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A Good Day to Die
"Mr. Harrison's perceptions are jagged and cutting . . . a remarkably well-plotted story."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
The New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry--including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth--Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. His novel A Good Day to Die centers on an unlikely trio: a poet with a tendency to lapse into beatific reveries of superb fishing in cold, fast streams; a Vietnam vet consumed by uppers, downers, and violence; and a girl who loved only one of them--at first. With plans conceived during the madness of one long drunken night, the three of them leave Florida, driving west to buy a case of dynamite, determined to save the Grand Canyon from a dam they believe is about to be built. A Good Day to Die is an unrelenting tour de force, and a dark exploration of what it means to live beyond the pale in contemporary America. Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to find this in print once again, and for new readers, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison's remarkable insight, storytelling, and evocation of the natural world.
The New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry--including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth--Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. His novel A Good Day to Die centers on an unlikely trio: a poet with a tendency to lapse into beatific reveries of superb fishing in cold, fast streams; a Vietnam vet consumed by uppers, downers, and violence; and a girl who loved only one of them--at first. With plans conceived during the madness of one long drunken night, the three of them leave Florida, driving west to buy a case of dynamite, determined to save the Grand Canyon from a dam they believe is about to be built. A Good Day to Die is an unrelenting tour de force, and a dark exploration of what it means to live beyond the pale in contemporary America. Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to find this in print once again, and for new readers, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison's remarkable insight, storytelling, and evocation of the natural world.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
83 people are currently reading
1135 people want to read
About the author
Jim Harrison
185 books1,487 followersJim Harrison was born in Grayling, Michigan, to Winfield Sprague Harrison, a county agricultural agent, and Norma Olivia (Wahlgren) Harrison, both avid readers. He married Linda King in 1959 with whom he has two daughters.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
His awards include National Academy of Arts grants (1967, 68, 69), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969-70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).
Much of Harrison's writing depicts sparsely populated regions of North America with many stories set in places such as Nebraska's Sand Hills, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Montana's mountains, and along the Arizona-Mexico border.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
His awards include National Academy of Arts grants (1967, 68, 69), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969-70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).
Much of Harrison's writing depicts sparsely populated regions of North America with many stories set in places such as Nebraska's Sand Hills, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Montana's mountains, and along the Arizona-Mexico border.
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June 1, 2025
DIE HARD
In Florida, a Key West, il giovane plurilaureato narratore, che qui e là lascia intuire che nel suo passato ci sia una moglie e probabilmente anche un figlio – è probabile, forse possibile, che lei l’abbia invitato a lasciarli, a sloggiare – incontra Tim, un veterano del Vietnam di poco più grande di lui.
L’uomo d’armi convince l’io narrante – che rimane senza nome – che stanno costruendo una diga nel Grand Canyon, la quale diga devasterà l’ambiente. Va eliminata.
Ma più che ragioni ambientaliste - i nostri due non sono certo anime ‘verdi’ – si tratta di liberare i pesci, le trote iridate, che la diga danneggerebbe impedendo loro di risalire la corrente per andare a deporre le uova.
Anche in questo caso, occorre sgombrare il campo da presunti propositi animalisti, di salvaguardia dell’habitat e delle sue creature: il veterano di guerra vuole solo che non sia limitata la sua libertà di pescare. Le trote devono abboccare al suo amo e finire nel suo retino.
E così convince il fresco più giovane amico che devono far saltare in aria quella diga. Questa è la loro missione.
Via, si parte. I due salgono in auto, fanno il primo stop in una cittadina della Georgia per aggiungere alla spedizione la bella Sylvia, fidanzata di Tim.
Le cose si delineano presto così: Sylvia è più innamorata di Tim di quanto lui lo sia di lei – il narratore s’invaghisce, o proprio innamora di Sylvia – e quindi, anche se forse non lo avevano considerato subito, il triangolo, per quanto con angoli fluttuanti, si presenta come situazione concreta.
Dimenticavo di dire che Tim è ovviamente tornato dalla guerra del Vietnam non proprio tutto a posto: ha visto e fatto cose che non riesce ad accettare, dimenticare, metabolizzare. E quindi, è possibile che abbia l’idea di un lento suicidio a base di droghe in pillole e alcol. Oppure, è solo diventata la sua condizione permanente, quella di strafatto.
