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Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,

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Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening past, you

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Speaker 1: can't predict anything brought to you by first Light.

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Speaker 2: When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First

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Speaker 2: Light builds, no compromise, gear that keeps me in the

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Speaker 2: field longer, no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it

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Speaker 2: out at first light dot com.

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Speaker 1: That's f I R S T L I T E

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Speaker 1: dot com.

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Speaker 2: All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're doing Joined Today by

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Speaker 2: UH with no headphones on. I've been pushing the fill

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Speaker 2: on it.

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Speaker 3: I'm in full support the headphones. Just for the audience

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Speaker 3: at home. This is a conversation we've had on my

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Speaker 3: off mic a lot. But the headphones help guess, especially

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Speaker 3: ones who aren't used to talking into microphones. It helps

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Speaker 3: them hear their own voice and stay close to the

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Speaker 3: microphone or else I'll have to yell at them from across.

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Speaker 2: That makes you, like I always said, it makes you

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Speaker 2: feel like God's talking to you. So it's gonna be

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Speaker 2: different now without these headphones on. Join Today by Todd Godder,

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Speaker 2: who just published a new book about a biography of

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Speaker 2: Jim Harrison. So any any hunting and fishing type person

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Speaker 2: who likes to read a lot is of course familiar

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Speaker 2: with Jim Harrison. If you if you go, if you're curious, like,

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Speaker 2: who the hell is Jim Harrison, the greatest point of

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Speaker 2: contact would be what was that? Why'd you make a

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Speaker 2: ten signal?

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Speaker 1: Facing the book?

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Speaker 2: That can people if you're trying to go like, you know,

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Speaker 2: fucking Jim Harrison, you go, you know, Legends of the Fall,

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Speaker 2: and people like, oh, yeah, but that's even that's just

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Speaker 2: barely scratching the surface. I'm partial to the old stuff.

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Speaker 2: So like Wolf, Brown Dog, He's got a book of

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Speaker 2: He's got a finalenminal book of essays called Just Before Dark,

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Speaker 2: which is some of the most beautiful, brilliant hunting and

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Speaker 2: fishing writing combined with some of the most obnoxious and

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Speaker 2: arrogant food writing. What are the other oh and then

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Speaker 2: literature essays? So Just Before Dark is like a complex

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Speaker 2: Like Jim Harrison was writing about hunting and fishing and

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Speaker 2: sports Illustrated back in the seventies, and it like collects

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Speaker 2: all that. It's just really brilliant stuff on hunting and fishing.

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Speaker 2: He also has all these characters that hunt and fish,

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Speaker 2: and he has characters that are filled with like environmental rage.

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Speaker 2: Wolf one of my favorites is a false memoir. It's

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Speaker 2: like a guy who is wandering around in Michigan's Upper Peninsula,

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Speaker 2: in the Huron Mountains, trying to catch a glimpse of

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Speaker 2: a wolf. Later in life he started doing these more complex,

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Speaker 2: I don't want to call them, like less angry, more

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Speaker 2: complex works like Dolva, The Road Home God, He's got

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Speaker 2: a million. How many books does he have?

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Speaker 1: Don she has twelve novels, nine collections of novella's, something

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Speaker 1: like eighteen books of poetry, a couple book, collections of

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Speaker 1: essays like Just before Dark children's book called The Boy

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Speaker 1: Ran of the Woods. So just an outrageously an outrageous

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Speaker 1: amount of output.

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Speaker 2: That, yeah, like everything ranging from like outdoor stuff. Much

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Speaker 2: of it's tinged with like a kind of a little

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Speaker 2: bit of an infantile kind of male fantasy kind of

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Speaker 2: stuff is tied in there. But like a like a

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Speaker 2: absolutely brilliant writer, like like a technically brilliant writer of

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Speaker 2: the one of the great writers who's colored by the outdoors,

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Speaker 2: the worlds of hunting and fishing, very complex kind of

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Speaker 2: frustrating person full of flaws, which we'll get into, but again,

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Speaker 2: a brilliant writer. And Todd are our guest. This is

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Speaker 2: his first book and he's a literary professor at Utah

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Speaker 2: Valley University and born in Philadelphia. And like, what age

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Speaker 2: did you start reading or that mcgwain, we'll talk about mcgwain. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: we could write what age did you start reading Harrison? Man?

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Speaker 2: Like how did you get on to Harrison?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? I probably started reading Harrison back in my early twenties, honestly,

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Speaker 1: And I think it began like it begins with lots

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Speaker 1: of people with Legends of the Fall. I think I

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Speaker 1: had a friend of mine turned me on to Legends

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Speaker 1: and when I began college in New York and just

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Speaker 1: immediately gravitated right to him. I mean, he hoped me

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Speaker 1: from the start, and from there, you know, I just

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Speaker 1: went back and started did a deep dive in Harrison.

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Speaker 1: And I remember, you know, I was trying to get

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Speaker 1: hold of every book Jim was writing, back to Wolf,

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Speaker 1: to Warlock, to Farmer or Farmer to Warlock to you know,

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Speaker 1: all the way up until what Jim had written in

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Speaker 1: the mid nineties or so, and then really tried to

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Speaker 1: catch up with anything new that was coming out with him,

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Speaker 1: you know, ever after and I think I went from

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Speaker 1: his fiction, then to his poetry, and then to his essays,

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Speaker 1: and just got completely hooked to by his food and

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Speaker 1: wine writing, by his outdoors essays, his hunting and fishing essays,

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Speaker 1: and sort of was off and running. And then got

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Speaker 1: a few chances to teach him in graduate school, taught

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Speaker 1: him a few times at Utah Valley University and tried

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Speaker 1: to incorporate him whenever I could into a class, and

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Speaker 1: and then you know, just kept rereading him over the

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Speaker 1: years until I finally sort of got into a position

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Speaker 1: to write this book.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, Like one thing I haven't gotten into his

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Speaker 2: is short of outside of like Robert Service, I'm not like,

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Speaker 2: I'm not a poem guy. Creation of Sam McGee is

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Speaker 2: like iking genius, you know, But I'm not a poem guy.

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Speaker 2: Like I never got into his stuff, like his his

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Speaker 2: I never read his books of poems. But I started

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Speaker 2: out like we were all when we were young, like

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Speaker 2: in college from Michigan, we were all way into Wolf,

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Speaker 2: like way into Wolf and then way into brown Dog

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Speaker 2: and other stuff like the Michigan stuff. You know, like

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Speaker 2: pissed off dudes a hunting and fished a lot. That

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Speaker 2: was our deal, right, like big time. And then later

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Speaker 2: I kind of like discovered the essays and then I

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Speaker 2: got really in it. I got for a long time.

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Speaker 2: I was really interested in food, and I liked all

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Speaker 2: his food stuff. But for me, it was like he, yeah,

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Speaker 2: his his hunting and fishing stuff and his environmental awareness

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Speaker 2: is what drew us in. It was weird though, because,

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Speaker 2: like you mentioned that, he he wasn't a big game

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Speaker 2: hunter man. Like he would write a lot about eating venison.

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Speaker 2: He'd even write about eating roadkill stuff, but he didn't

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Speaker 2: like any kind of he talked about. He saw a

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Speaker 2: bear skinned out one time and it looked too much

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Speaker 2: like a dude hanging there. You know. He was like

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Speaker 2: pretty particular about what he participated in.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's finny. He loved to eat big game, but

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Speaker 1: he wasn't a big game hunter. I mean, he hunted

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Speaker 1: deer when he was younger, you know, and occasionally hunted

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Speaker 1: deer even even into his thirties and early forties, but

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Speaker 1: he you know, it's a great story of Jim was

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Speaker 1: out hunting with a friend of his from Livingston Montana,

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Speaker 1: and Jim had settled outside of Livingston, Montana later around

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Speaker 1: two thousand, living in the Paradise Valley, and he went

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Speaker 1: out to hunting.

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Speaker 2: We should hit that route, did he real quick? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Hit like where he was born, Yeah, where he spent time,

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Speaker 2: and then where he died.

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Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, definitely. So Jim was born in Grayling, Michigan,

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Speaker 1: grew up in Reed City, and grew up in Hazlet

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Speaker 1: outside of Lansing, and then settled with his family in

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Speaker 1: Lake Lelanis in Michigan Lake Leland Peninsula, and then really

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Speaker 1: lived there for most of his life until around two thousand.

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Speaker 1: So he's born in nineteen thirty seven. Around two thousand,

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Speaker 1: he moves relocates out to Montana, where his daughters were

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Speaker 1: living at the time. Uh settles in the Paradise Valley

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Speaker 1: outside of Livingston, Montana, and Uh ended up buying a

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Speaker 1: small casida down in Patagony, Arizona. And so the family

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Speaker 1: would you know, spend half the year in Montana and

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Speaker 1: spend the winter in Patagony, Arizona. And that's sort of

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Speaker 1: the general you know that those are Jim's main places.

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Speaker 2: Right, and hunting a lot of kail down there.

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Speaker 1: And hunting a ton of a ton of merns quailed

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Speaker 1: down in Patagonia.

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Speaker 2: Uh.

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Speaker 1: And of course famously he had a cabin up in

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Speaker 1: the Upper Peninsula which he in gram Ray, just outside

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Speaker 1: of Gramma Ray, Michigan. And so those are like his

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Speaker 1: big spots.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So when Jim moves out to Livingston around two thousand,

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Speaker 1: you know, he he would go out aid, he would

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Speaker 1: got bird hunting for hunts and different things like that

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Speaker 1: Hungarian partridge.

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Speaker 4: Uh.

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Speaker 1: But occasionally he go for big game. But there's a

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Speaker 1: story of Jim going out one time with a friend

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Speaker 1: of his from Livingston, a guy named Dan Laarn and

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Speaker 1: he they were hunting antelope and or pronghorn, and they

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Speaker 1: get finally into a position where Jim can take a

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Speaker 1: shot and he uh, he passes the gun to Dan

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Speaker 1: and says, you take the shot right. And of course

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Speaker 1: he would want to eat the meat. He'd want, he'd

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Speaker 1: want he had won the animal, but he couldn't actually

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Speaker 1: pull the trick execute. And I think it comes back

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Speaker 1: to the you know, the reason you were suggesting partly

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Speaker 1: is he couldn't he couldn't handle killing animals that were mammals, frankly,

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Speaker 1: and he thought they looked too much like their insides,

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Speaker 1: their parts looked too much like humans. And I think

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Speaker 1: he among other reasons, but I think that was definitely

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Speaker 1: one of them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he was something of a fly fishing snob. He

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Speaker 2: wrote a great piece about ice fishing one time, but

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Speaker 2: was definitely like a fly snob, you know. But he

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Speaker 2: hated snobs. Yeah, hated snobs, but was a little bit

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Speaker 2: of a fly fishing snob. One of his many contradictions.

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Speaker 1: I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was a little bit of a fly fishing snob.

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Speaker 2: But he hated arrogance, you know, outside of his own you.

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Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, he for an arrogant guy, one of his

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Speaker 1: many contradictions. Right, for an arrogant guy. He couldn't stand

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Speaker 1: there against and other people, right, But he was Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was a little bit snobby about fly fishing, but

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Speaker 1: you know, that came later. I think he grew up

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Speaker 1: bait fishing and stuff like that and fly fishing too,

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Speaker 1: but really later in life. He really I think McGain

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Speaker 1: was very instrumental in introducing him to fly fishing, and

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Speaker 1: really Jim was already doing it, but really showed him

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Speaker 1: the ropes.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know what, we were talking about his hangout zones.

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Speaker 2: We kind of missed like he also like he's one

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Speaker 2: of these dudes if you look at like Elder Leopold,

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Speaker 2: Elder Leopold is embraced by Wisconsin and Elder Leopold is

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Speaker 2: embraced by New Mexico. Yeah, Okay, these are like and

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Speaker 2: there's other places embraced Hi because Elder Leopold was like

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Speaker 2: el Leopord, taught in Madison and kind of wrote about Wisconsin,

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Speaker 2: spend a bunch of time in New Mexico. So these

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Speaker 2: guys that has these like these guys a bunch of homes,

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Speaker 2: you know, or multiple homes. Harrison also for a big

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Speaker 2: part of the country. Harrison is also like a Key

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Speaker 2: West guy, right right, because he was when when dudes

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Speaker 2: were figuring out down there, like catching permit and catching

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Speaker 2: bonefish on flies and stuff in the seventies when that

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Speaker 2: was kind of coming into a thing and tarping and stuff,

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Speaker 2: like he was there. So it's just yet another place

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Speaker 2: around the country. Northern Michigan, Arizona, absolutely, Montana, Key West

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Speaker 2: or all these places that sort of hold a little

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Speaker 2: bit of a like they kind of hold the Harrison mystique,

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he's like he's like Leopold, but he's

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Speaker 1: also like Hemingway in that regard, right, Hemingway has his places, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Michigan is his place. Key West is definitely one of

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Speaker 1: his places. Cuba's place, Cuba's place, France is his place,

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Speaker 1: Spain is his place, Italy is his place. He's claimed

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Speaker 1: by all of these different geographical and settled in Idaho eventually.

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Speaker 1: And and Harrison's very much the same way, right, He's

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Speaker 1: got these very strong sort of local identifications, right. Uh, Patagonia,

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Speaker 1: Montana definitely first and foremost Michigan, but also Key West.

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Speaker 2: One of the things that grabbed like when I say

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Speaker 2: I'm talking about it just like me and my like

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Speaker 2: circle of people, and when we just grew up like

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Speaker 2: you know, like definite didn't like grew up like not

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Speaker 2: well off, okay, and it grew up kind of not

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Speaker 2: We grew up not real clear on how the whole

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Speaker 2: like college world worked. Like most of my bodies were

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Speaker 2: definitely like first time people and their families and went

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Speaker 2: to college. You know, my dad didn't finish high school, right,

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Speaker 2: so it was like we didn't understand the guys I

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Speaker 2: grew up around. We didn't like understand that world of

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Speaker 2: like education, We didn't understand the world that you'd become

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Speaker 2: a writer. We didn't know about writers, do you know

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Speaker 2: what I mean? It was like, oh, yeah, everybody's like, oh,

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna be a game ward and you know, you

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Speaker 2: just didn't know. Even though we're definitely afraid of game wards,

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Speaker 2: people thought like, oh, I'll be a game warden when

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Speaker 2: I grow up. But all of a sudden, like here's

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Speaker 2: this dude who grew up like north of us. And

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Speaker 2: the thing in Michigan is, no matter where you are,

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Speaker 2: the real Rednecks are just north of you, do you

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Speaker 2: know what I'm saying? Yeah, So I've talked about this before,

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Speaker 2: Like if you lived in like where I grew up

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Speaker 2: in Twin lank the real Rednecks were in Holton, just north.

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Speaker 2: But if you talk to a dude in Holton, the

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Speaker 2: real Rednecks are just north in Hisspiia. And it like

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Speaker 2: advances up the state. And so here's this guy like

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Speaker 2: two or three clicks north. The people in France are

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Speaker 2: buying his books, and it's kind of like, how does

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Speaker 2: that happen? Do you know what I mean? Like, how

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Speaker 2: is this dude like known and celebrated in France from

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Speaker 2: some redneck ass town north of US? Do I mean?

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Speaker 2: Like how like how did he? How did that click?

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Speaker 2: You know? His dad was what his dad was an

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Speaker 2: extension agent.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he was an agricultural agent. You're right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: Jim is an nomally right, He's an extremely unusual in

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Speaker 1: that regard. I Mean, the one thing I'd say is

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Speaker 1: that he came from a family of readers, So his

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Speaker 1: dad was an agricultural agent, you know, went to farm

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Speaker 1: school at m.

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Speaker 2: S U.

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Speaker 1: Still an agricultural primarily.

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Speaker 2: Was that the first generation in his family to go

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Speaker 2: to college would have been his old man.

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Speaker 1: It was his dad, Yeah, his dad, and his dad

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Speaker 1: was driven I think from an you know, from an

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Speaker 1: early age. I think he was extremely motivated by sort

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Speaker 1: of agricultural research and saw himself as something like an

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Speaker 1: agricultural missionary, coming out of sort of the dustbel era

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Speaker 1: where farms were you know, had certain practices that led

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Speaker 1: to environmental sort of devastation of their farms and dust dustbells,

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Speaker 1: so that he had.

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Speaker 2: That he grew up around that land ethic.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so he grew up around that land. I think

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Speaker 1: he was a big Steinbeck fan, right, and and and

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Speaker 1: he came from a family of primarily non readers. And

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Speaker 1: so where Jim's dad, and his dad's name was Winfield,

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Speaker 1: you know, got this sort of motivation Winfield. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've caught that, Yeah, Winfield. And where he got this

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Speaker 1: sort of motivation to educate himself and read is not

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Speaker 1: entirely clear. He didn't necessarily get it from his family,

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Speaker 1: but he had. He was driven, and I think he

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Speaker 1: was driven largely by wanting to learn as much as

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Speaker 1: he could about agriculture, but he also read Steinbeck, and

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Speaker 1: he read literature, and he was really interested in reading.

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Speaker 1: And Jim's mother too, was an avid reader. And I

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Speaker 1: think they instilled that in all of their children. But

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Speaker 1: the thing is they didn't know any writers either, right,

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Speaker 1: They didn't know Jim's brother, David Harrison once told me,

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Speaker 1: he said, we didn't know writers. We didn't know writers.

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Speaker 1: We didn't know anyone who knew any writers, not let

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Speaker 1: alone us. Right there, stage is removed, Yeah, there's stage

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Speaker 1: is removed. So, you know, being a writer as an occupation,

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Speaker 1: as a living, as a calling, as it was for Jim,

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Speaker 1: was just unheard of to his parents, you know, and

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Speaker 1: so when Jim came home it's age sixteen and said

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Speaker 1: I want to be a poet, they just had no

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Speaker 1: idea what to do with him. Right, But how does

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Speaker 1: a guy like Jim go, you know, from that background

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Speaker 1: to being sort of read broadly and celebrated in Paris.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a difficult question, right, how does.

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Speaker 2: He That's kind of I remember doing a book one time. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: someone asked a question, you know, and it was kind

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Speaker 2: of like the whole question was the whole point of

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Speaker 2: the book. Yeah. They'd be like, well, I mean I

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Speaker 2: just spent I mean it's I just spent two hundred

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Speaker 2: and fifty pages explaining that.

