine provide temporary relief. Thinking about the logic of birds and fishes provides mental diversion. In one story, he writes about the antique word courage, more applicable to the nineteenth century before the use of drones to kill enemies. He remembers Lakota concepts of courage. He recalls writing, years ago, in a prophetic poem, “Our bodies are women who were never / meant to be faithful to us.” Jim’s sense of courage is to continue struggling against unassailable odds. He gives helpful information about the benefits of his meditation style.

At age seventy-six he had to cancel a book tour trip to Paris because he was feeling poorly. None the less, he claimed to be roaring with largely irrelevant ideas and plots. Such as why doesn’t the Republican Party settle down and figure out how to recycle toilet paper? And he speculates about his ability to write a best-seller about naps, then moving to Montreal and eating.