Siamo in un classico topos americano, sia letterario che cinematografico: l’on-the-road tale, il racconto di un viaggio, i protagonisti in movimento da qui a là, ma anche senza una vera mèta.
Il che si traduce, ovviamente, in viaggio sia geografico che esistenziale: il cui obiettivo interiore sembrerebbe essere quella di prendere coscienza della propria inadeguatezza alle regole e convenzioni sociali di un mondo che non riconoscono e di una vita che non li attrae.
Man mano la diga da far saltare diventa il progetto di far saltare tutte le dighe che ci sono. Ma poi siccome non esiste alcuna diga nel Grand Canyon, si adattano e decidono di far esplodere qualcos’altro. In fondo, quello che cercano davvero è di accendere una miccia nelle loro vite, farle deflagrare, visto che non riescono a scenderci a patti.
A peggiorare le cose, se ce ne fosse bisogno, il narratore sfoggia una compiaciuta autocommiserazione che lo induce a colpevolizzarsi perché non riesce a ‘salvare’ Tim da droghe alcol e propositi suicidi, non riesce a essere all’altezza del suo amore per Sylvia, che rimane più che altro focalizzata su Tim: e men che meno riesce a essere all’altezza dei fieri nativi che abitavano la terra che stanno attraversando.
Tutto questo si può trovare nelle pagine di altri autori, ma con più ironia, pregio che Harrison mi sembra non possedere.
Dipende dal fatto che il suo grande amore è la poesia e ne ha scritte e pubblicate a volontà? O dipende dal fatto che se qualcuno giudica Hemingway troppo macho, quel qualcuno dovrebbe misurare il livello del testosterone di Jim Harrison.
Che io ho letto più volte (tre) senza mai riuscire a trovare sintonia.
Gli adattamenti cinematografici dalle sue opere – ai quali ha anche collaborato in veste di sceneggiatore – hanno peggiorato le cose, allontanandomi da lui ancora più.
In Florida, a Key West, il giovane plurilaureato narratore, che qui e là lascia intuire che nel suo passato ci sia una moglie e probabilmente anche un figlio – è probabile, forse possibile, che lei l’abbia invitato a lasciarli, a sloggiare – incontra Tim, un veterano del Vietnam di poco più grande di lui.
L’uomo d’armi convince l’io narrante – che rimane senza nome – che stanno costruendo una diga nel Grand Canyon, la quale diga devasterà l’ambiente. Va eliminata.
Ma più che ragioni ambientaliste - i nostri due non sono certo anime ‘verdi’ – si tratta di liberare i pesci, le trote iridate, che la diga danneggerebbe impedendo loro di risalire la corrente per andare a deporre le uova.
Anche in questo caso, occorre sgombrare il campo da presunti propositi animalisti, di salvaguardia dell’habitat e delle sue creature: il veterano di guerra vuole solo che non sia limitata la sua libertà di pescare. Le trote devono abboccare al suo amo e finire nel suo retino.
E così convince il fresco più giovane amico che devono far saltare in aria quella diga. Questa è la loro missione.
Via, si parte. I due salgono in auto, fanno il primo stop in una cittadina della Georgia per aggiungere alla spedizione la bella Sylvia, fidanzata di Tim.
Le cose si delineano presto così: Sylvia è più innamorata di Tim di quanto lui lo sia di lei – il narratore s’invaghisce, o proprio innamora di Sylvia – e quindi, anche se forse non lo avevano considerato subito, il triangolo, per quanto con angoli fluttuanti, si presenta come situazione concreta.
Dimenticavo di dire che Tim è ovviamente tornato dalla guerra del Vietnam non proprio tutto a posto: ha visto e fatto cose che non riesce ad accettare, dimenticare, metabolizzare. E quindi, è possibile che abbia l’idea di un lento suicidio a base di droghe in pillole e alcol. Oppure, è solo diventata la sua condizione permanente, quella di strafatto.
Siamo in un classico topos americano, sia letterario che cinematografico: l’on-the-road tale, il racconto di un viaggio, i protagonisti in movimento da qui a là, ma anche senza una vera mèta.
Il che si traduce, ovviamente, in viaggio sia geografico che esistenziale: il cui obiettivo interiore sembrerebbe essere quella di prendere coscienza della propria inadeguatezza alle regole e convenzioni sociali di un mondo che non riconoscono e di una vita che non li attrae.