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Speaker 1: Like right, yeah, right, yeah exactly. I mean I can't

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Speaker 1: just tell you. I mean the short answers. He he

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Speaker 1: was incredibly motivated and worked.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 1: I love this description by mcwaine. Mcgwain called and I'm

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Speaker 1: talking about Tom mcgwaan, who is one of Jim's really

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Speaker 1: close friends.

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Speaker 2: He's been I don't know, he's been on the show

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Speaker 2: a million years ago.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like six years ago.

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Speaker 2: Dude. He was old then, and he's got a new

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Speaker 2: book out now. Yeah, he's still still it was the

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Speaker 2: name of the McGain episode. Do you remember, if people

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Speaker 2: want to refer back, we're gonna mention mcgwaine. A number

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Speaker 2: of times. McGain was like a contemporary of I'm sorry,

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Speaker 2: go ahead, yeah, well, clonel, dig that up.

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Speaker 4: I mean mcgwaane on the beauty of not knowing.

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Speaker 2: Okay, what a gentleman.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, great guy, and uh, you know, we

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Speaker 1: can talk about how they're connected and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: But mcgwaine once called Jimmy said he's a country boy

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Speaker 1: who was touched. Oh is how he described Jim. And

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's a really good description. Touched

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Speaker 1: by genius, that is right. And Jim worked extremely hard

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Speaker 1: at his writing and got himself into a position, I

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Speaker 1: mean where he really worked his way into, you know,

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Speaker 1: literary culture in America. But I think I think his

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Speaker 1: his sort of rustic identity, right, his what did you

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Speaker 1: say up north? What do you say? He's above north? Right,

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Speaker 1: He's way up there, right, as part of his appeal

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Speaker 1: in France. So I'd say, you know, not only did

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Speaker 1: he earn that through his writing, but I also think

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Speaker 1: the appeal is partly where he comes from.

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Speaker 2: Like they recognized him as a country bumpkin.

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Speaker 1: They recognized him not a.

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Speaker 2: Bumpkin, but they recognized him as like a man of

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Speaker 2: the like someone of the land in a way, you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I think I think the French associated gym

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Speaker 1: with wilderness, right, the American wilderness, the American you know,

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Speaker 1: the Great north Woods. Someone who's writing about the sort

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Speaker 1: of land and landscape and history of northern Michigan and

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Speaker 1: of northern America, right, I think that's part of his appeal.

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Speaker 1: So his sort of rusticity is part of his appeal

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Speaker 1: in France.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because he never got there's a thing that happens.

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Speaker 2: It didn't happen to him. But I remember when I

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Speaker 2: was going away to writing school. I remember like I

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Speaker 2: always read about like trappers and hunters and explorers and shit,

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Speaker 2: that's all I wanted to read about when I was

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Speaker 2: a kid, when I was going away to writing school.

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Speaker 2: After I got out of regular college, I remember being like, man,

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Speaker 2: I should probably remember I went and tried to read

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Speaker 2: James Joyce as dubliners, because like, I should probably figure

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Speaker 2: out what people actually write about, do you know what

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Speaker 2: I mean? And then he gave up on that. He

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Speaker 2: never got, he never fell for that trap because early

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Speaker 2: work was about the people he knew. Like his early

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Speaker 2: work was about the people he knew. You know, he

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Speaker 2: didn't try to be something he wasn't, but he wrote

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Speaker 2: about it with like the skill set of someone who is.

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Speaker 1: Not that I think that's right. I Mean, he was

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Speaker 1: so well read, and so I think, you know, he's

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Speaker 1: he's coming to his even his early works with this

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Speaker 1: immense body of sort of learning and reading behind him, right,

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Speaker 1: But he was smart enough not to fall into that

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Speaker 1: trap of sort of trying to to closely or carefully emulate, right,

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Speaker 1: some of the some of the writers that he so admired.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think he really claimed that maybe if

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Speaker 1: he used and borrowed some of the style and was

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Speaker 1: influenced by writers, he really made it his own right,

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Speaker 1: and he was going to anchor his books in the

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Speaker 1: people he knew, the world that he grew up in, right,

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Speaker 1: the local details and characteristics of his own specific upbringing

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Speaker 1: right in Michigan. And you know, and he carries that

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Speaker 1: around the country with him and Wolf.

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Speaker 2: What's his deal? What's his deal with like his love

387
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Speaker 2: hate kind of like like he's haunted by Hemingway, haunted

388
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Speaker 2: by Hemingway. Like what is that all about? Did you

389
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Speaker 2: ever come to understand that? Like you never tell if

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Speaker 2: he likes the guy or hates the guy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he was conflicted. I think he wanted

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Speaker 1: to distance himself from Hemingway because he had so much

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Speaker 1: in common with heming People would.

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Speaker 2: Point out the right hanging out the same place. But

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Speaker 2: Hemingway's in Illinois, dude, Chicago.

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Speaker 1: You're right, yeah, but he but he spent his summers

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Speaker 1: all the time in difference. Man, No, I agree, I

398
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Speaker 1: won't claim otherwise. Yeah, dad is a doctor or something. Right, Yeah,

399
00:20:42,119 --> 00:20:44,239
Speaker 1: you're right, So his dad's a doctor. He comes from

400
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Speaker 1: a very different background, grows up in Oak Park, Illinois,

401
00:20:47,680 --> 00:20:50,320
Speaker 1: comes from a religious family. His mother was very religious,

402
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Speaker 1: and Jim's mother was very religious. But uh, you know Hemingway.

403
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Speaker 1: But Hemingway also, you know, his early books are associated.

404
00:20:56,280 --> 00:20:59,960
Speaker 1: They're said in Michigan, up in Michigan, same rivers he fished, man, Yeah,

405
00:21:00,160 --> 00:21:02,919
Speaker 1: I know exactly, the big two hearted in other rivers

406
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Speaker 1: and so you know, and he's what Hemingway's writes about

407
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Speaker 1: fishing and hunting. Lived in Paris, right, fished in Key West,

408
00:21:13,440 --> 00:21:16,200
Speaker 1: and his associated with Key West was a man of

409
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Speaker 1: big appetites like Harrison was, and so there's lots of

410
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Speaker 1: parallels between Harrison and Hemingway.

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Speaker 2: They like to pull a cork.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you like to pull a cork from time to time,

413
00:21:24,720 --> 00:21:29,440
Speaker 1: to put it mildly. But so I think, on one level, right,

414
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Speaker 1: a whole generation of writers coming after Hemingway felt like

415
00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:35,679
Speaker 1: they had the distance in themselves from him to do

416
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Speaker 1: exactly what you suggested earlier, right, was to avoid being

417
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Speaker 1: sort of pulled into his universe, right, become a satellite

418
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Speaker 1: instead of their own system.

419
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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: And Hemingway had that allure, right, he had that appeal

421
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Speaker 1: and that power, And so I think writers went out

422
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Speaker 1: of their way to distance themselves from him after him, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, to not be like, you know, guys like Hemingway. Right,

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Speaker 2: whenever I'm talking about Harriston, someone says something about him

425
00:21:58,760 --> 00:22:02,280
Speaker 2: and I just roll my ass like it's not the same. No,

426
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Speaker 2: it ain't the same thing.

427
00:22:04,080 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 1: No, it's not the same thing. And he writes extremely,

428
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Speaker 1: very differently than Hemingway. And so I think, you know,

429
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Speaker 1: there's a love hate thing there. I think he tried

430
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Speaker 1: to distance himself from Hemingway and did so successfully. But

431
00:22:15,359 --> 00:22:17,879
Speaker 1: I think he also admired Hemingway, but maybe didn't want to,

432
00:22:18,359 --> 00:22:21,120
Speaker 1: you know, was reluctant maybe to celebrate Hemingway as much

433
00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:24,040
Speaker 1: as he might have otherwise coming out of his you know,

434
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:28,159
Speaker 1: as everyone did, you know, growing up in Hemingway's shadows,

435
00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:31,840
Speaker 1: so to speak. And so, yeah, did I ever get

436
00:22:31,880 --> 00:22:34,720
Speaker 1: to the bottom of that? I mean, he likes Hemingway, right,

437
00:22:34,760 --> 00:22:37,119
Speaker 1: he admires his writing, and he says it plenty of times,

438
00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:41,760
Speaker 1: but he also says, you know, ah, he dismisses him simultaneously,

439
00:22:42,040 --> 00:22:44,200
Speaker 1: and so I think there's a conflict at his court.

440
00:22:44,600 --> 00:22:52,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, talk about tell everybody about like you look at Harrison,

441
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:55,719
Speaker 2: like here he is, you know, yeah, on the car,

442
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:57,800
Speaker 2: I'm holding up the book cover, the book. This is

443
00:22:57,800 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 2: when he's older, just closer to way, closer to death.

444
00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:04,399
Speaker 2: I guess a big thing that comes up in his

445
00:23:04,480 --> 00:23:08,320
Speaker 2: work comes up. I mean, the guy can't he can't write.

446
00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:12,200
Speaker 2: I don't know, I was gonna saw on a number

447
00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:16,399
Speaker 2: of pages. I can't do it that way. Harrison Man,

448
00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:23,320
Speaker 2: he was disfigured as a child, and it permeates like

449
00:23:24,320 --> 00:23:28,320
Speaker 2: it's every it's everything, it's in everything, it's baked into everything.

450
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:32,320
Speaker 2: He's got what he's got a googly eye. That's his

451
00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 2: his word, not mine, his word, not mine. It haunted him, dude,

452
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 2: Like it's like it became him. You know, like explain

453
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:44,080
Speaker 2: that the folks like how that happened. And in the

454
00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:48,640
Speaker 2: way that just was kind of like, you know, it

455
00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:52,680
Speaker 2: was his uh what's that famous uh you know, the

456
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 2: the Orson Wells deal, like the fucking rosebud. Yeah, it

457
00:23:57,560 --> 00:23:58,680
Speaker 2: was his rosebud moment.

458
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:01,359
Speaker 1: You know, it's his rosebud. I think that's really a

459
00:24:01,359 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: good way of saying it. So, you know, it's a

460
00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 1: spring day in nineteen forty five, I think.

461
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:07,200
Speaker 2: Is that what it was for it? Okay?

462
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:11,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was seven years old and he was you know,

463
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 1: living in Reed City, Michigan. Went down the street and

464
00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:19,440
Speaker 1: he was playing with a young girl and they were

465
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: in a lot behind a hospital and what exactly in

466
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:23,640
Speaker 1: the hospital?

467
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:26,120
Speaker 2: Reed City? Yeah, you were going to get the wrong

468
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 2: picture and they hear behind a hospital.

469
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:29,439
Speaker 1: Well, it was just it was just it was just

470
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 1: an empty lot right just down the street from his house.

471
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:35,680
Speaker 1: You know what, kids playing in back lots and there

472
00:24:35,720 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 1: was you know, some woods behind very old, little small

473
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: little town, small town, small hospital. Yeah, rustic and he's

474
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:47,680
Speaker 1: out back, and what exactly was going on it has

475
00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: never been made entirely clear, but I think they were experimenting,

476
00:24:52,760 --> 00:24:55,960
Speaker 1: playing around, maybe playing doctor, right Jim. Jim would say

477
00:24:55,960 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: this himself, right, that they were experimenting, and something happened,

478
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:05,200
Speaker 1: something clicked. The girl panicked or you know, got scared

479
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:10,440
Speaker 1: or defensive, and she grabbed a piece of glass broken

480
00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:12,359
Speaker 1: from a beaker that was next to them on a

481
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:16,080
Speaker 1: trash pile and jabbed it at Jim and caught him

482
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:17,359
Speaker 1: in the eye.

483
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 2: So and and Wolf, what happens to the character who

484
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:24,399
Speaker 2: is very much like him, but not him. It's like

485
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 2: a broken beer bottle or something, but yeah, a beaker glass, Yeah.

486
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 1: It was like a beaker glass caught him in the eye,

487
00:25:30,640 --> 00:25:34,720
Speaker 1: and immediately, you know, the sort of left side of

488
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 1: his face, you know, went blind left, you know, his

489
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: left his left eye. And so the girl took off

490
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:43,199
Speaker 1: and he went. He went across the street to his

491
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:46,040
Speaker 1: neighbor's house, and the mother was a nurse and she

492
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 1: recognized the severity of what had happened immediately, and is

493
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 1: you know, everybody freaked out. He ended up in Grand

494
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:55,639
Speaker 1: Rapids in the hospital for a couple of weeks with

495
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:58,120
Speaker 1: bandages on both his eyes, and at one point they

496
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: tied him to the bed because he was panning and

497
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 1: they wanted to keep him still. And this was an

498
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 1: incredibly traumatic experience for him, right, and he recalled it's

499
00:26:06,840 --> 00:26:09,000
Speaker 1: an experience, like you said, it's his rosebud. It's something

500
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 1: he would never forget for the rest of his life.

501
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:13,680
Speaker 1: And all he could really see out of that eye

502
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:16,440
Speaker 1: was just sort of like maybe light and shadow a

503
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:18,719
Speaker 1: little bit, right, so he could remember seeing a bit

504
00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:21,680
Speaker 1: of sort of the blur, the vague blur of the moon.

505
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: But for all intents and purposes that I was blinded.

506
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:29,440
Speaker 1: He'd never get his vision back, and it was incredibly

507
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: traumatic for him. You know, literally the left side of

508
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:36,040
Speaker 1: his his his vision was completely cut off with the.

509
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 2: Rest of it changed how the brother looked man like, and.

510
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:42,960
Speaker 1: It changed how he looked. He felt, uh, you know,

511
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 1: sort of freakish. He had a googly eye right his

512
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: he says, his eye jogged in its socket like a

513
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:49,840
Speaker 1: milky sparrow.

514
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:50,240
Speaker 2: You know.

515
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:54,080
Speaker 1: It was uh. And and he you know, he thought

516
00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 1: he thought he had buck teeth, He thought he had

517
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:58,200
Speaker 1: this swarthy complexion he had.

518
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 2: This comes up a lot as he's like just constantly

519
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:06,120
Speaker 2: mentioning the people would think he was people would think

520
00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:08,480
Speaker 2: he was hispanic or and he's got this crazy eye,

521
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 2: and they didn't believe that he's from where he's from.

522
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:13,639
Speaker 1: And definitely, yeah, I mean he was. He did have

523
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:15,720
Speaker 1: a kind of swarthier complexion. Part of that was just

524
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: from being outside. Part of that was just maybe the

525
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: pigmentation in his skin. He just had a little darker complexion,

526
00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: and you know, and he really felt like an outsider.

527
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:29,199
Speaker 1: He felt sort of alienated from those around him. And

528
00:27:29,680 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 1: I think if you wanted to sort of draw this

529
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,920
Speaker 1: back his early to you know, that period in his

530
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: life he sort of retreated into the woods. And Jim

531
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 1: already liked the woods a lot, but this was a moment,

532
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 1: I think when he really developed attachments to the natural,

533
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:45,520
Speaker 1: non human world, because there he wasn't judged right. He

534
00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 1: could go out into the woods, you know, observed creatures

535
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:52,879
Speaker 1: walk in the woods, things like that, and there became

536
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 1: sort of this really stark division between the societal and

537
00:27:56,960 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 1: the judgment that he experienced there with his eye and

538
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:02,720
Speaker 1: his fireman that I think in his mind was sort

539
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 1: of blown out of proportion and.

540
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 2: Amih you get the sense that I always had the

541
00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:10,760
Speaker 2: sense that he thought when he looked in the mirror, Yeah,

542
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 2: he saw something a lot worse than what was there. Right.

543
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 1: You look at Jim at thirty, and you know, you

544
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: see something askew with his eye. But it's not probably

545
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: what he am at. He probably you know the way

546
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 1: I think in some days he thought it was like

547
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:24,359
Speaker 1: a monster. Yeah, I think he looked. I think he

548
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 1: felt like he looked like a monster. And you know,

549
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:29,399
Speaker 1: the children's book that he wrote, The Boy He Ran

550
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:32,359
Speaker 1: into the Woods is really about is exactly about this experience,

551
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 1: and it becomes sort of like an origin story for

552
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 1: Harrison where he says, you know what sort of this started,

553
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:45,080
Speaker 1: you know, sort of you know, it was the origin

554
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:48,400
Speaker 1: of my sort of interest in and fascination and love

555
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: and devotion to the natural world on the one hand,

556
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 1: but also to his giving himself sort of an artistic perspective.

557
00:28:57,160 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 2: Right.

558
00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wasn't in it now. He was off the side, right,

559
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: And that's something he would later name his memoir Off

560
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:07,320
Speaker 1: to the Side, Right, because of his disfigurement, he felt

561
00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 1: he he was sort of always off to the side now,

562
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: seeing things differently, literally figuratively right and sort of not

563
00:29:17,880 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: part of the crowd, but observing part of the crowd.

564
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 1: And so you know, it becomes this sort of beginning,

565
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 1: sort of this mythology, right, this origin story of Harrison.

566
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 1: But you know, and that all may very well be true,

567
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: and I think in many ways it is, but he

568
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 1: would still carry this trauma with him for the rest

569
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: of his life. You know, I had real consequences for him.

570
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: There's a story about him walking through the woods one

571
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 1: time fishing in northern Michigan and he's with this guy

572
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 1: named Mike Ballard, the guy he used to fish with

573
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: in the Upper Peninsula, and it was getting dark and

574
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: Mike's urging Jim to hurry up, and he says, I can't.

575
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 1: You know, I can't go any faster. If I get

576
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 1: a branch in my other eye, I'm done. And when

577
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:08,040
Speaker 1: you stop and think about that, you're like, oh, yeah,

578
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: I got it. Like living with one kidney man. He's

579
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: got that one eye right, because that's all he's got

580
00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 1: left right in terms vision, And so one of the

581
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:21,000
Speaker 1: funny not one of the funnier he's it was.

582
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 2: Also we haven't touched on this. Also, at times a

583
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 2: very funny writer. But in one of his bird hunting essays,

584
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 2: I think he talks about the moment it occurred to

585
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:30,880
Speaker 2: him that instead of carrying around binoculars, you could buy

586
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 2: a monocular. That's great, Yeah, yeah, a stroke of genius.

