Jim Harrison, a titan of American letters, died at age 78 while writing in his studio at his Patagonia, Arizona home in 2016. His handwriting dwindled to mere marks on the page, likely a result from suffering from cardiac arrest with pen in hand, cigarette burning in the ashtray. The handwritten poem’s final lines were: “The earth used to be God’s body / but he took too many wounds and abandoned it. / He left us with the husk we made / of the body like a wasp’s nest. / Man shit his pants and trashed God’s body”. Harrison’s prolific body of work at the time of his death totaled twenty-one books of fiction, fourteen volumes of poetry, plus essays, journalism, and screenplays. Mortality and its “many wounds” were lifelong obsessions. Friends and family, after receiving the news, remarked that the author, whose extensive career spanned decades and literary fame with such books such as LEGENDS OF THE FALL and TRUE NORTH, died a “poet’s death.”
The details of the beloved author’s poignant “poet’s death” comprise the latter part of Todd Goddard’s impressive definitive biography, published at the end of last year. DEVOURING TIME: JIM HARRISON, A WRITER’S LIFE is based on Goddard’s extensive reporting and archival research, which entailed conducting more than one hundred original interviews and drew up Harrison’s collected papers, including 76 boxes of personal letters alone. Goddard also crisscrossed the country on numerous road trips to visit the places and people that meant so much to Harrison, which included his homes in Livingston, Montana and Patagonia Arizona, as well as northern Michigan where he was born and raised. Anyone familiar with Harrison’s work, from his novellas to articles on fishing, knew that rural and remote places like his Grand Marias cabin near the wild shoreline of Lake Superior or the lush rolling hills of Nebraska’s Sand Hills captured his imagination and soul. Goddard patiently unravels Harrison’s influences and impulses, including the two tragic events Harrison experienced that forever shaped his work: the loss of sight in his left eye at age seven and the untimely deaths of his sister and father in an auto accident when he was in his twenties. In the preface of the nearly 600-page book, Goddard shares that his particular focus in tracing Harrison’s life was poetry. He writes, “Poetry was Jim’s first love.” Although it was his first and final love of Harrison’s life, even outlasting his nearly 56-yearlong marriage to Linda King who preceded him in death by six months, poetry wasn’t enough for the critically acclaimed writer to live off.
From the book’s title to the final pages, Goddard shares how poetry shaped Harrison, and he delves into the various genres the seemingly inexhaustible writer explored throughout his long career. Some of those elements were often contradictory, both in terms of how a poet also worked on movie scripts, kept company with actors and singers and Harrison’s sometimes mercurial personality. “It might be hyperbole to say that the author of Legends of the Fall was a contradiction of a man, but he certainly was a unique combination of things: a serious, critically acclaimed writer who hung out with the likes of Jack Nicholson and the Hollywood set; a hard-living, hard-drinking outdoorsman who crafted exquisite poetry; a wounded man whose epic depressions threatened the well-being of his family but fueled his writing,” Goddard writes. This contradiction is best captured in the biography’s title, DEVOURING TIME, which comes from William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 19. The sonnet was one of Harrison’s favorites and according to Goddard, he often quoted from it, remarking how Shakespeare acknowledged the ravages of time while defending the poet’s unique ability to preserve love and beauty in his verse. Harrison was also known for his prodigious appetite, a gourmand who wrote about extensively about his meals and bottles of wine, and his destructive drug and alcohol use. For Goddard, this “devouring”” nature is apt description of the iconic American author.
While these devouring appetites produced a staggering amount of literature in his lifetime, including elevating the novella form to bestseller status and making him a downright celebrity in France, there was a dark side. Chronic depression, drug and alcohol abuse, financial instability, extramarital affairs, and professional insecurity constitute Harrison’s life. As a literary biographer, Goddard includes them. However, Harrison’s often troubling and inappropriate depiction of male characters who lust over young women, some of them underage, isn’t fully mentioned in an otherwise cleareyed approach.
Harrison was also legendary for his generosity, humor, devotion, and utter commitment to writing and reading. This is an exquisite biography of an epic writer’s life.