Born and raised in Michigan, Jim Harrison often sets the lusty appetites and grizzled fatalism of his work among his native state's north woods, rivers and lakes. When a Harrison character gets off track in urban living or academia or an unsustainable marriage, he goes back to drink from Michigan's nourishing well.
The River Swimmer takes another refreshing dive into that well. The title novella is the story of Thad, a Michigan youth raised on a farm on a river island. Swim coaches offer generous scholarships, but in typical Harrison fashion, Thad is more interested in the shapely rear ends and breasts of girls than intercollegiate competition. He swims because "it is the most complete feeling of freedom that there is. The current guides your skin. It's the closest we get to a bird."
"The Land of Unlikeness" is the longer and better of the two novellas, giving Harrison more room to dig into the changes that old age brings to men. Clive is a 60-year-old art history professor from New York City who gave up painting after critics trashed his last gallery show. He returns to rural Michigan to care for his nearly blind mother, where he finds that his first sexual partner, Laurette, is also back from her downstate job to live in her old neighboring farm home. She has taken in a young down-on-her-luck, bisexual poet, and, consistent with Harrison's prodigious appetite for food, sex and the arts, Clive gathers his paints from his childhood room to discover again the pleasure he found in painting and female company.
The River Swimmer is Harrison at his crusty best. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.