587
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 2: It was to realize you didn't need two things.

588
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 1: It came with real practical consequences, right.

589
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 2: And then another big one with being a kid as

590
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 2: a and I kind of know the way it comes

591
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 2: up and his I kind of know the way it

592
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:55,280
Speaker 2: like comes up in his writing and things. But he

593
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 2: also like his father and his sister are killing the

594
00:30:59,280 --> 00:31:05,160
Speaker 2: car accident. Yeah, and that also just lives like it

595
00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 2: just plays out over decades of writing. You know. It's

596
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:16,719
Speaker 2: just it's it's becomes baked into his everything, you know,

597
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:19,719
Speaker 2: and it's probably kind of like I just said, he's funny,

598
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 2: he's funny. Oh, also it's his stuff is sad. Yeah,

599
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 2: I mean, I keep talking about wolves Is. It remains

600
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:33,480
Speaker 2: my it remains my favorite work of his, not just

601
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 2: because of it, like not because of the work. I

602
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:41,240
Speaker 2: mean the work for sure, but it remains a favorite

603
00:31:41,280 --> 00:31:45,200
Speaker 2: of mine because of what it meant to like, what

604
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:48,080
Speaker 2: it meant to grow up in those areas and to

605
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 2: hang out in the Up a lot, and then here's

606
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 2: this guy that like wrote about that in that way,

607
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 2: it also remains a favorite of mine because, like when

608
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:59,200
Speaker 2: I discovered it, I was at that age kind of

609
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 2: like at that age of where the of where the

610
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 2: narrator is. I remember I saw my first Wolf track

611
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 2: in the Up, you know what I mean. It's like,

612
00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 2: so I hold it out as my favorite, not because

613
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 2: it's his best work, but it's it's his most meaningful thing,

614
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 2: you know, and it has I don't want to blow

615
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 2: up for anybody. It has one of the most abrupt, sad,

616
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:30,360
Speaker 2: catatonic like endings to a book. He goes to see

617
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 2: his grandma, like stops in at his grandma's and like

618
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 2: nothing happens. He just says a couple things about leaving

619
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 2: his grandma's house, and it leaves you just gutted. So

620
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 2: he's like funny, but it's sad, and like that sadness

621
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 2: like his losing his dad and his sister's big for him,

622
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:51,960
Speaker 2: you know.

623
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's one of the most remarkable things

624
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:59,400
Speaker 1: about Jim that I found writing this book is his ability.

625
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:03,240
Speaker 1: You know, He's went through incredibly deep depressions throughout his life.

626
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Like how bad would that get for him?

627
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:09,520
Speaker 2: All right? Would it make it that he couldn't work ever?

628
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: You know?

629
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 2: I mean he's so prolific, you know.

630
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:15,400
Speaker 1: Later in life, really, after the death of his father

631
00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 1: and sister, he would work through the deepest of depressions

632
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 1: and somehow his poetry would help to sort of lift

633
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:23,960
Speaker 1: him out of it. Right, But before he really really

634
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 1: started writing, before his his before the deaths of his

635
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 1: loved ones, he wouldn't necessarily write, and he would fall.

636
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 1: He would fall into the deepest of depressions even as

637
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,560
Speaker 1: a young man, right Like while he was in the

638
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 1: years that take place in the novel Wolf, and he

639
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:43,080
Speaker 1: would come close to sort of nervous crack ups.

640
00:33:43,880 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 2: Really serious. Tell a story of how of the of

641
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:48,880
Speaker 2: the car crash. Yeah, so I don't even know the

642
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:50,560
Speaker 2: I don't even know the deal, the win or where.

643
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:51,480
Speaker 2: I don't know that.

644
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 1: So Jim was in his in his in his twenties.

645
00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 1: I think it happened in nineteen sixty two, and it

646
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 1: was Thanksgiving weekend, and Jim was married to his wife Linda,

647
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: and they were visiting with his parents. They were in

648
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: Haslet and Jim's father, Winfield, and his sister Judy were

649
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:17,919
Speaker 1: going to go on a hunting trip, your hunting trip,

650
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 1: as they did annually, and Judy would go along, she

651
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: was a hunter too, and Jim was sort of wavering

652
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:26,920
Speaker 1: on whether to go with them. Right that day and

653
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:29,440
Speaker 1: he was sort of hanging around the house. He'd just

654
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,399
Speaker 1: gotten home from a trip with his wife and sort

655
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: of decided at the last minute that he wasn't going

656
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: to go, and Judy and Winfield took off and for

657
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:43,399
Speaker 1: their trip. Jim went over to Linda's parents' house right

658
00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:46,760
Speaker 1: down the street, not too far in Lansing, And later

659
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: that evening, Norma called the King's house, which was Linda's

660
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 1: parents name, and Bil King picked up the phone and

661
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:00,120
Speaker 1: sort of had a stricken look on his face and

662
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:02,920
Speaker 1: pulled Jim aside and told Jim that there had been

663
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 1: a car accident and that his father and his sister

664
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 1: were killed. So unbelievable, right, a incomprehensible sort of information

665
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:18,640
Speaker 1: being conveyed to Jim. It turns out that what happened

666
00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 1: was that they had headed up north and on their

667
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:24,920
Speaker 1: way they were coming down a two lane road a

668
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: car was backing out onto the highway and a car

669
00:35:28,040 --> 00:35:30,200
Speaker 1: that was coming the other direction swerved to miss the

670
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:32,439
Speaker 1: car that was backing out and hit them head on

671
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 1: and they were both killed instantly. And as you can imagine,

672
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:41,920
Speaker 1: I mean, the trauma of that is unimaginable, learning of

673
00:35:41,960 --> 00:35:45,000
Speaker 1: the sort of sudden deaths of two loved ones, and

674
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:48,080
Speaker 1: Jim was so close to his father and even closer

675
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:50,919
Speaker 1: to his sister arguably, I mean, Judy and Jim were

676
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 1: like twins in their connection, and so it absolutely devastated Jim.

677
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,040
Speaker 1: And on top of that, compounding things was the fact

678
00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 1: that Jim felt somehow responsible because he had sort of

679
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: delayed their departure by thinking whether or not maybe I'll go,

680
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,719
Speaker 1: maybe I won't, And so he was tormented by the

681
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 1: fact that if he had decided a few seconds earlier,

682
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: a few minutes earlier, or a few minutes later, they

683
00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:17,279
Speaker 1: would still be alive. And so he really blamed himself

684
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 1: with the timing of that. And you know, that was

685
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:23,879
Speaker 1: an event. Really that's another sort of if you want

686
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:25,360
Speaker 1: to call it that, I mean, as horrible as it is,

687
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: it's also a kind of origin story for Jim's writing.

688
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:31,880
Speaker 1: And I think that was absolutely definitively the catalyst that

689
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 1: Jim needed. As dark as it was, he just absolutely

690
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 1: devoted himself to his writing after that. He was already

691
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 1: interested in writing before that, but he was really having

692
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:46,360
Speaker 1: trouble getting pen to page and make, you know, actually

693
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: having some kind of productive output. But after that, I

694
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: think Jim's world changed. I think he thought, if this

695
00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:56,880
Speaker 1: can happen, and death is that close and so sudden

696
00:36:56,920 --> 00:37:00,239
Speaker 1: and unpredictable, that there's absolutely nothing left to do but

697
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 1: to do what you absolutely want to do. Uh, no

698
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:06,799
Speaker 1: Plan B for Jim, right, there was not going to

699
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:09,360
Speaker 1: be a plan B. He there was plan A. He

700
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:10,920
Speaker 1: was going to be the writer that he wanted to be.

701
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 1: He was going to be a prolific writer, and he

702
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:15,000
Speaker 1: was not going to look back. And that was it.

703
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:17,239
Speaker 1: And he started writing after that. He says, at one

704
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:20,640
Speaker 1: point he says, I found a new voice. He says,

705
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:25,240
Speaker 1: the truth is always new wine right, he had somehow

706
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 1: been gifted, he found he thought, with sort of the

707
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: gift of speech, right, and all of a sudden he

708
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:33,279
Speaker 1: could begin writing. And he really never looked back from that.

709
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 1: But I think you're absolutely right. That story permeates everything

710
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:41,880
Speaker 1: he wrote after that and defined the rest of his life.

711
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:48,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, hmmm, what was how did it come to be? Like,

712
00:37:48,840 --> 00:37:51,240
Speaker 2: like when did he start becoming friends with all these

713
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 2: with with like these other writers. Let's let's just I

714
00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 2: guess we'll focus on instead of saying these other writers,

715
00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 2: will focus on what we'll talk about mcgwain, because here's

716
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 2: this other great writer, another Michigan guy, another guy like

717
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:09,839
Speaker 2: obsessed with hunting, obsessed with fishing, transcended that world. Neither

718
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:13,520
Speaker 2: of these guys. No one would call Harrison or mcguain

719
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 2: an outdoor writer. No one would call him a hunting

720
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:21,080
Speaker 2: and fishing writer. But their writers that hunters and anglers love.

721
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 2: But they they way, they overshot any kind of definition

722
00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:29,880
Speaker 2: like that, they became like literary figures, right, you know, yeah,

723
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 2: Like how at what point did he start to be

724
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 2: that he was going to be with writers and associate

725
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:38,759
Speaker 2: with writers and join the kind of like literati you know.

726
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so you know, Jim, like like we

727
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 1: were saying, I mean, Jim didn't grow up knowing writers.

728
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 1: It wasn't really until he got into college and he

729
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 1: began like you know, getting to know professors and things

730
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:55,320
Speaker 1: like that. He really didn't get to know some professional

731
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:58,600
Speaker 1: writers until you know, I think he ran into Jack

732
00:38:58,680 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 1: Kerouac once at a bar New York and so that

733
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 1: was like the first writer I'd ever met. And Jack

734
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 1: Kerouac was at a jazz bar in a village and

735
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: he was apparently really drunk, and Harrison says he met

736
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 1: him and sort of got to know him. He says, well,

737
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,080
Speaker 1: that was the first writer I ever really got I met.

738
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 1: But you know, he really became he really got to

739
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 1: know and sort of become part of the literary scene.

740
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:24,279
Speaker 1: At one point, he was invited by a professor at

741
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:27,400
Speaker 1: Michigan State University who got to Stonybrook University on Long Island,

742
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:30,759
Speaker 1: and there Jim got to know a lot of poets, right.

743
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 1: He was partly in charge of inviting writers to the

744
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:36,759
Speaker 1: department to get to you know, to for talks and

745
00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:39,400
Speaker 1: readings and things like that, and sort of met the

746
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: whole literary world there, at least in the world of

747
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 1: poetry time, right, And I think so that got him

748
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:51,800
Speaker 1: to know a lot of writers. And then you know mcgwuaine,

749
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:54,320
Speaker 1: who had gone to school with at Michigan State University,

750
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,399
Speaker 1: reached out to him, you know, around this time, and

751
00:39:57,480 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 1: they didn't know each other. That well at MSU, but

752
00:39:59,719 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: mcwi reached out to him and they began this sort

753
00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 1: of decades long correspondence and deep friendship that would develop.

754
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: And it turns out mcwaine was, you know, incredibly invested

755
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 1: in writing too, and was very active in writing and publishing,

756
00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 1: and so all of a sudden, Jim started to have

757
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:19,279
Speaker 1: a literary community, right, And it was mcwaine in many

758
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:22,319
Speaker 1: ways introduced Jim to lots of his good friends who

759
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 1: would later become good friends, like he.

760
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,400
Speaker 2: Became friends with buff Jimmy Buffett and Jimmy Buffett.

761
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:31,319
Speaker 1: Gee Delaval then, right, who was a French count who

762
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 1: he met fishing in Key West.

763
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:36,319
Speaker 2: That's one dude. I'll never understand. What did that dude do. Well,

764
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 2: he's always like they're always bringing him up that they

765
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 2: just like him because he's a French count.

766
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: Well he was his deal, he was, he was, He

767
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:46,320
Speaker 1: was an avid fish. He's dead now. Yeah, I did get.

768
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:48,440
Speaker 2: To always talking about that guy. I never got it.

769
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:50,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gee, I mean gee was he name again?

770
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 2: Gee?

771
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 1: G Delaval? Dad?

772
00:40:52,360 --> 00:40:57,400
Speaker 4: I think I met his great his uh not grandson

773
00:40:57,560 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 4: or yeah, we hunted in Scotland together and word all

774
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:03,760
Speaker 4: about Gee.

775
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't mean he like disrespect the dead.

776
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,399
Speaker 2: But whenever those dudes, like either of them just talking

777
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:11,400
Speaker 2: about that guy, I'm like this guy.

778
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:12,439
Speaker 1: Again, who is this guy?

779
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 2: Yeah?

780
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: He was important to that though, you know, yeah, like

781
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 1: I never got it because he had like he could

782
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: afford the good wine definitely part of it, but they

783
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:24,920
Speaker 1: paid for everything or something. Yeah, he had money. I

784
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: think they genuinely really liked him. He was he was

785
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:30,799
Speaker 1: He was an excellent fisherman, right. He was one of

786
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:33,320
Speaker 1: the people that mcgwaine met down fishing in Key West

787
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:36,919
Speaker 1: and was one of the only people, I mean very

788
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 1: few people in the island who understood tarp and fishing.

789
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:40,239
Speaker 2: He did.

790
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: The French dude he did, oh yeah, extremely serious fisherman

791
00:41:44,239 --> 00:41:47,240
Speaker 1: and bird hunter, right, and so they had that in common.

792
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:50,320
Speaker 1: And then maybe it was jealous and then he was

793
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:52,440
Speaker 1: who wouldn't be, right, Yeah, who doesn't want to be

794
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: a French count? He had He grew up with a moat.

795
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 2: I mean, you know who can say I ever understood

796
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:03,000
Speaker 2: like he just like having a googly eye and having

797
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 2: your dad and sister dying a crash, Like there's like

798
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 2: those things and you go, like what else permeates? Harrison's

799
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:17,440
Speaker 2: work like the French count right exactly right, right? How

800
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 2: would you put Like there's a songwriter like a lot

801
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:27,040
Speaker 2: Evan Felker from Turnpike Troubadors, and we're talking about he

802
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 2: he puts honey and fishing in his music. But he

803
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 2: does in the way that you know it's legit, okay,

804
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,960
Speaker 2: like you can from a mile away smell when someone

805
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 2: is just inserting stuff they don't understand. Well, it's like

806
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 2: his references are very good, like you know, it's legit.

807
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:47,399
Speaker 2: And he said, why don't I only think of it

808
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 2: like it's not it's not what the story's about. I

809
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:54,560
Speaker 2: just need them to have a thing to do, Like

810
00:42:55,760 --> 00:42:58,920
Speaker 2: they're gonna the characters in the songs. They're gonna interact

811
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 2: and say the things they need to say, or the

812
00:43:01,080 --> 00:43:04,320
Speaker 2: story is that. But then well what are they doing?

813
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:07,680
Speaker 2: Why are they there? And he goes, in my head,

814
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:10,880
Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing when I think of like where do I

815
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 2: put them? That just tends to be where I put them.

816
00:43:14,640 --> 00:43:17,359
Speaker 2: But it's not what it's about. It's just where I

817
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:19,640
Speaker 2: stick them, you know what I mean? Like like this,

818
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:21,640
Speaker 2: I'm doing a horrible job of like putting it. But

819
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 2: that's like he's not trying to write like a song

820
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 2: with like a hunting reference. He just doesn't know what

821
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,759
Speaker 2: to have him doing or whatever. So oftentimes they're doing

822
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:31,840
Speaker 2: stuff with horses, or they're doing stuff with guns, or

823
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:35,799
Speaker 2: you know whatever. Yeah, So, how like, how after doing

824
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:37,719
Speaker 2: all this work and spending all these years on this,

825
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 2: and I'm saying it says a guy like I wouldn't

826
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 2: if he wasn't into hunting and fishing, I wouldn't have

827
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:48,240
Speaker 2: discovered him, and I wouldn't read them. But like, how

828
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 2: do you think of the role j I mean, like,

829
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 2: if you look at like all these poems and all

830
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:58,279
Speaker 2: these books and novella's and essays, how do you describe

831
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 2: what those things meant to him? You know? Yeah?

832
00:44:03,600 --> 00:44:06,799
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, you know I I think it's you

833
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: did describe it nicely. I mean this idea that you

834
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 1: might be writing about death or mortality or you know,

835
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:15,360
Speaker 1: consciousness or these other things. But but what the characters

836
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: are doing are hunting and fishing rights. And that's what

837
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:20,760
Speaker 1: Jim knew, right. I mean, he grew up with hunters

838
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:23,320
Speaker 1: and fishers in his family. You know what that means

839
00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: to him? I mean it meant everything to him, it's

840
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:27,839
Speaker 1: it was how he grew up, it's what his family did,

841
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:31,799
Speaker 1: it's it's what he truly enjoyed to do doing, right,

842
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 1: And so you know, and I'm not talking just about

843
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing, but I'm talking about being out in

844
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 1: the natural world, right in the non human world, whether

845
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:47,560
Speaker 1: it's floating a river and fly fishing or bird hunting,

846
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: which Jim genuinely loved to do, walking fields. He just

847
00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: loved to walk through the woods.

848
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 2: And so he's a great observer, a very astute observer

849
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 2: of nature. In one of his frustrations with a lot

850
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:03,239
Speaker 2: of hook and bullet guys, and one of his big

851
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:07,000
Speaker 2: frustrations with like a lot of outdoor writers is they

852
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:11,600
Speaker 2: were only interested in animals insofar as like how best

853
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:14,239
Speaker 2: to kill them? Yeah, and it like he did. It

854
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:17,399
Speaker 2: infuriated him, like it comes up references again and again,

855
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 2: like they weren't students of nature.

856
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:21,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think Jim was an

857
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:25,440
Speaker 1: incredible student of nature, right he uh, and hunting and

858
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 1: fishing was part of that to him, but it was

859
00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: not the only thing to him, right, He was incredibly observant,

860
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:31,319
Speaker 1: as you said, he's.

861
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:33,160
Speaker 2: Like he probably I don't know if he called himself that.

