In another life, I wouldn't mind coming back as Jim Harrison. A tough guy with a soft heart, Harrison's best known for his poetry and his novellas, most notably Legends of the Fall. He also apparently made some good money writing screenplays and enjoyed life in Hollywood's fast lane for a few years. But he first came to my attention because of a New Yorker article from last Fall that documented a 37-course, 12 hour meal that he had with friends in Burgundy. Totally over the top, and richly entertaining.
He's been a food columnist for Esquire, Men's Journal, and Smart, and these and other writings have been compiled in The Raw and The Cooked, a book that seems to pulse with the intensity of Harrison's appetites. I don't think I could eat or drink or just live like Harrison does without doing grievous harm to my arteries and my liver, but he manages it somehow, and we're the better for it.
I love what poetry I've read, but I haven't dug deeply yet. Conversations with Jim Harrison is a lengthy compilation of interviews with him, and it has some shining moments, but he returns to a few themes over and over--often using the exact same words--and I eventually got the feeling that he has not only a script that he trots out for interviewers, but also a well-worn public persona that he uses to keep the world at bay and protect his privacy, his real self.
He's not a political writer per se, but his views come through clearly in the interviews and peek out regularly in his nonfiction. He's an unreconstructed liberal, so from my perspective he's great on social issues but not a guy I'd want in charge of economic policy. But Harrison's warmth, his passion for life, his desire to make a better world and to enjoy it to the hilt positively leap off of every page, and since I don't believe in reincarnation, reading him is probably the next best thing.