862
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 2: He's definitely like a birder, you know.

863
00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and not just a bird hunter, but a birder.

864
00:45:37,880 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: He'd loved to just you know, like his mother, he

865
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: loved to go out and birdwatch, right and he you know,

866
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:48,320
Speaker 1: would go you know, he knew a huge range of birds.

867
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 1: You know, we could talk about them fluently. But you know,

868
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:53,799
Speaker 1: Jim was famous for just going out and sitting on

869
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: a log right in the middle of the woods, and

870
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 1: he would just sit there and he would sort of

871
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 1: melt sort of melt in into the into the into

872
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:04,759
Speaker 1: the stump he was sitting on as the sort of

873
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: natural world around him came alive around him because he

874
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:10,640
Speaker 1: no longer posed a threat. He was this sort of

875
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 1: you know, inanimate sort of object or animate object that

876
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: had become one with his surroundings, and he would just observe.

877
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 1: And I think, I mean that meant everything to him.

878
00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: It was it was his spirituality. It was a very

879
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 1: deeply spiritual practice for him. Uh, and he would connect

880
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 1: with that, you know, in a classic sort of romantic

881
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: romantic way. Even though I don't think Jim ever romanticized nature,

882
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,680
Speaker 1: he knew I think he knew what the wild was. Yeah,

883
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 1: but I think in a spiritual sense, I think he

884
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: found sort of spiritual sustenance there. I mean it was,

885
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:46,080
Speaker 1: you know, not to use a cliche, it was like

886
00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: his church. Right, he would go into he would go

887
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:50,399
Speaker 1: into the into the wild, into nature just on even

888
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:54,480
Speaker 1: just sort of small walks. But that's where he got

889
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 1: his ideas for literature. That's where he'd do his thinking,

890
00:46:56,719 --> 00:47:00,080
Speaker 1: and that's where he'd do was sort of meditating. And

891
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 1: so you know, it was such a large part of

892
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:04,400
Speaker 1: his life that what else would he write about, right,

893
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 1: I mean a large part of his work has to

894
00:47:06,719 --> 00:47:10,319
Speaker 1: deal with that huge factor that's in the middle of

895
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: his life.

896
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, I don't think he ever had like a

897
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:16,840
Speaker 2: main character that didn't respect nature. It was like a

898
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:20,480
Speaker 2: prerequisite to be a character, is like you had to

899
00:47:20,520 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 2: respect nature else you're not allowed.

900
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're certainly not a good guy right in his work, Right,

901
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:30,239
Speaker 1: they're bad characters writers who are you know, exploitive And

902
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,319
Speaker 1: that was Jim's one thing, right, He really could not

903
00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:36,520
Speaker 1: stand people who hunted to excess or fish to excess,

904
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:40,920
Speaker 1: almost in a sort of greedy sort of way, with

905
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:43,440
Speaker 1: you know, taking much more than they would eat or

906
00:47:43,520 --> 00:47:46,359
Speaker 1: kill or any reasonable person could possibly want to take

907
00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: out of take out of the wilderness, and and or

908
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:54,080
Speaker 1: you know, sort of malpractice in fishing and hunting, snagging

909
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 1: fish and other things. You had zero patients with that,

910
00:47:56,840 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you know, right, and just incredibly you know,

911
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 1: dislike that to his core. Yeah, what uh?

912
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:09,239
Speaker 2: How did he cope with? Or you know, somewhat like

913
00:48:09,239 --> 00:48:10,840
Speaker 2: I said, like a lot of his work is like

914
00:48:13,520 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 2: angry about like wealth, angry about people like just getting

915
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 2: things without working for them, you know what I mean.

916
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 2: Like he's got like he like prides people with work ethics,

917
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:34,600
Speaker 2: like his good characters work hard. But then all of

918
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:36,840
Speaker 2: a sudden, like later he kind of becomes like like

919
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 2: early he's sort of looking into the fish bowl, do

920
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? And in the fish bowl

921
00:48:42,160 --> 00:48:47,759
Speaker 2: is like wealth and wealth and privilege and elitism. But

922
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:51,319
Speaker 2: then later he's kind of in the bowl, right, Like

923
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 2: what was that? Like? What do you think that was like?

924
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 2: For that guy?

925
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:58,000
Speaker 1: It was a conflict and a struggle for him. You know,

926
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:00,640
Speaker 1: he grew up his parents, his dad, and his parents

927
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 1: say he was you know, we're sort of you know,

928
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:08,360
Speaker 1: they respected labor leaders, right, to come from real working

929
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:11,600
Speaker 1: class to call their democratic families sort of like a

930
00:49:11,640 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 1: Butte Democrat, but Montana Democrats who were, you know, very

931
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 1: invested in the labor movement. And Jim grew up in

932
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:22,879
Speaker 1: that setting. He grew up around people who worked hard,

933
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:27,160
Speaker 1: outdoor labor, hard work, right, And and his dad wasn't

934
00:49:28,160 --> 00:49:30,160
Speaker 1: you know, his dad was always going out farms, and

935
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:33,320
Speaker 1: Jim was always meeting farmers, and so he deeply respected,

936
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:38,480
Speaker 1: you know, people who you know, weren't weren't didn't have

937
00:49:38,560 --> 00:49:44,799
Speaker 1: easy wealth, right, right. And then later, you know, but

938
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:47,080
Speaker 1: I think Jim also, I think this is why he's

939
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:50,600
Speaker 1: a contradictory and complicated person. I think Jim liked nice things.

940
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:53,800
Speaker 1: He liked the things that he could get with his buddy,

941
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 1: the French count, right, And Jim seemed to sort of

942
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:03,879
Speaker 1: gather around him people of means throughout his life. And

943
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,840
Speaker 1: then once he published Legends of the Fall, which was

944
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:09,240
Speaker 1: a really big hit, and then started getting movie deals,

945
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:11,320
Speaker 1: he started making a ton of money, and I think

946
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:16,520
Speaker 1: he enjoyed the money. He liked the wine certainly, right.

947
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: He liked some of the other fruits of his money wealth,

948
00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:26,480
Speaker 1: good food certainly, and even some cocaine from time to time,

949
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: or maybe more than from time to time. And I

950
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,120
Speaker 1: think I think he enjoyed that, but I always think

951
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: he became deeply conflicted about that. On the one hand,

952
00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 1: he feared that he had lost track of who he

953
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:43,360
Speaker 1: once was to some extent, right, and he laments this

954
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 1: fact in his poetry and his fiction. I think, you know,

955
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 1: he has an image in one of his poems of

956
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: like feeding at the bourgeois trough. Yeah, right, and he's

957
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: like leaning into it and just and he knows that

958
00:50:56,120 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 1: this is highly problematic. And it's problematic for him because

959
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 1: it's distance him from I don't know, a certain kind

960
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:05,400
Speaker 1: of consciousness that he thought was necessary to be a

961
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:09,279
Speaker 1: writer and a poet, right, And it also distanced him

962
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 1: from the sort of values and things things that he

963
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:15,919
Speaker 1: valued and the people who he valued. And I also

964
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:18,960
Speaker 1: think it was a conflict for him because what he

965
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,359
Speaker 1: had to do to make that money repeatedly took him

966
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:25,040
Speaker 1: away from his first love, which was poetry, right, And

967
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:27,480
Speaker 1: so no one was going to get rich writing poetry,

968
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:31,239
Speaker 1: but poetry he was sort of in his core, right,

969
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:32,359
Speaker 1: and every time he was.

970
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:34,400
Speaker 2: Going he describes himself as that all the time It's

971
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:35,959
Speaker 2: funny because I never read a look of that stuff.

972
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, you know, he says it was

973
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 1: the true bones of his life. It was poetry, right,

974
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:44,759
Speaker 1: And every time he had to go out to Hollywood

975
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:46,719
Speaker 1: to work on a screenplay, or go to New York

976
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:48,879
Speaker 1: to meet with film producers, or do all the things

977
00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:52,280
Speaker 1: that you know, or go on tour for even a novel,

978
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:55,640
Speaker 1: all that was constantly taking him away from what he's

979
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:59,279
Speaker 1: viewed as his calling, right, which was I won't say

980
00:51:59,280 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 1: fiction wasn't a calling of his, but his poetry was

981
00:52:01,600 --> 00:52:04,439
Speaker 1: his core, and I was always taking him away, right,

982
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:08,400
Speaker 1: So sort of that conflict was twofold, right. It contrasted

983
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 1: with the values he'd grown up with of sort of

984
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: just rural simplicity, right, and simple pleasures, And it conflicted

985
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 1: because it took him away from his art.

986
00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:24,320
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I've hit you with a bunch

987
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:28,200
Speaker 2: of like things that I regard as I don't know, man,

988
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:32,160
Speaker 2: like like themes of his work and things I pull

989
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:36,360
Speaker 2: from it in your book, Like what are some of

990
00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:38,880
Speaker 2: the things you pull at outside of what I've asked

991
00:52:38,880 --> 00:52:41,880
Speaker 2: you about? Like what are some of the you know,

992
00:52:41,920 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 2: the through lines or the discoveries you found that help

993
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:48,320
Speaker 2: kind of explain him as a as a writer.

994
00:52:50,040 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean you hit on

995
00:52:52,160 --> 00:52:53,719
Speaker 1: a lot of the key themes I think that I

996
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:58,319
Speaker 1: do explore in the book as a writer. I mean

997
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 1: as a human. Friendship was one of the sort of

998
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:01,840
Speaker 1: through lines.

999
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:03,760
Speaker 2: In this book. So he was a good friend.

1000
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:06,080
Speaker 1: He was a good friend. I think he was. He

1001
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:08,600
Speaker 1: could be a difficult friend. We seem to have friends.

1002
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:11,840
Speaker 2: He had friends for long times, man, which I respect

1003
00:53:12,040 --> 00:53:12,439
Speaker 2: me too.

1004
00:53:12,719 --> 00:53:14,719
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you hear so much about sort

1005
00:53:14,760 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 1: of the crisis of male friendship and loneliness in the

1006
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:23,280
Speaker 1: US today, and Jim, in some ways, I mean, model

1007
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:25,319
Speaker 1: a sort of life that was very different from that.

1008
00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:29,400
Speaker 1: Here is like masculine guys, outdoor guys who you know,

1009
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:32,479
Speaker 1: were not solitary people. They were communal people. They love

1010
00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:36,480
Speaker 1: to be around other male friends. And Jim cultivated not

1011
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:40,680
Speaker 1: just male friends, female friends too. Jim really worked at

1012
00:53:40,719 --> 00:53:44,839
Speaker 1: building friendships, yeah, and sustaining them over decades. I mean

1013
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:49,239
Speaker 1: Tom mcgwain and Jim Harrison wrote for five decades to

1014
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:52,760
Speaker 1: each other two letters a week. I mean that alone,

1015
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:55,440
Speaker 1: is that's insane.

1016
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:58,400
Speaker 2: So foreign, Like I know, I'm still buddies with guys

1017
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:00,719
Speaker 2: I knew growing up. There's some as I grew up

1018
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:02,759
Speaker 2: with them, still budies with But like, there is no

1019
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:06,759
Speaker 2: way in the world I'm gonna pen them a letter.

1020
00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:09,959
Speaker 2: It's just not gonna happen, right, I mean.

1021
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:12,359
Speaker 4: Letters of Steven Ronella's just.

1022
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:13,840
Speaker 2: Not I'll shoot him a quick text.

1023
00:54:14,920 --> 00:54:17,800
Speaker 1: Somebody some day is gonna want to publish your collected letters.

1024
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 2: You have to collection a chance, yea over that way, Okay.

1025
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 4: The should be published into like a coffee book because

1026
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:30,080
Speaker 4: they're so funny. The random text you get from Steve.

1027
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:32,840
Speaker 1: That's funny. Yeah. And Jim, you know, you could collect

1028
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: his emails to friends too, But I mean he would

1029
00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:39,400
Speaker 1: handwrite letters to to mcguaine for decades and decades, you know,

1030
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:40,520
Speaker 1: but he would.

1031
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 2: Were they doing it like knowing it would be collected?

1032
00:54:43,520 --> 00:54:45,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Tom and Jim were.

1033
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:50,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they were like writing out so that someday

1034
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:53,560
Speaker 2: there'd be a record of themselves.

1035
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: I suspect that someday they suspected someone like me woul

1036
00:54:57,840 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: spending like six months in an art times somewhere reading

1037
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:03,239
Speaker 1: every letter they ever wrote, so I could write a

1038
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:06,200
Speaker 1: biography of one of them. I do think that's true,

1039
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:09,520
Speaker 1: and I think at first it was aspirational. They were like,

1040
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:12,080
Speaker 1: we're going to be famous, right, We're going to be

1041
00:55:12,120 --> 00:55:14,080
Speaker 1: great writers. We're gonna be famous writers. And then at

1042
00:55:14,080 --> 00:55:16,920
Speaker 1: a certain point they were like, wow, we're pretty famous writers, right,

1043
00:55:17,400 --> 00:55:20,919
Speaker 1: and this came true, and we're doing this for posterity.

1044
00:55:21,719 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 1: And so you know, there's a level of sort of

1045
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:28,759
Speaker 1: performativity in the letters right with they know definitely, I

1046
00:55:28,760 --> 00:55:30,800
Speaker 1: think there's an eye they know people are going to

1047
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 1: be reading these letters. But I but in spite of themselves,

1048
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 1: they're always lapsing into real periods of honesty and being

1049
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 1: incredibly supportive of each other in their correspondence. Early on,

1050
00:55:41,719 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 1: Tom and Jim saw each other a lot. They'd see

1051
00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: each other in Montana all the time, yearly, for sometimes

1052
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:48,799
Speaker 1: weeks and months at a time. They go fishing together

1053
00:55:48,840 --> 00:55:50,479
Speaker 1: in Key West all the time, so they did spend

1054
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:52,800
Speaker 1: a lot of time together physically in the same place.

1055
00:55:53,160 --> 00:55:56,520
Speaker 1: Later that became more correspondence. But no matter how busy

1056
00:55:56,600 --> 00:56:00,600
Speaker 1: Jim was, and he was extremely busy, he would always

1057
00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:04,000
Speaker 1: carve out time for friends, you know, for gee until

1058
00:56:04,080 --> 00:56:08,760
Speaker 1: well then right for Russell Chathams or you know Buffett

1059
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:14,279
Speaker 1: for and a lot of Jim's professional relationships became friendships.

1060
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:18,640
Speaker 1: He would hang out with his psychiatrist, you know, they

1061
00:56:18,640 --> 00:56:20,799
Speaker 1: woul write letters to each other and spend time together

1062
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:25,319
Speaker 1: when they were in New York, right. You know, his

1063
00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:28,879
Speaker 1: publishers and his editors and his producer friends, they would

1064
00:56:28,880 --> 00:56:31,399
Speaker 1: all become friends. And so Jim, yeah, really went out

1065
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:33,480
Speaker 1: of his way to cultivate friendships. And you know, Gee

1066
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:35,680
Speaker 1: and those other guys would come up to Lake Lelanod

1067
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:38,680
Speaker 1: and they'd hunt every fall. They'd come up to Montana

1068
00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:42,120
Speaker 1: every year for bird hunting season. Right, they'd all congregate

1069
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:45,080
Speaker 1: and meet at early on. They'd all meet at mcwain's

1070
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:48,240
Speaker 1: ranch in Paradise Valley and they would all hunt together

1071
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:50,120
Speaker 1: and then they would create. They would cook these big

1072
00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:52,480
Speaker 1: feasts of everything they caught, right, the fish and the

1073
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:55,400
Speaker 1: birds that they shot, and they'd create these elaborate meals.

1074
00:56:55,840 --> 00:56:57,520
Speaker 1: And that was very much part of their life.

1075
00:56:57,640 --> 00:56:57,840
Speaker 3: You know.

1076
00:56:58,080 --> 00:56:59,840
Speaker 1: That's one of the through lines of this book. That

1077
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:03,000
Speaker 1: and it's one of the big surprises for me, just

1078
00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:07,239
Speaker 1: how dedicated Jim was to cultivating and sustaining friendships.

1079
00:57:07,640 --> 00:57:12,000
Speaker 2: One of his bodies. So for years, let me explain

1080
00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:16,600
Speaker 2: this to listeners, not you is, if you go by

1081
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:23,480
Speaker 2: Harrison's books, the covers are Russell Chatham paintings. If you

1082
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:27,520
Speaker 2: want to watch a great movie, go watch Rivers of

1083
00:57:27,560 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 2: a Lost Coast. It's a very obscure film about the

1084
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:36,720
Speaker 2: Steelhead Runs of Northern California. Kind of about the death

1085
00:57:36,760 --> 00:57:39,160
Speaker 2: of the Steelhead Runs of Northern California, but like the

1086
00:57:39,200 --> 00:57:44,240
Speaker 2: Steelhead Heyday of Northern California and Chatham, this painter, Chatham

1087
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:51,120
Speaker 2: kind of carries this documentary but also does these beautiful landscapes,

1088
00:57:51,760 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 2: and Harrison always used them. Did that just stay true

1089
00:57:54,240 --> 00:57:55,760
Speaker 2: all the way to the end. No, I guess some

1090
00:57:56,200 --> 00:57:58,400
Speaker 2: of his covers weren't Chatham paintings, but you know, I mean,

1091
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:03,560
Speaker 2: like all those covers were those like very moody, dark

1092
00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:05,920
Speaker 2: landscapes by Russell Chatham.

1093
00:58:06,200 --> 00:58:10,880
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely, so yeah, I mean Chatham. Uh, Chatham

1094
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:12,800
Speaker 1: is a fisherman, right, and I've seen.

1095
00:58:12,680 --> 00:58:13,760
Speaker 2: Them the Bay Area.

1096
00:58:14,080 --> 00:58:14,320
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1097
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:17,120
Speaker 2: Oh dude, it's an unbelievable movie, Rivers of a Lost Coast.

1098
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:20,040
Speaker 2: I can't wait to see it now, classic man, like

1099
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:21,720
Speaker 2: no one, no one knows about that movie.

1100
00:58:22,080 --> 00:58:25,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm totally gonna watch that. Yeah, I mean Chatham.

1101
00:58:25,440 --> 00:58:27,439
Speaker 1: It's funny I was. I was talking to Chatham's daughter.

1102
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:29,080
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know.

1103
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:31,920
Speaker 2: Did he pass away? He did, Yeah, yeah, because he

1104
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:34,680
Speaker 2: started that restaurant kind of like that went a little

1105
00:58:34,840 --> 00:58:38,320
Speaker 2: tits up and then like yeah, I mean he was

1106
00:58:38,360 --> 00:58:39,160
Speaker 2: a cool restaurant.

1107
00:58:39,480 --> 00:58:42,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. He started all sorts of ventures, publishing house, Clark

1108
00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:46,000
Speaker 1: City Press and Livingston and then open Livingston Bar and grill.

1109
00:58:46,080 --> 00:58:49,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, we go there a bit man. Yeah, but I

1110
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:51,160
Speaker 2: mean those long time I was back in like around

1111
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:53,560
Speaker 2: two thousand or something. Yeah, that was a long time ago.

1112
00:58:53,880 --> 00:58:57,440
Speaker 1: Even today, Leah Chatham, Russ's daughter, says that if you

1113
00:58:57,560 --> 00:59:01,120
Speaker 1: ask someone in town in Livingston, Montana, who Russ Chatham is,

1114
00:59:02,680 --> 00:59:05,440
Speaker 1: half of them will say, oh, he's that famous fisherman,

1115
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:10,360
Speaker 1: and half of them an artist which really speaks volumes, right,

1116
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:13,080
Speaker 1: the guy with the restaurant. Some of them would probably

1117
00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:15,640
Speaker 1: definitely say that too. But I mean, I think he

1118
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:18,240
Speaker 1: holds he held the record for the largest stripe maass

1119
00:59:18,360 --> 00:59:21,480
Speaker 1: caught on a fly for a long time, if not

1120
00:59:21,560 --> 00:59:25,240
Speaker 1: still so Okay, So I'm losing track of where I was,

1121
00:59:25,240 --> 00:59:29,080
Speaker 1: But so, Jim and Chatham became close friends beginning from

1122
00:59:29,200 --> 00:59:30,400
Speaker 1: Key West fishing days.

1123
00:59:30,560 --> 00:59:32,800
Speaker 2: That's how they met. They met in Key West, got

1124
00:59:32,880 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 2: it and they just into that fishing scene down there.

1125
00:59:35,640 --> 00:59:40,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Chatham had also a bad eye. Yeah, he

1126
00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:44,120
Speaker 1: had no depth perception. He's an artist, the landscape artist

1127
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:47,160
Speaker 1: with no depth perception. Apparently he went a tarpeid Fishermen,

1128
00:59:47,320 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: which and it is a death perception game. Yeah. So

1129
00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:54,680
Speaker 1: somehow Russ managed to like not only like fish tarpin

1130
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:58,080
Speaker 1: and spot him and cast him, but also to paint right.

1131
00:59:58,120 --> 01:00:00,000
Speaker 1: And he was apparently a really good pool player to boot.

1132
01:00:00,120 --> 01:00:05,200
Speaker 1: So I don't know how deficiency and he had the

1133
01:00:05,200 --> 01:00:07,760
Speaker 1: same eye injuries Jim not done, you know, for the

1134
01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:10,240
Speaker 1: same reasons. But he had a bad eye. And it

1135
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:12,440
Speaker 1: happened around the same age as Jim, maybe the exact

1136
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:14,600
Speaker 1: same age as Jim. So they were like they saw

1137
01:00:14,640 --> 01:00:18,480
Speaker 1: each other at in Key West and they were just like, oh,

1138
01:00:18,680 --> 01:00:21,600
Speaker 1: we need to be friends, right, and they just hit

1139
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:24,680
Speaker 1: it off from the start, right, and uh, I can't

1140
01:00:24,720 --> 01:00:28,680
Speaker 1: remember exactly when it began, but Chatham Jim started using

1141
01:00:28,760 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 1: hair Chatham's paintings on the covers of his books, and

1142
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:35,000
Speaker 1: really that would that would and then eventually, you know,

1143
01:00:35,080 --> 01:00:37,320
Speaker 1: Chatham would go back and create covers for his like

1144
01:00:37,360 --> 01:00:40,360
Speaker 1: sort of back list of books. And so now pretty

1145
01:00:40,400 --> 01:00:43,400
Speaker 1: much if you go into any bookstore and pick up

1146
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:45,560
Speaker 1: a Jim Harrison book, you're going to see a Russell

1147
01:00:45,640 --> 01:00:49,680
Speaker 1: Chatham painting on the cover, and you know, in their

1148
01:00:49,720 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 1: beautiful covers. A lot of people have told me that

1149
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 1: they picked up a Harrison book because of the cover

1150
01:00:54,360 --> 01:00:56,800
Speaker 1: for the first time. Sure, right, because it's such a

1151
01:00:56,840 --> 01:01:02,240
Speaker 1: striking cover. And they became sort of inextricably linked, right,

1152
01:01:03,640 --> 01:01:08,840
Speaker 1: complementing each other, right, larger than they would be individually, right,

1153
01:01:09,360 --> 01:01:10,280
Speaker 1: And so yeah.

1154
01:01:10,120 --> 01:01:13,640
Speaker 2: They really you know, there's a documentary if I don't know,

1155
01:01:13,680 --> 01:01:15,720
Speaker 2: it's not even really fair to call it a documentary.

1156
01:01:15,720 --> 01:01:20,200
Speaker 2: It's more like a compilation of clips of that seventies

1157
01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:24,600
Speaker 2: era of fly fishing in Key West with those guys

1158
01:01:24,600 --> 01:01:27,480
Speaker 2: all in it. It's not Chasing Silver. No.

1159
01:01:28,360 --> 01:01:33,800
Speaker 1: Well, the original documentary that Gee made right of fly fishing,

1160
01:01:33,840 --> 01:01:36,480
Speaker 1: of those guys fly fishing in Key West was called Tarpin,

1161
01:01:37,440 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 1: and that is if you haven't seen.

1162
01:01:39,040 --> 01:01:41,160
Speaker 2: That's not I have that. Yeah, I have that on DVD.

1163
01:01:41,440 --> 01:01:43,560
Speaker 1: Yeah really cool. Yeah, great thought.

1164
01:01:43,560 --> 01:01:45,440
Speaker 2: Which is impossible to play, but I own.

1165
01:01:45,280 --> 01:01:49,200
Speaker 1: It, yeah, exactly. And then someone recently made a documentary

1166
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:51,680
Speaker 1: of that documentary. Is that what you're talking about.

1167
01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:52,840
Speaker 2: I'm talking about Tarpin.

1168
01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:54,520
Speaker 1: You're talking about Tarpa specifically.

1169
01:01:54,680 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that's in my DVD pile, but that's not

1170
01:01:57,000 --> 01:01:59,560
Speaker 2: it Rivers of the Lost Coast and tarp and Tarpin.

1171
01:01:59,760 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that documentary Tarpin, I mean just really

1172
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:07,440
Speaker 1: sort of tried to capture a sort of you know,

1173
01:02:07,480 --> 01:02:13,200
Speaker 1: the wonder and amazement of of you know, pulling a

1174
01:02:13,280 --> 01:02:18,000
Speaker 1: skiff around the flats off of Key West, right and

1175
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:22,280
Speaker 1: casting you know, site casting to Tarpin, and then with

1176
01:02:22,400 --> 01:02:25,960
Speaker 1: amazing sort of photography, right, they captured these tarpin you know,

1177
01:02:26,000 --> 01:02:28,240
Speaker 1: coming up out of the water, under the water, you know,

1178
01:02:28,320 --> 01:02:31,200
Speaker 1: being caught in the sort of electric experience of catching

1179
01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:35,000
Speaker 1: the tartan. Yeah, and then it brushed, you know, to

1180
01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:37,320
Speaker 1: a decent amount. I also explored sort of the nightlife

1181
01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:39,400
Speaker 1: that those guys explore the Key West, but maybe a

1182
01:02:39,400 --> 01:02:40,720
Speaker 1: lot less. So I think it's a lot more about

1183
01:02:40,720 --> 01:02:41,320
Speaker 1: the fishing.

1184
01:02:41,440 --> 01:02:43,280
Speaker 2: We get to send to the nightlife aspect.

1185
01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:45,880
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1186
01:02:46,240 --> 01:02:51,880
Speaker 2: You know, another guy, another outdoorsman right that definitely transcended

1187
01:02:52,240 --> 01:02:56,560
Speaker 2: the world, is Richard Broadigan. So Richard Broadgan wrote trout

1188
01:02:56,560 --> 01:03:02,760
Speaker 2: fishing in America, which is not about people fishing it.

1189
01:03:02,800 --> 01:03:04,600
Speaker 2: But it's not about trout fishing in America, but it

1190
01:03:04,600 --> 01:03:07,160
Speaker 2: has one of the greatest fishing lines ever. Is Broadigan's

1191
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:12,680
Speaker 2: talking about fishing a stream that was so narrow and

1192
01:03:12,720 --> 01:03:16,160
Speaker 2: so brushy and hard to fish. She said you had

1193
01:03:16,160 --> 01:03:19,480
Speaker 2: to be a plumber to fish that creek, which all

1194
01:03:19,640 --> 01:03:22,840
Speaker 2: is the greatest thing. But like Broadigan kind of like

1195
01:03:23,040 --> 01:03:24,400
Speaker 2: Broadigen later shoots himself.

1196
01:03:24,520 --> 01:03:27,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you know is it true?

1197
01:03:29,200 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 2: Like Chad, like Russell Chatham kind of wrote this thing

1198
01:03:32,360 --> 01:03:35,000
Speaker 2: and it was kind of from hanging out with Broadigan

1199
01:03:35,080 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 2: and Harrison and all that. Is it true that broad

1200
01:03:37,560 --> 01:03:39,919
Speaker 2: Agan like maybe killed some kid with a twenty two

1201
01:03:39,960 --> 01:03:42,600
Speaker 2: when he was young. Are you familiar with that?

1202
01:03:42,720 --> 01:03:43,760
Speaker 1: I don't know that story.

1203
01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:49,080
Speaker 2: No, possible because it made like like he's talking about

1204
01:03:49,080 --> 01:03:53,560
Speaker 2: they would get together to hunt birds. Yeah, and Chatham

1205
01:03:53,560 --> 01:03:57,440
Speaker 2: wouldn't hunt or sorry, Broadigan wouldn't hunt, wouldn't go hunting,

1206
01:03:57,520 --> 01:03:59,320
Speaker 2: but talk about one time he shot it hole through

1207
01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:02,360
Speaker 2: the TV with the gun. Yeah, and he talks about

1208
01:04:02,520 --> 01:04:07,800
Speaker 2: I understand why you would shoot zenus but not pheasants.

1209
01:04:08,840 --> 01:04:12,080
Speaker 2: It was kind of about like broad against torments you know,

1210
01:04:12,360 --> 01:04:13,760
Speaker 2: but like killed himself.

1211
01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:15,800
Speaker 1: Right he did. Yeah, And you know he had a thing,

1212
01:04:16,960 --> 01:04:20,760
Speaker 1: you know, he had a thing with guns, sort of

1213
01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:26,680
Speaker 1: shooting them off indoors. He had you know, he did.

1214
01:04:26,720 --> 01:04:30,080
Speaker 1: Lots of stories of of Brodigen, uh who. And Brodigan

1215
01:04:30,120 --> 01:04:34,520
Speaker 1: eventually bought a sort of small farm in Paradise Valley,

1216
01:04:34,640 --> 01:04:39,880
Speaker 1: Montana too, right, not not, Yeah, in that same seventies

1217
01:04:39,920 --> 01:04:42,600
Speaker 1: there off of East River Road, in the same area, Yeah,

1218
01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:45,400
Speaker 1: same era, right when mcgaine and all them were there.

1219
01:04:45,280 --> 01:04:48,400
Speaker 2: And Whoopie Goldberg for a minute.

1220
01:04:48,240 --> 01:04:51,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and everybody right in la who was like

1221
01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:53,320
Speaker 1: setting it. Yeah, it was the new place to be.

1222
01:04:54,080 --> 01:04:55,960
Speaker 1: But Brodigan lived there for a while. Yeah, and he

1223
01:04:55,960 --> 01:04:58,919
Speaker 1: would hang out with all these guys in Paradise Valley.

1224
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:01,240
Speaker 1: But there are lots of stories of sort of you know,

1225
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:06,400
Speaker 1: unfortunate sort of drunken late nights with you know, forty

1226
01:05:06,400 --> 01:05:09,200
Speaker 1: four magnum that that brought him would carry around and

1227
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 1: he would there's a story of him shooting out a

1228
01:05:13,520 --> 01:05:16,560
Speaker 1: clock like that was on the wall and he shot

1229
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:19,520
Speaker 1: around the clock in a circle, you know, until they

1230
01:05:19,520 --> 01:05:21,040
Speaker 1: could push the clock out of the wall.

1231
01:05:21,280 --> 01:05:21,640
Speaker 2: Oh.

1232
01:05:21,800 --> 01:05:23,800
Speaker 1: There's another one of him shooting up through the ceiling

1233
01:05:24,640 --> 01:05:26,600
Speaker 1: and then him going to bed and waking up in

1234
01:05:26,640 --> 01:05:30,680
Speaker 1: the morning and coming downstairs and having splinters and stuff

1235
01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:33,560
Speaker 1: all on his back because the bullets had gone through

1236
01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:35,720
Speaker 1: the roof into the bed, through the bed and his

1237
01:05:35,800 --> 01:05:38,760
Speaker 1: mattress and had shot splinters up into the match and

1238
01:05:39,720 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 1: came down with splinters in them. So yeah, yeah, I

1239
01:05:45,160 --> 01:05:47,560
Speaker 1: never heard that story about him having shot somebody.

1240
01:05:47,720 --> 01:05:50,800
Speaker 2: Man, Like, I feel like, I'm maybe I should have

1241
01:05:50,800 --> 01:05:52,439
Speaker 2: brought I should have checked him that before I brought

1242
01:05:52,480 --> 01:05:52,800
Speaker 2: it up.

1243
01:05:53,160 --> 01:05:55,600
Speaker 1: But you know, I know he loved the fish and

1244
01:05:55,600 --> 01:05:57,680
Speaker 1: he would get fishing with those guys all the time. Yeah,

1245
01:05:57,720 --> 01:05:59,760
Speaker 1: and he would He didn't cook, but those guys would

1246
01:05:59,760 --> 01:06:02,160
Speaker 1: go over Broughtigan's house and they cooked big, elaborate meals

1247
01:06:02,200 --> 01:06:05,120
Speaker 1: at his house and they would host big parties of

1248
01:06:05,160 --> 01:06:07,200
Speaker 1: her Broughtigans. And there are some funny stories in the

1249
01:06:07,200 --> 01:06:10,480
Speaker 1: book about Jim and brought Again in their funny relationship together.

1250
01:06:11,440 --> 01:06:14,240
Speaker 1: Jim taught his daughter to fly fish, brought Again's daughter

1251
01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:16,680
Speaker 1: to fly. Yeah, and Brogan was very much part of

1252
01:06:16,680 --> 01:06:19,000
Speaker 1: the community and Broughtigan's in Tarpin what state? Did he

1253
01:06:19,040 --> 01:06:20,760
Speaker 1: kill himself in California?

1254
01:06:21,240 --> 01:06:23,320
Speaker 2: Does it ever surprise you? It wouldn't have Like, had

1255
01:06:23,360 --> 01:06:25,480
Speaker 2: I read that Harrison killed himself at some point, I

1256
01:06:25,480 --> 01:06:28,160
Speaker 2: would not have been surprised. Doesn't seem like he would

1257
01:06:28,160 --> 01:06:29,360
Speaker 2: have been a dude who would killed himself.

1258
01:06:29,400 --> 01:06:32,440
Speaker 1: Maybe he came really close, I mean because of his depressions.

1259
01:06:33,360 --> 01:06:35,960
Speaker 1: You know, in his thirties, he hit a depression of

1260
01:06:35,960 --> 01:06:41,280
Speaker 1: all depressions basically, and you know, and contemplated suicide very seriously.

1261
01:06:41,320 --> 01:06:43,920
Speaker 1: His daughter, I mean said repeatedly that they would just

1262
01:06:44,040 --> 01:06:45,760
Speaker 1: she was reading his poetry a lot at the time,

1263
01:06:45,800 --> 01:06:49,360
Speaker 1: but everywhere she looked she saw thoughts and ideas of suicide.

1264
01:06:49,360 --> 01:06:52,120
Speaker 1: And Jim came extremely close. He was writing a collection

1265
01:06:52,160 --> 01:06:55,240
Speaker 1: of poetry called Letters to You Senen was Sergey you

1266
01:06:55,360 --> 01:06:59,120
Speaker 1: Senen was a Russian poet, and Jim was called the

1267
01:06:59,240 --> 01:07:02,400
Speaker 1: collection you know, Letters to You sent, and he was

1268
01:07:02,480 --> 01:07:05,800
Speaker 1: literally writing letters to this dead Russian poet, right. But

1269
01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:09,040
Speaker 1: he credits that book with really sort of pulling him

1270
01:07:09,080 --> 01:07:13,280
Speaker 1: out of that deep depression, right, and sort of poetry

1271
01:07:13,400 --> 01:07:17,520
Speaker 1: helped him sort of gain his footing and recover himself,

1272
01:07:17,880 --> 01:07:20,800
Speaker 1: right in writing to this poet. And it turns out

1273
01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:24,800
Speaker 1: Sergey U Senen had committed suicide, hung himself. Wrote his

1274
01:07:24,920 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 1: last letter out in his own blood or a poem

1275
01:07:28,600 --> 01:07:31,920
Speaker 1: and then you know, really gruesome stuff. And Jim recovered,

1276
01:07:32,040 --> 01:07:34,720
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of recovered himself through through the

1277
01:07:34,760 --> 01:07:37,480
Speaker 1: writing of poetry. But I mean something we never got

1278
01:07:37,520 --> 01:07:40,040
Speaker 1: at earlier, which we were talking about, was it, you know,

1279
01:07:40,160 --> 01:07:42,800
Speaker 1: despite all of the other big through line through this book.

1280
01:07:42,840 --> 01:07:45,480
Speaker 1: And what always amazes me is that despite these epic

1281
01:07:45,480 --> 01:07:48,560
Speaker 1: depressions that Jim would go through, he had these unbelievable

1282
01:07:48,600 --> 01:07:51,400
Speaker 1: store of humor. And you know, it would be a

1283
01:07:51,400 --> 01:07:54,720
Speaker 1: mistake to paint him as this really dark, sure troubled figure,

1284
01:07:54,720 --> 01:07:57,360
Speaker 1: which he was, but he was also this guy with

1285
01:07:57,440 --> 01:08:00,640
Speaker 1: this just endless sense of humor and sort of zuberants

1286
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:05,640
Speaker 1: for life and viv right that he never seemed to lose.

1287
01:08:06,360 --> 01:08:08,440
Speaker 1: You know, it had been flowed, but he would always

1288
01:08:08,520 --> 01:08:11,040
Speaker 1: recover himself. Even in his darkest times. He'd make jokes.

1289
01:08:11,280 --> 01:08:15,040
Speaker 1: You know what we're talking about, the Hemingway deal. He

1290
01:08:15,040 --> 01:08:15,720
Speaker 1: he Harrison.

1291
01:08:15,920 --> 01:08:18,200
Speaker 2: I can't remember where he was, right, but Harrison had

1292
01:08:18,240 --> 01:08:21,519
Speaker 2: talked about, you know, you know that ritualistic suicide like

1293
01:08:21,920 --> 01:08:23,120
Speaker 2: is Harry carry.

1294
01:08:23,280 --> 01:08:27,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah your sword kind of death before well you

1295
01:08:27,680 --> 01:08:29,960
Speaker 1: disemboline tool yourself, right, yeah, yeah.

1296
01:08:30,680 --> 01:08:32,760
Speaker 2: The reason one of the reasons I always picture that

1297
01:08:32,800 --> 01:08:34,840
Speaker 2: he might be that that would have been how he

1298
01:08:34,840 --> 01:08:38,599
Speaker 2: would have died. Is he he seemed to struggle with this,

1299
01:08:38,800 --> 01:08:45,439
Speaker 2: like like death before dishonor, but dishonor would have been senescence. Yeah,

1300
01:08:45,600 --> 01:08:49,040
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like would you really let

1301
01:08:49,120 --> 01:08:54,559
Speaker 2: yourself get old and senile? Would be better to like

1302
01:08:54,760 --> 01:08:57,479
Speaker 2: go out on your own terms? And that's kind of

1303
01:08:57,560 --> 01:08:59,720
Speaker 2: he seemed to. That's like a reference he seemed to

1304
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:01,920
Speaker 2: make fair bit And that was like the Hemingway deal

1305
01:09:02,240 --> 01:09:04,920
Speaker 2: because I think that when Hemingway shot himself, like Hemingway

1306
01:09:04,960 --> 01:09:07,120
Speaker 2: was supposed to be contributing like a sentence to a

1307
01:09:07,200 --> 01:09:12,080
Speaker 2: Kennedy memorial. And my understanding is maybe this is like

1308
01:09:12,120 --> 01:09:13,960
Speaker 2: a little bit of a you know, maybe it's like

1309
01:09:14,000 --> 01:09:18,240
Speaker 2: an apocryphal story. But but like he couldn't come up

1310
01:09:18,240 --> 01:09:23,559
Speaker 2: with a sentence for Kennedy's memorial or something, and felt

1311
01:09:23,560 --> 01:09:25,040
Speaker 2: that it was like he was tapped out.

1312
01:09:26,240 --> 01:09:29,920
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe that's what kept kept Jim Jim

1313
01:09:29,920 --> 01:09:31,960
Speaker 1: in this world, is he never ran out of words.

1314
01:09:32,160 --> 01:09:34,240
Speaker 1: In fact, I think the closer he came to death

1315
01:09:34,280 --> 01:09:38,400
Speaker 1: and dying, he wrote more and more and you know,

1316
01:09:38,520 --> 01:09:45,760
Speaker 1: a language. You know, he felt sometimes trapped in language,

1317
01:09:45,880 --> 01:09:49,040
Speaker 1: you know, ironically, maybe I think he felt that he

1318
01:09:49,080 --> 01:09:51,360
Speaker 1: had been a slave to language his whole life, and

1319
01:09:51,400 --> 01:09:53,040
Speaker 1: he started to feel that later in life. But it

1320
01:09:53,120 --> 01:09:55,920
Speaker 1: was language that really never abandoned him.

1321
01:09:56,000 --> 01:09:59,560
Speaker 2: He would sometimes lament that he had no mechanical capabilities.

1322
01:10:00,040 --> 01:10:02,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, Yeah, I mean his physical cap is that

1323
01:10:02,520 --> 01:10:03,639
Speaker 1: what you mean, like physical capable?

1324
01:10:03,680 --> 01:10:06,720
Speaker 2: No, I mean like wasn't like he wasn't like like

1325
01:10:06,800 --> 01:10:10,120
Speaker 2: fixing stuff and all that mechanical stuff. Yeah, he would

1326
01:10:10,120 --> 01:10:14,520
Speaker 2: make jokes about that he was, you know, like not

1327
01:10:14,520 --> 01:10:17,920
Speaker 2: not in some capacities handy at like vehicle repair or

1328
01:10:17,960 --> 01:10:19,320
Speaker 2: whatever I do or whatever. Like he was a man

1329
01:10:19,360 --> 01:10:19,799
Speaker 2: of words.

1330
01:10:19,920 --> 01:10:22,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I don't doubt that at all. Yeah, I

1331
01:10:22,439 --> 01:10:24,240
Speaker 1: don't think Jim ever, like he wasn't the kind of

1332
01:10:24,240 --> 01:10:26,160
Speaker 1: guy who's going to call under, you know, a hood

1333
01:10:26,240 --> 01:10:28,840
Speaker 1: and you know, get greasy death. Although you know maybe

1334
01:10:28,840 --> 01:10:30,479
Speaker 1: when he was younger a little bit, but he wasn't

1335
01:10:30,560 --> 01:10:34,320
Speaker 1: yeat mechanically inclined. Yeah, he wasn't that guy. But language

1336
01:10:34,360 --> 01:10:38,080
Speaker 1: never abandoned him, you know. And he died writing a poem.

1337
01:10:38,120 --> 01:10:40,760
Speaker 1: He was writing a poem the day he died, and

1338
01:10:40,800 --> 01:10:43,519
Speaker 1: so till his very last breath. I mean was sitting

1339
01:10:43,560 --> 01:10:45,800
Speaker 1: at his desk with the poem in front of him

1340
01:10:45,800 --> 01:10:48,519
Speaker 1: and a cigarette smoldering in an ash tray. Huh when

1341
01:10:48,520 --> 01:10:53,240
Speaker 1: he died And yeah, he had a big pilot of

1342
01:10:53,320 --> 01:10:56,680
Speaker 1: cigarettes on his desk and one was smoldering. Or I

1343
01:10:56,720 --> 01:11:00,000
Speaker 1: mean the day he died and he basically fell over

1344
01:11:00,080 --> 01:11:03,760
Speaker 1: after writing his last poem. So you know, maybe who knows,

1345
01:11:03,800 --> 01:11:05,840
Speaker 1: maybe if language had abandoned him, he might you know,

1346
01:11:05,880 --> 01:11:06,759
Speaker 1: where would he have been.

1347
01:11:07,560 --> 01:11:10,080
Speaker 2: Talked about that you take a lot of naps. Yeah,

1348
01:11:10,160 --> 01:11:11,760
Speaker 2: but he said he didn't count it as a nap

1349
01:11:11,840 --> 01:11:14,719
Speaker 2: unless he took his socks off. That life.

1350
01:11:16,280 --> 01:11:21,200
Speaker 1: In a classic Harrison right, Yeah.

1351
01:11:19,600 --> 01:11:21,920
Speaker 2: The one caveat that hangs over this and like the

1352
01:11:21,960 --> 01:11:24,760
Speaker 2: one reason and I hate it, like I wish it

1353
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:27,120
Speaker 2: wasn't true, because the one reason I can't be like

1354
01:11:27,200 --> 01:11:31,320
Speaker 2: that I love him, you know, and like I said, man,

1355
01:11:31,360 --> 01:11:33,400
Speaker 2: he did me a good turn, like he blurbed a

1356
01:11:33,439 --> 01:11:37,920
Speaker 2: couple of my books and right helped me out. But

1357
01:11:38,800 --> 01:11:40,360
Speaker 2: like a thing that keeps me from being like I

1358
01:11:40,400 --> 01:11:45,200
Speaker 2: love the guy is like I don't understand how he

1359
01:11:45,240 --> 01:11:48,559
Speaker 2: could how he would just like humiliate his wife like that,

1360
01:11:50,240 --> 01:11:52,800
Speaker 2: do you? I mean, like I'm like I've been married

1361
01:11:52,840 --> 01:11:59,920
Speaker 2: for seventeen years, right, there's just no way. There's no

1362
01:12:00,240 --> 01:12:04,040
Speaker 2: way I'm going to humiliate my wife. Do you follow me?

1363
01:12:04,400 --> 01:12:07,160
Speaker 2: But he would so freely humiliate his wife, Like what

1364
01:12:07,240 --> 01:12:08,040
Speaker 2: is all that about?

1365
01:12:08,360 --> 01:12:11,679
Speaker 1: You mean by carrying on with carrying on with other.

1366
01:12:11,720 --> 01:12:13,880
Speaker 2: Fantasize about women carrying on with other women? Like how

1367
01:12:13,880 --> 01:12:16,439
Speaker 2: could you like do that to somebody like habitually, dude,

1368
01:12:16,800 --> 01:12:18,360
Speaker 2: and then not only that, but then like go home

1369
01:12:18,400 --> 01:12:20,640
Speaker 2: and face them, you know what I mean? Like like

1370
01:12:21,000 --> 01:12:27,479
Speaker 2: I don't talk like if like I can't be Like

1371
01:12:27,560 --> 01:12:30,400
Speaker 2: one way to get like majorly like ot seed out

1372
01:12:30,400 --> 01:12:34,120
Speaker 2: of my circle would be to like like dudes that

1373
01:12:34,200 --> 01:12:36,400
Speaker 2: humiliate their wives or just like out of the club.

1374
01:12:36,880 --> 01:12:38,960
Speaker 2: Do you follow me? So like makes it that I

1375
01:12:39,000 --> 01:12:43,000
Speaker 2: can't like I want to be like, oh he was great,

1376
01:12:43,040 --> 01:12:47,519
Speaker 2: but I'm eh, like what was that about? Yeah?

1377
01:12:47,600 --> 01:12:56,519
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's tough. What is that about? H

1378
01:13:00,320 --> 01:13:06,240
Speaker 1: I think I think Jim and his wife, I mean,

1379
01:13:06,520 --> 01:13:09,760
Speaker 1: so there's no there's no excuse for humiliation. I think

1380
01:13:09,880 --> 01:13:13,080
Speaker 1: Jim loved his wife very much. I don't have any

1381
01:13:13,080 --> 01:13:15,719
Speaker 1: doubt about that, and I think she loved him very much.

1382
01:13:17,560 --> 01:13:20,320
Speaker 1: I think Jim became so difficult to live with for

1383
01:13:20,479 --> 01:13:24,360
Speaker 1: other reasons later in life, because of his alcoholism and

1384
01:13:24,479 --> 01:13:29,000
Speaker 1: his you know, the sort of things that had happened

1385
01:13:29,120 --> 01:13:31,400
Speaker 1: is his ability to sort of comprehend the consequences of

1386
01:13:31,479 --> 01:13:34,240
Speaker 1: his actions. And I'm not talking about affairs now. I'm

1387
01:13:34,240 --> 01:13:37,160
Speaker 1: talking about smoking cigarettes around his wife when she was

1388
01:13:37,200 --> 01:13:41,639
Speaker 1: suffering from asthma and lung problems later in life, and

1389
01:13:41,880 --> 01:13:46,320
Speaker 1: he could be incredibly self centered and self focused in

1390
01:13:46,360 --> 01:13:51,240
Speaker 1: a way that seemed incredibly frustrating to people around them

1391
01:13:51,280 --> 01:13:54,040
Speaker 1: because they knew that his smoking was hurting his wife

1392
01:13:54,040 --> 01:13:58,160
Speaker 1: and such. And I think that eventually sort of his

1393
01:13:58,200 --> 01:14:03,200
Speaker 1: wife became increasing intolerant of him. I think earlier when

1394
01:14:03,240 --> 01:14:08,559
Speaker 1: Jim was having affairs and you know, you can't really

1395
01:14:08,600 --> 01:14:10,920
Speaker 1: make excuses for him. You're right, it was a humiliation.

1396
01:14:11,400 --> 01:14:14,920
Speaker 1: I think it's one that Linda realized what she was

1397
01:14:14,960 --> 01:14:17,120
Speaker 1: getting herself into very early on.

1398
01:14:17,840 --> 01:14:19,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wasn't even bashful about it.

1399
01:14:20,080 --> 01:14:24,160
Speaker 1: He wasn't bashful about it. And she was smart, his wife,

1400
01:14:24,680 --> 01:14:28,400
Speaker 1: she was incredibly smart, incredibly perceptive. I think she knew

1401
01:14:28,640 --> 01:14:30,439
Speaker 1: very I know for a fact that she knew very

1402
01:14:30,479 --> 01:14:34,400
Speaker 1: early on how Jim was going to conduct his life

1403
01:14:35,080 --> 01:14:37,720
Speaker 1: and I think Linda was an adult, and I think

1404
01:14:37,760 --> 01:14:41,479
Speaker 1: she chose to stay in that relationship for you know,

1405
01:14:42,000 --> 01:14:45,760
Speaker 1: reasons of all sorts of complex reasons, right, because she

1406
01:14:45,880 --> 01:14:54,599
Speaker 1: valued that relationship, She valued Jim. She accepted explicitly, if tacitly,

1407
01:14:54,640 --> 01:15:00,240
Speaker 1: if not explicitly, the terms of that relationship, right, they're

1408
01:15:00,320 --> 01:15:06,240
Speaker 1: very from a young age. McGain once wrote to a

1409
01:15:06,280 --> 01:15:08,080
Speaker 1: friend and I write about this in the book, and

1410
01:15:08,120 --> 01:15:10,880
Speaker 1: he said, you know, there's only really two paths with marriage,

1411
01:15:10,880 --> 01:15:14,439
Speaker 1: and he says, one is at least this was his perception,

1412
01:15:14,600 --> 01:15:18,200
Speaker 1: and he was speaking about Jim's infidelity specifically, and he said,

1413
01:15:18,240 --> 01:15:21,040
Speaker 1: you know there's one where, you know, you conduct your

1414
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:25,760
Speaker 1: business in private, you go and have ilicted affairs, you

1415
01:15:26,320 --> 01:15:29,360
Speaker 1: hire sex workers, you do this or that all like

1416
01:15:29,439 --> 01:15:33,400
Speaker 1: in closed private spaces behind your wife's back. And the

1417
01:15:33,439 --> 01:15:36,439
Speaker 1: alternative is sort of having an open relationship, right, And

1418
01:15:36,479 --> 01:15:39,360
Speaker 1: he says, Now, I don't know, he says, And at

1419
01:15:39,360 --> 01:15:41,840
Speaker 1: the time mcgwaine said, well, and we know Jim. You know,

1420
01:15:41,920 --> 01:15:44,760
Speaker 1: McGain himself had gone through a series of relationships with

1421
01:15:44,920 --> 01:15:47,120
Speaker 1: their own sort of levels of complexity, and one of

1422
01:15:47,160 --> 01:15:51,000
Speaker 1: them was a relatively high profile, even relatively open relationship.

1423
01:15:51,720 --> 01:15:53,519
Speaker 1: But he said, you know, the trick to that and

1424
01:15:53,600 --> 01:15:57,160
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it's doomed to failure open relationships to begin

1425
01:15:57,200 --> 01:16:00,840
Speaker 1: with by definition, maybe they're unsustainable.

1426
01:16:01,200 --> 01:16:05,680
Speaker 2: Oh it's like, just as a side note, people to

1427
01:16:05,760 --> 01:16:09,200
Speaker 2: act like that's gonna fly. Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, and

1428
01:16:09,479 --> 01:16:11,280
Speaker 2: it's like such a joke and be black like, oh, no,

1429
01:16:11,320 --> 01:16:14,000
Speaker 2: we have an understanding. I'm like, you don't. Yeah, you

1430
01:16:14,080 --> 01:16:16,120
Speaker 2: might think you do, Yeah, you don't. Yeah, And it's

1431
01:16:16,160 --> 01:16:18,439
Speaker 2: not a two way understanding, right, you have an understanding

1432
01:16:18,439 --> 01:16:21,360
Speaker 2: with your desires. But that's about that's the limit, right there,

1433
01:16:21,479 --> 01:16:21,720
Speaker 2: you know.

1434
01:16:22,120 --> 01:16:24,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and McGain recognized that, and he said, you know,

1435
01:16:24,439 --> 01:16:27,519
Speaker 1: but the trick to doing that, and maybe it's impossible anyway,

1436
01:16:27,560 --> 01:16:29,720
Speaker 1: the trick to doing it is to extend the privileges

1437
01:16:29,760 --> 01:16:33,000
Speaker 1: to both people, fully right, you can't have one side.

1438
01:16:33,120 --> 01:16:35,840
Speaker 1: It has to extend it to and Jim, you know,

1439
01:16:35,920 --> 01:16:38,240
Speaker 1: there was no there's no evidence that they had that

1440
01:16:38,360 --> 01:16:39,160
Speaker 1: sort of agreement.

1441
01:16:39,280 --> 01:16:41,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she wasn't a big swinging dick writer either.

1442
01:16:42,280 --> 01:16:45,040
Speaker 1: You're right, you're right. But she was also very attractive

1443
01:16:45,080 --> 01:16:47,280
Speaker 1: though she was a beautiful moment or something, and she

1444
01:16:47,320 --> 01:16:50,439
Speaker 1: was she was intelligent, she was beautiful, but I mean,

1445
01:16:50,439 --> 01:16:52,800
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. Mcgwaine went through several relationships,

1446
01:16:52,840 --> 01:16:56,000
Speaker 1: eventually settled in what it is a very happy marriage

1447
01:16:56,040 --> 01:16:59,200
Speaker 1: now to Jimmy Buffett's sister. But Jim, you know, Jim

1448
01:16:59,240 --> 01:17:01,400
Speaker 1: and Linda stayed married when a lot of other their

1449
01:17:01,439 --> 01:17:04,639
Speaker 1: friends got divorced throughout the years. And man, they were

1450
01:17:05,400 --> 01:17:06,680
Speaker 1: they were together up until the end.

1451
01:17:07,520 --> 01:17:09,800
Speaker 2: And you know, it's something I'll never understand, man.

1452
01:17:10,240 --> 01:17:12,320
Speaker 1: And I think for someone who wrote poetry, for someone

1453
01:17:12,360 --> 01:17:14,640
Speaker 1: who was so sensitive, someone who was a student of

1454
01:17:14,640 --> 01:17:17,400
Speaker 1: consciousness and you know, and and and looking at the

1455
01:17:17,400 --> 01:17:20,760
Speaker 1: world honestly, to be able to still do what he did,

1456
01:17:22,479 --> 01:17:27,280
Speaker 1: you know, it's a contradiction and it's a complexity. Yeah, yeah,

1457
01:17:27,400 --> 01:17:28,880
Speaker 1: I wouldn't.

1458
01:17:29,160 --> 01:17:31,360
Speaker 2: It's almost speaking ill of the dead, Like if he

1459
01:17:31,439 --> 01:17:34,559
Speaker 2: was alive, I would be uncomfortable bringing it up. And

1460
01:17:34,600 --> 01:17:39,040
Speaker 2: I didn't, yeah, you know, like because we had mutual

1461
01:17:40,479 --> 01:17:44,320
Speaker 2: associates and mutual friends and stuff, and like I just

1462
01:17:44,439 --> 01:17:46,680
Speaker 2: always I was always like why you know, you know,

1463
01:17:46,680 --> 01:17:49,559
Speaker 2: I mean it's like a like, who's who's that culture

1464
01:17:49,600 --> 01:17:53,799
Speaker 2: that used to make Who's a culture that make rugs?

1465
01:17:53,800 --> 01:17:56,960
Speaker 2: And they'd put imperfection in the rug because because it

1466
01:17:57,000 --> 01:17:59,800
Speaker 2: was hubris to to make it perfect, like in the

1467
01:17:59,800 --> 01:18:05,879
Speaker 2: eye as a god, you'd intentionally make it imperfect. M right, Yeah,

1468
01:18:05,920 --> 01:18:08,720
Speaker 2: And it was like he had this like glaring imperfection

1469
01:18:08,840 --> 01:18:10,320
Speaker 2: that he has always bugged me.

1470
01:18:10,360 --> 01:18:12,880
Speaker 1: Man, he did have a glaring imperfection more than one.

1471
01:18:13,320 --> 01:18:15,280
Speaker 2: We all do. I mean we all do. But it

1472
01:18:15,560 --> 01:18:19,360
Speaker 2: was like celebrated. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like

1473
01:18:19,360 --> 01:18:21,559
Speaker 2: like when I was young, it didn't occur to me

1474
01:18:21,720 --> 01:18:23,720
Speaker 2: to be it didn't occur to me to look at

1475
01:18:23,800 --> 01:18:25,000
Speaker 2: it from two sides.

1476
01:18:25,120 --> 01:18:26,720
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1477
01:18:27,040 --> 01:18:32,280
Speaker 2: Only later that I'd be like, man, like you know, yeah,

1478
01:18:32,320 --> 01:18:34,599
Speaker 2: like I have somewhat of a you know, like I

1479
01:18:34,640 --> 01:18:37,440
Speaker 2: have some of a public profile, Like I have somewhat

1480
01:18:37,439 --> 01:18:40,320
Speaker 2: of a way to go out and meet people and

1481
01:18:40,400 --> 01:18:43,680
Speaker 2: have adventures that like isn't like readily available to my

1482
01:18:44,240 --> 01:18:47,759
Speaker 2: wife taking care of the kids that we had together.

1483
01:18:48,280 --> 01:18:50,799
Speaker 2: You become aware of that, like there's just a baked

1484
01:18:50,840 --> 01:18:53,400
Speaker 2: in dude, I don't want to call it an imbalance,

1485
01:18:53,439 --> 01:18:55,800
Speaker 2: but there's like a baked in something that you can take,

1486
01:18:55,960 --> 01:18:58,559
Speaker 2: that you can exploit. And then later when I became

1487
01:18:58,600 --> 01:19:01,679
Speaker 2: aware of that that there is a thing to exploit.

1488
01:19:02,160 --> 01:19:08,360
Speaker 2: When I became aware of it, maybe very judgmental about

1489
01:19:08,400 --> 01:19:09,439
Speaker 2: someone that takes the bait.

1490
01:19:11,040 --> 01:19:12,559
Speaker 1: I think it was baked in. Yeah, it was definitely

1491
01:19:12,640 --> 01:19:15,280
Speaker 1: baked in for Jim two. You know where he grew up,

1492
01:19:15,280 --> 01:19:18,280
Speaker 1: the people he grew up around and with from a

1493
01:19:18,400 --> 01:19:21,640
Speaker 1: very young age. I think a lot of that, you

1494
01:19:21,680 --> 01:19:26,840
Speaker 1: know that the way of thinking about you know, male

1495
01:19:26,880 --> 01:19:30,479
Speaker 1: female relationships and marriages. I was baked into him from

1496
01:19:30,479 --> 01:19:32,920
Speaker 1: a young age. And and I think it was it

1497
01:19:33,040 --> 01:19:35,360
Speaker 1: just it always just remained a sort of like Fisher

1498
01:19:35,479 --> 01:19:39,679
Speaker 1: in his identity. Right, this this uh, this contradiction, right

1499
01:19:39,720 --> 01:19:42,600
Speaker 1: that he could be as sensitive as he was to

1500
01:19:42,720 --> 01:19:46,599
Speaker 1: people's suffering. He could write novels in women's voices in.

1501
01:19:46,600 --> 01:19:49,360
Speaker 2: Ways, dude, like so sympathetic man.

1502
01:19:49,280 --> 01:19:52,960
Speaker 1: So sympathetic, Dolva and women lit by firefly.

1503
01:19:52,680 --> 01:19:54,559
Speaker 2: Like in a way you wouldn't be able to do now,

1504
01:19:54,720 --> 01:19:57,120
Speaker 2: Like you couldn't. He would have if he'd have written

1505
01:19:57,920 --> 01:20:00,960
Speaker 2: if he'd have written a novel from the perspective of

1506
01:20:01,000 --> 01:20:04,719
Speaker 2: a female Native American in twenty twenty, dude, they would

1507
01:20:04,720 --> 01:20:08,320
Speaker 2: have murdered him. Yeah, they would have hung him from

1508
01:20:08,320 --> 01:20:12,080
Speaker 2: a tree, do you know what I mean? Yeah, he's like,

1509
01:20:12,080 --> 01:20:13,840
Speaker 2: I got an idea. I'm like an old white guy.

1510
01:20:13,920 --> 01:20:16,280
Speaker 2: I even read a book where I'm a Native American woman.

1511
01:20:17,360 --> 01:20:20,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know he might he might have gotten away

1512
01:20:20,280 --> 01:20:22,720
Speaker 1: with the woman, but not the Native American woman, right, Yeah,

1513
01:20:22,840 --> 01:20:24,960
Speaker 1: he got away with it in France, he would have

1514
01:20:24,960 --> 01:20:25,519
Speaker 1: gotten away with it.

1515
01:20:25,600 --> 01:20:27,160
Speaker 2: But I'm not saying he shouldn't have done it. Like,

1516
01:20:27,200 --> 01:20:29,320
Speaker 2: that's not my perspective. I don't think that. I don't.

1517
01:20:29,360 --> 01:20:30,920
Speaker 2: I don't look at it like I don't think that

1518
01:20:31,040 --> 01:20:35,719
Speaker 2: you can own I don't believe in in I understand

1519
01:20:35,760 --> 01:20:38,000
Speaker 2: the arguments for it, but I don't believe in people

1520
01:20:38,040 --> 01:20:40,080
Speaker 2: being like that, that you can make it that other

1521
01:20:40,120 --> 01:20:43,120
Speaker 2: people can't think about certain things, you know, I mean

1522
01:20:43,160 --> 01:20:45,320
Speaker 2: I I don't. I don't. I don't like that. I

1523
01:20:45,400 --> 01:20:46,639
Speaker 2: understand the argument, but I don't.

1524
01:20:46,680 --> 01:20:49,200
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't like live by it. I completely

1525
01:20:49,240 --> 01:20:51,040
Speaker 1: agree with that. And it's funny, you know. I just

1526
01:20:51,080 --> 01:20:53,280
Speaker 1: read teaching, you know, and I just read three books

1527
01:20:53,280 --> 01:20:56,400
Speaker 1: in a row where the man wrote a book from

1528
01:20:57,000 --> 01:20:59,519
Speaker 1: a woman's perspective, and then the two women wrote two

1529
01:20:59,560 --> 01:21:01,800
Speaker 1: books from his perspectives. And these are all in the

1530
01:21:01,840 --> 01:21:04,800
Speaker 1: past five years. So I'm like, Okay, well, yeah, we

1531
01:21:04,920 --> 01:21:08,320
Speaker 1: haven't you know fully, you know, people are still experimenting

1532
01:21:08,320 --> 01:21:11,680
Speaker 1: with you know, and whatever experience they have.

1533
01:21:11,920 --> 01:21:14,240
Speaker 2: We live in a little bit of freer time right now.

1534
01:21:14,680 --> 01:21:17,760
Speaker 2: You know. You know the writer Larry Brown, Uh yeah,

1535
01:21:17,800 --> 01:21:19,080
Speaker 2: a little bit big bad love.

1536
01:21:19,360 --> 01:21:22,000
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah.

1537
01:21:22,120 --> 01:21:23,960
Speaker 2: He died young. He had a heart attack. He was

1538
01:21:23,960 --> 01:21:25,639
Speaker 2: from Mississippi. He was a fireman.

1539
01:21:26,000 --> 01:21:26,559
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

1540
01:21:26,640 --> 01:21:29,600
Speaker 2: He wrote seven books. He wrote seven novels for he

1541
01:21:29,600 --> 01:21:38,280
Speaker 2: had a novel published. Wow. He uh. He became like

1542
01:21:38,280 --> 01:21:40,120
Speaker 2: a very like he sold some of his stuff to

1543
01:21:40,479 --> 01:21:43,200
Speaker 2: He did stuff had in movies, like the Coen Brothers

1544
01:21:43,200 --> 01:21:45,200
Speaker 2: bought one of the things. He became a big, pretty

1545
01:21:45,240 --> 01:21:47,640
Speaker 2: big writer. He was the first guy. This is the

1546
01:21:47,680 --> 01:21:50,960
Speaker 2: last thing I'll say about this thing with marriage and stuff,

1547
01:21:51,280 --> 01:21:56,800
Speaker 2: is uh. When I was in writing school, Larry came

1548
01:21:56,840 --> 01:21:59,280
Speaker 2: and did a he like came for semester or something

1549
01:22:00,040 --> 01:22:03,840
Speaker 2: up from Mississippi. Dude never went to college nothing. Man.

1550
01:22:03,840 --> 01:22:06,800
Speaker 2: He taught himself to write like between calls at a firebarn.

1551
01:22:07,160 --> 01:22:11,559
Speaker 2: But became a very celebrated novelist. You know. Uh, I

1552
01:22:11,600 --> 01:22:13,960
Speaker 2: mentioned him. He knew Harrison hung out just in the

1553
01:22:14,000 --> 01:22:16,920
Speaker 2: literary circles. And he was the first guy that like

1554
01:22:17,840 --> 01:22:20,400
Speaker 2: said to me. I brought him up and he said

1555
01:22:20,400 --> 01:22:24,160
Speaker 2: something about like like eye roll because he was a

1556
01:22:24,280 --> 01:22:28,439
Speaker 2: very faithful, loyal family person. He had like an eye

1557
01:22:28,560 --> 01:22:32,040
Speaker 2: roll about like, oh him and his starlets, do you know?

1558
01:22:32,080 --> 01:22:34,080
Speaker 2: I mean it was the first time I heard someone

1559
01:22:34,160 --> 01:22:37,080
Speaker 2: like do like a condemnation and it was like dismissive,

1560
01:22:37,920 --> 01:22:40,280
Speaker 2: you know, man. It wasn't even that long after that,

1561
01:22:40,360 --> 01:22:45,920
Speaker 2: Larry Brown died of a heart attack. Wow. What was

1562
01:22:47,040 --> 01:22:51,639
Speaker 2: like when Harrison died? What was sort of going on

1563
01:22:51,720 --> 01:22:55,800
Speaker 2: with him? You know, like where was he at right

1564
01:22:55,880 --> 01:22:58,920
Speaker 2: with his work? And he had like he didn't he

1565
01:22:58,960 --> 01:23:01,519
Speaker 2: have had to have like bad health problems and things.

1566
01:23:01,800 --> 01:23:04,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he was sort of ravaged physically, right,

1567
01:23:04,439 --> 01:23:08,800
Speaker 1: he is He's still sharp though he was, he still sharp.

1568
01:23:10,880 --> 01:23:13,719
Speaker 1: He still had the capacity to write and write poems.

1569
01:23:14,040 --> 01:23:18,040
Speaker 1: And I think fiction had become difficult for him. He

1570
01:23:18,160 --> 01:23:21,960
Speaker 1: just couldn't sort of sustain the attention to detail that

1571
01:23:22,080 --> 01:23:24,120
Speaker 1: was required for fiction, right. I think he was at

1572
01:23:24,160 --> 01:23:27,720
Speaker 1: that point in his life. Right before he died, he

1573
01:23:27,760 --> 01:23:31,080
Speaker 1: began a new novella called A Woman Who Loved Trees,

1574
01:23:31,120 --> 01:23:33,799
Speaker 1: I think, and it was about his wife, about Linda.

1575
01:23:34,439 --> 01:23:37,320
Speaker 1: And so the important thing to know is Linda died

1576
01:23:37,600 --> 01:23:42,719
Speaker 1: about five months prior to Jim, and so when Jim died,

1577
01:23:42,800 --> 01:23:47,120
Speaker 1: he was extremely lonely, right, he was sort of living

1578
01:23:47,160 --> 01:23:50,200
Speaker 1: in Montana, but then when he died, he died in Patagony, Arizona,

1579
01:23:50,800 --> 01:23:53,400
Speaker 1: and he was just didn't know what to do with himself, right,

1580
01:23:53,439 --> 01:23:57,240
Speaker 1: because he had been married since nineteen fifty nine to Linda, right,

1581
01:23:57,320 --> 01:23:59,519
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden he was without her, and

1582
01:23:59,600 --> 01:24:02,840
Speaker 1: so there was this huge gaping, you know, hole in

1583
01:24:02,880 --> 01:24:06,000
Speaker 1: his life. But in the sort of waning months of

1584
01:24:06,040 --> 01:24:08,800
Speaker 1: his life, I mean, he he could write poems still,

1585
01:24:08,840 --> 01:24:11,840
Speaker 1: there was still that sort of compression and smallness of

1586
01:24:11,880 --> 01:24:13,240
Speaker 1: it that he could get his mind around.

1587
01:24:13,320 --> 01:24:13,519
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1588
01:24:14,760 --> 01:24:17,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he you know, he was sharp enough to write.

1589
01:24:17,400 --> 01:24:23,479
Speaker 1: I think his mind was very sort of beclouded by

1590
01:24:24,360 --> 01:24:27,400
Speaker 1: sort of all the alcohol that he was drinking, right

1591
01:24:27,720 --> 01:24:30,680
Speaker 1: from years and years and years of alcoholism, and I

1592
01:24:30,720 --> 01:24:34,280
Speaker 1: think it had taken a real toll on him mentally intellectually.

1593
01:24:36,560 --> 01:24:38,840
Speaker 1: But you know, he's he had his humor, he had

1594
01:24:39,760 --> 01:24:42,000
Speaker 1: he had it still, like a decent life going on,

1595
01:24:42,080 --> 01:24:43,960
Speaker 1: so those friends and things like that. But I think

1596
01:24:44,000 --> 01:24:46,880
Speaker 1: in the absence of Linda, it seems.

1597
01:24:46,600 --> 01:24:49,400
Speaker 2: He really could got start to fade.

1598
01:24:49,920 --> 01:24:52,599
Speaker 1: It's not an exaggeration to say that he faded, you know,

1599
01:24:52,720 --> 01:24:54,599
Speaker 1: in the absence of his wife, you know, died from

1600
01:24:54,640 --> 01:24:57,000
Speaker 1: a broken heart in some ways, right from the loss

1601
01:24:57,000 --> 01:24:59,200
Speaker 1: of Linda. He couldn't go on after that, but he

1602
01:24:59,280 --> 01:25:01,200
Speaker 1: was still writing, I mean up until he died.

1603
01:25:01,200 --> 01:25:01,559
Speaker 2: He wrote.

1604
01:25:02,040 --> 01:25:04,080
Speaker 1: There was a collection of poems published right before he

1605
01:25:04,120 --> 01:25:08,400
Speaker 1: died called dead Man's Float, And actually the soft cover

1606
01:25:08,520 --> 01:25:11,040
Speaker 1: came out after he died and includes the last poem

1607
01:25:11,080 --> 01:25:12,120
Speaker 1: he was writing when he died.

1608
01:25:12,520 --> 01:25:15,360
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, dude. When you look at him, like

1609
01:25:15,400 --> 01:25:17,439
Speaker 2: especially on the cover here, and you listen to it,

1610
01:25:17,479 --> 01:25:21,520
Speaker 2: like clips him talk and you'd form sort of an impression,

1611
01:25:21,760 --> 01:25:23,479
Speaker 2: and then you go read some of the sentences he

1612
01:25:23,520 --> 01:25:27,280
Speaker 2: wrote and you're like, how could that sentence? Like how

1613
01:25:27,280 --> 01:25:29,880
Speaker 2: did those sentences come out of that guy? You know,

1614
01:25:30,720 --> 01:25:36,200
Speaker 2: it's like so unbelievably talented and smart. Man, Yeah, it's

1615
01:25:36,400 --> 01:25:37,240
Speaker 2: so talented.

1616
01:25:38,120 --> 01:25:43,759
Speaker 1: Gary Snyder write the poet from California, Beat Poet, Nature Poet,

1617
01:25:44,240 --> 01:25:47,559
Speaker 1: was walking across the campus one time in California with

1618
01:25:47,640 --> 01:25:50,640
Speaker 1: his wife and saw Jim Harrison was coming across the

1619
01:25:50,680 --> 01:25:53,679
Speaker 1: campus and she turned to Gary and says, I cannot

1620
01:25:53,680 --> 01:26:01,200
Speaker 1: believe that's the man who wrote Dolva. So similar similar idea. Right,

1621
01:26:02,080 --> 01:26:04,479
Speaker 1: you look at Jim on the cover that's in. Yeah,

1622
01:26:04,520 --> 01:26:06,919
Speaker 1: he doesn't scream sensitive poet right.

1623
01:26:08,080 --> 01:26:13,880
Speaker 2: Some greasy sweatshirt and stuff. It's just like, yeah, he

1624
01:26:13,920 --> 01:26:16,639
Speaker 2: lived eight cigarettes hanging out of his mouth just but then.

1625
01:26:16,600 --> 01:26:21,040
Speaker 1: Just so brilliant man lived a long, hard life. Yeah,

1626
01:26:21,160 --> 01:26:22,320
Speaker 1: and it shows on his face.

1627
01:26:22,920 --> 01:26:25,200
Speaker 2: So it took you. You spent five six years on

1628
01:26:25,240 --> 01:26:28,280
Speaker 2: the book and talked to how many people do you interview?

1629
01:26:28,520 --> 01:26:32,000
Speaker 1: I mean, well over one hundred different interviews for the book,

1630
01:26:32,600 --> 01:26:35,080
Speaker 1: sort of all over the place, from Montana and Michigan

1631
01:26:35,160 --> 01:26:39,000
Speaker 1: to New York and LA to France, you know, Florida

1632
01:26:39,080 --> 01:26:44,559
Speaker 1: obviously Arizona took a solid six years. But from like

1633
01:26:44,640 --> 01:26:47,360
Speaker 1: the first phone call I made to publication date, probably

1634
01:26:47,360 --> 01:26:50,439
Speaker 1: seven years total. So it's been a long journey.

1635
01:26:50,760 --> 01:26:55,200
Speaker 2: And no, and you beat everybody to it. No one's

1636
01:26:55,240 --> 01:26:57,559
Speaker 2: done a no one's done like a full biography of

1637
01:26:58,640 --> 01:26:59,240
Speaker 2: Jim Harrison.

1638
01:26:59,320 --> 01:27:01,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, couldn't believe it. I mean that I'd be worried.

1639
01:27:01,000 --> 01:27:02,559
Speaker 2: While you were working on that someone else is going

1640
01:27:02,600 --> 01:27:04,679
Speaker 2: to quick kick one out. I was you caught wind

1641
01:27:04,680 --> 01:27:04,920
Speaker 2: of it.

1642
01:27:05,080 --> 01:27:07,400
Speaker 1: I didn't think they get it done before me, necessarily,

1643
01:27:07,439 --> 01:27:10,920
Speaker 1: but I was ill. Yeah, when I first started, when

1644
01:27:10,960 --> 01:27:13,559
Speaker 1: I first sort of zeroed in on on writing a

1645
01:27:13,680 --> 01:27:15,479
Speaker 1: biography of Harrison. I was shocked that no one was

1646
01:27:15,520 --> 01:27:16,160
Speaker 1: already doing it.

1647
01:27:16,400 --> 01:27:18,160
Speaker 2: I had some dudes calling me that were kicking around

1648
01:27:18,160 --> 01:27:19,639
Speaker 2: making a documentary about his life.

1649
01:27:20,000 --> 01:27:20,520
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1650
01:27:20,880 --> 01:27:22,320
Speaker 2: I don't know if you were involved in that or not.

1651
01:27:22,800 --> 01:27:26,000
Speaker 1: No, No, I'm not. There's Yeah, there's been a number

1652
01:27:26,000 --> 01:27:28,759
Speaker 1: of just sort of people circling the documentary of Harrison,

1653
01:27:28,800 --> 01:27:30,360
Speaker 1: and I think there should definitely be one.

1654
01:27:31,200 --> 01:27:33,240
Speaker 2: They had asked whoever it was, I don't remember. I

1655
01:27:33,439 --> 01:27:35,360
Speaker 2: don't even know if I'd be able to even find anything,

1656
01:27:35,400 --> 01:27:37,439
Speaker 2: but we spoke on the phone and they were asking

1657
01:27:37,439 --> 01:27:39,960
Speaker 2: me about if I would do like a little talking

1658
01:27:40,000 --> 01:27:41,479
Speaker 2: head bit in it. But I don't know what came

1659
01:27:41,560 --> 01:27:41,720
Speaker 2: of it.

1660
01:27:42,000 --> 01:27:46,879
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, people people have been circling a documentary, but uh,

1661
01:27:47,040 --> 01:27:49,080
Speaker 1: and I sort of thought someone would start to not

1662
01:27:49,120 --> 01:27:51,760
Speaker 1: start one while I was writing it. Sure, Yeah, I

1663
01:27:51,760 --> 01:27:53,519
Speaker 1: don't think anyone did, not that I heard of.

1664
01:27:53,680 --> 01:27:55,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they were asked me there that it was

1665
01:27:55,560 --> 01:27:57,880
Speaker 2: like not as someone that knew them, but just someone

1666
01:27:57,960 --> 01:28:00,200
Speaker 2: was influenced by the work, right, righteah? Right? Or is

1667
01:28:00,240 --> 01:28:02,280
Speaker 2: that were influenced by the work, Yeah, for sure. And

1668
01:28:02,320 --> 01:28:04,640
Speaker 2: then I was kind of I didn't get you know,

1669
01:28:04,680 --> 01:28:06,640
Speaker 2: I definite didn't get the sense that there was a

1670
01:28:06,680 --> 01:28:09,759
Speaker 2: done deal on being in it. I was like, sure, whatever, yeah,

1671
01:28:09,800 --> 01:28:11,720
Speaker 2: but I kept kind of I still kind of keep

1672
01:28:11,760 --> 01:28:14,240
Speaker 2: my eyes out expecting the movie to come out.

1673
01:28:14,400 --> 01:28:15,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it would be great.

1674
01:28:15,560 --> 01:28:17,040
Speaker 2: But the fact that you managed to get like a

1675
01:28:17,040 --> 01:28:19,360
Speaker 2: big ass book done before they could get a documentary

1676
01:28:19,360 --> 01:28:24,040
Speaker 2: done is impressive. What year did he die in?

1677
01:28:24,120 --> 01:28:26,360
Speaker 1: Twenty sixteen? March?

1678
01:28:26,560 --> 01:28:28,599
Speaker 2: Okay, so you didn't get Crank until he was dead.

1679
01:28:28,920 --> 01:28:31,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't, right, Yeah, So you felt.

1680
01:28:31,120 --> 01:28:32,360
Speaker 2: Phony doing it while he's alive.

1681
01:28:33,880 --> 01:28:40,080
Speaker 1: I don't think so now I don't think. I think yeah, yeah,

1682
01:28:40,080 --> 01:28:42,600
Speaker 1: I think I would have. I think there's you know,

1683
01:28:43,680 --> 01:28:45,400
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have interviewed him for the book.

1684
01:28:45,479 --> 01:28:49,800
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, there's it's also

1685
01:28:49,840 --> 01:28:53,320
Speaker 1: sort of liberating to do it when they're not alive too, Yeah.

1686
01:28:53,120 --> 01:28:56,519
Speaker 2: Because when they're alive a matter of written biography, but

1687
01:28:56,680 --> 01:28:59,519
Speaker 2: well I've written like biographical sketches, but I think when

1688
01:28:59,520 --> 01:29:04,559
Speaker 2: they're alive, I've it just becomes different because their own

1689
01:29:05,439 --> 01:29:10,400
Speaker 2: their own mythology is right, someone's own mythology is part

1690
01:29:10,680 --> 01:29:14,120
Speaker 2: like in an interview, as you're getting the mythological version

1691
01:29:15,000 --> 01:29:18,240
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, totally unless they're just done

1692
01:29:18,400 --> 01:29:20,720
Speaker 2: in the guards down, you're gonna get like, here's how

1693
01:29:20,760 --> 01:29:22,160
Speaker 2: i'd like you know what it is. Yeah, here's how

1694
01:29:22,200 --> 01:29:24,240
Speaker 2: I'd like to be remembered totally.

1695
01:29:24,320 --> 01:29:26,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you would have to really filter for that, right,

1696
01:29:26,400 --> 01:29:28,080
Speaker 1: You'd have to like take everything they excited with a

1697
01:29:28,120 --> 01:29:31,360
Speaker 1: grain of salt. But I mean there were enough like

1698
01:29:31,520 --> 01:29:34,719
Speaker 1: friends and family members still live and are still alive

1699
01:29:34,840 --> 01:29:39,080
Speaker 1: now around Jim's in Jim's world that you know, I

1700
01:29:39,120 --> 01:29:41,040
Speaker 1: don't know if I would have written it differently than

1701
01:29:41,040 --> 01:29:43,360
Speaker 1: they've been alive, because I'm still writing, you know, with

1702
01:29:43,439 --> 01:29:47,800
Speaker 1: the idea that it's still very much living story, right,

1703
01:29:47,960 --> 01:29:50,200
Speaker 1: And so you have to keep that in mind, I

1704
01:29:50,200 --> 01:29:53,400
Speaker 1: think when you're writing biography. Well, congratulations on it, man,

1705
01:29:53,600 --> 01:29:54,000
Speaker 1: thank you.

1706
01:29:54,400 --> 01:29:57,120
Speaker 2: I'm excited to I'm excited to dig in and rito

1707
01:29:57,120 --> 01:29:59,320
Speaker 2: I just I mean, I just took possession of my

1708
01:29:59,400 --> 01:30:00,920
Speaker 2: hardcover right now.

1709
01:30:01,080 --> 01:30:04,920
Speaker 1: Wonderful. That's great. I'd like to have.

1710
01:30:04,840 --> 01:30:07,200
Speaker 2: You sign it for me. I would love to again.

1711
01:30:07,280 --> 01:30:11,759
Speaker 2: The title is Devouring Time Jim Harrison, A Writer's Life

1712
01:30:11,920 --> 01:30:16,479
Speaker 2: by Todd Goddard. So if you're a fan of Harrison's work,

1713
01:30:16,520 --> 01:30:20,000
Speaker 2: and I know there are many out there more than

1714
01:30:20,040 --> 01:30:26,200
Speaker 2: any of the people of the writers that sort of

1715
01:30:26,320 --> 01:30:29,959
Speaker 2: touch on and swerve in and out of the worlds

1716
01:30:29,960 --> 01:30:32,400
Speaker 2: of hunting and fishing in nature. Like, I think that

1717
01:30:32,400 --> 01:30:36,320
Speaker 2: he's the most celebrated. I don't think anybody comes close.

1718
01:30:36,920 --> 01:30:40,080
Speaker 1: I agree entirely. Yeah, I don't think anybody comes close.

1719
01:30:41,200 --> 01:30:46,240
Speaker 1: In their manner, something for everybody. There's something for everybody, which.

1720
01:30:46,040 --> 01:30:47,960
Speaker 2: Is, if you're like a little too eighty HD for

1721
01:30:48,000 --> 01:30:49,799
Speaker 2: a novel, try a novella.

1722
01:30:49,960 --> 01:30:53,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a short novel and Jim was a

1723
01:30:53,160 --> 01:30:55,160
Speaker 1: Jim had mastered that for him. I mean, he's known

1724
01:30:55,200 --> 01:30:55,439
Speaker 1: for that.

1725
01:30:56,320 --> 01:30:58,280
Speaker 2: If you're like, dude, I don't have time for a novel,

1726
01:30:58,760 --> 01:30:59,400
Speaker 2: the novella.

1727
01:31:00,080 --> 01:31:01,519
Speaker 1: Take a novella, right, exactly?

1728
01:31:02,160 --> 01:31:06,240
Speaker 2: What's that term for a really long essay, not a

1729
01:31:06,280 --> 01:31:10,120
Speaker 2: man not a memo, like a monograph.

1730
01:31:10,160 --> 01:31:13,320
Speaker 1: Exactly. Well, it's been real honored to be invited on here.

1731
01:31:13,360 --> 01:31:13,840
Speaker 1: So thank you.

1732
01:31:13,880 --> 01:31:16,639
Speaker 2: So I love it. And again, man, you can tell

1733
01:31:16,640 --> 01:31:20,439
Speaker 2: that I'm like, I'm a Harrison fan. I'm haunted by Harrison.

1734
01:31:23,479 --> 01:31:26,599
Speaker 2: I get mad thinking about him. I love his work. Yeah,

1735
01:31:26,680 --> 01:31:29,680
Speaker 2: to reread his books, dude, he's like, he's like, uh,

1736
01:31:31,560 --> 01:31:34,840
Speaker 2: you know, I guess he's to me what Hemingway was

1737
01:31:34,880 --> 01:31:35,200
Speaker 2: to him.

1738
01:31:35,640 --> 01:31:40,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right, contradictory and like he just like like

1739
01:31:40,520 --> 01:31:43,800
Speaker 1: a not a dark cloud, but a cloud in the sun,

1740
01:31:43,880 --> 01:31:44,360
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.

1741
01:31:44,680 --> 01:31:46,479
Speaker 2: He's just there, right, and.

1742
01:31:47,520 --> 01:31:50,040
Speaker 1: I turned back to him for nourishment in some way, right,

1743
01:31:50,360 --> 01:31:52,519
Speaker 1: I don't know. Jim said this great thing in tarpin.

1744
01:31:52,560 --> 01:31:54,360
Speaker 1: Actually he says, you know, you go fly fishing, you're

1745
01:31:54,439 --> 01:31:57,559
Speaker 1: tarpin fishing. He says, because catching a tarpin gives you

1746
01:31:57,600 --> 01:32:00,600
Speaker 1: a jolt of electricity, the fresh and the feeling of

1747
01:32:00,600 --> 01:32:04,160
Speaker 1: being alive. And I think Harrison does that. Yeah, I mean,

1748
01:32:04,280 --> 01:32:07,160
Speaker 1: go pick up a food essay, one of his sports essays, right,

1749
01:32:08,040 --> 01:32:10,719
Speaker 1: and you know you'll be freshen you know, your feeling

1750
01:32:10,720 --> 01:32:12,880
Speaker 1: of life will be freshened. And Harrison's so good at

1751
01:32:12,880 --> 01:32:16,160
Speaker 1: doing that. You know. I can't turn back to him

1752
01:32:16,240 --> 01:32:17,880
Speaker 1: enough and not feel that.

1753
01:32:18,280 --> 01:32:20,240
Speaker 2: The thing we didn't touch on, and I'll just mention

1754
01:32:20,320 --> 01:32:29,400
Speaker 2: it is he was a lifelong, unapologetic environmentalist. Definitely unapologetic. Yeah,

1755
01:32:29,520 --> 01:32:31,360
Speaker 2: he didn't care if that shit was in fashion or

1756
01:32:31,360 --> 01:32:34,000
Speaker 2: out of fashion. That dude was an environmentalist, yeah, you know,

1757
01:32:34,040 --> 01:32:35,840
Speaker 2: and he probably would have said that he maybe he

1758
01:32:36,120 --> 01:32:39,760
Speaker 2: used that word. But he was like he was a

1759
01:32:39,800 --> 01:32:42,360
Speaker 2: clean air, clean water, wildlife guy through and through.

1760
01:32:42,880 --> 01:32:43,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely.

1761
01:32:43,720 --> 01:32:45,880
Speaker 2: No one had to ever wonder what he thought about

1762
01:32:46,280 --> 01:32:50,000
Speaker 2: the habitat and you know, in degradation and the kind

1763
01:32:50,000 --> 01:32:52,560
Speaker 2: of people that degrade. Yeah.

1764
01:32:52,640 --> 01:32:54,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he never lost sight of like, you know,

1765
01:32:56,200 --> 01:32:57,920
Speaker 1: you know, the people who work in that world. You know,

1766
01:32:58,000 --> 01:33:01,320
Speaker 1: he never had an unrealistic view of the fact that

1767
01:33:01,400 --> 01:33:03,759
Speaker 1: humans go into the natural world and have an impact

1768
01:33:03,800 --> 01:33:06,000
Speaker 1: on it. Right. He was never one of his people

1769
01:33:06,040 --> 01:33:08,400
Speaker 1: who was going to say, you know, everything needs to

1770
01:33:08,439 --> 01:33:11,160
Speaker 1: be preserved in a pristine state where you know, people

1771
01:33:11,200 --> 01:33:13,040
Speaker 1: can't go in and work in those environments. But he

1772
01:33:13,120 --> 01:33:15,240
Speaker 1: had a strong environmental convert.

1773
01:33:15,240 --> 01:33:17,760
Speaker 2: No, he knew it. It's an occupied landscape that has

1774
01:33:17,760 --> 01:33:18,519
Speaker 2: to be taken care.

1775
01:33:18,400 --> 01:33:20,880
Speaker 1: Of, that's right. Well yeah, but he cared about it, right,

1776
01:33:20,920 --> 01:33:22,760
Speaker 1: and he knew we had to take care of it.

1777
01:33:23,280 --> 01:33:23,439
Speaker 4: Well.

1778
01:33:23,479 --> 01:33:26,240
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on, Todd, Thank you again. Devouring time.

1779
01:33:26,360 --> 01:33:30,320
Speaker 2: Jim Harrison a writer's life. Fascinating guy. I can't wait

1780
01:33:30,320 --> 01:33:30,960
Speaker 2: to read the book.

1781
01:33:31,000 --> 01:33:32,200
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much.

1782
01:33:32,200 --> 01:33:32,439
Speaker 2: Steve