Man mano la diga da far saltare diventa il progetto di far saltare tutte le dighe che ci sono. Ma poi siccome non esiste alcuna diga nel Grand Canyon, si adattano e decidono di far esplodere qualcos’altro. In fondo, quello che cercano davvero è di accendere una miccia nelle loro vite, farle deflagrare, visto che non riescono a scenderci a patti.
A peggiorare le cose, se ce ne fosse bisogno, il narratore sfoggia una compiaciuta autocommiserazione che lo induce a colpevolizzarsi perché non riesce a ‘salvare’ Tim da droghe alcol e propositi suicidi, non riesce a essere all’altezza del suo amore per Sylvia, che rimane più che altro focalizzata su Tim: e men che meno riesce a essere all’altezza dei fieri nativi che abitavano la terra che stanno attraversando.
Tutto questo si può trovare nelle pagine di altri autori, ma con più ironia, pregio che Harrison mi sembra non possedere.
Dipende dal fatto che il suo grande amore è la poesia e ne ha scritte e pubblicate a volontà? O dipende dal fatto che se qualcuno giudica Hemingway troppo macho, quel qualcuno dovrebbe misurare il livello del testosterone di Jim Harrison.
Che io ho letto più volte (tre) senza mai riuscire a trovare sintonia.
Gli adattamenti cinematografici dalle sue opere – ai quali ha anche collaborato in veste di sceneggiatore – hanno peggiorato le cose, allontanandomi da lui ancora più.
April 14, 2023
“Romantic love was certainly our messiest invention.”
I would hate to know almost every person I encountered in this novel in real life, but there is something strangely compelling about this short, propulsive book. There are lots of things one might feel about A GOOD DAY TO DIE, but one thing that I would think any reader of it would agree on is that Jim Harrison was an interesting (if not very talented) writer.
In this book an unnamed narrator goes on a cross-country trip with two other companions. One a drug addled Vietnam veteran, and the other the woman who loves said vet. Their goal is to blow up dams in the American West. These wannabe eco terrorists are deeply troubled individuals. Our unnamed narrator is a vastly interesting character as Mr. Harrison reveals small bits of his backstory throughout the book, but never enough about him to create a completely full, or even remotely accurate, picture of the man. And yet the bits about him that are revealed are consistently interesting. He has a kid, he is (or was) married, he is well travelled, he reads D.H. Lawrence, etc.
I think the thing I liked most about this book, published in 1973, is that I’m not sure it would be published in today’s censorious environment. These characters are not woke, they are not sanitized versions of eco terrorists. They are real people. Real disgusting people. Who they really are would contradict the modern (false) narrative of their eco agenda. Thus, it could not be shared. “Sensitive” (and by that I mean censors) editors would not publish it.
Quotes:
• “She was an as#$*!e and I couldn’t have loved her at gunpoint.”
• “…I felt very melancholy pondering all the little cheats people pull on one another.”
• “Perhaps the movies have an eternal stranglehold on me as I either fall “in love” at first sight or not at all.”
• “It is so easy to become fatigued with love.”
• “So many good women fall in love with maniacs I thought.”
• “I’ve always wondered how people who don’t know anything about history get by, but I’ve realized if you are ignorant of history you’re not lost in it.”
• “I reflected stupidly on how much everyone needed the night to give at least the appearance of a fresh start.”
• “How could she be a foot away and still so distant?”
• “I wasn’t use to questioning the essential truth of the way I lived.”
• “Being oblique and directionless is the least attractive characteristic if you want to get screwed. A moron will get laid a lot if he has the self-assurance of an average ward heeler.”
• “I knew in my drunkenness that I had lost any remnant of control and would somehow merely have to wait and see what I would do.”
The final realization that our narrator has is about as honest a self-reflection as a person could have about themselves. It is a perfect ending for this text. A GOOD DAY TO DIE is one of the more intriguing reads that I have had in a while, and for that alone it was worth the trip through its 176 pages.
I would hate to know almost every person I encountered in this novel in real life, but there is something strangely compelling about this short, propulsive book. There are lots of things one might feel about A GOOD DAY TO DIE, but one thing that I would think any reader of it would agree on is that Jim Harrison was an interesting (if not very talented) writer.
In this book an unnamed narrator goes on a cross-country trip with two other companions. One a drug addled Vietnam veteran, and the other the woman who loves said vet. Their goal is to blow up dams in the American West. These wannabe eco terrorists are deeply troubled individuals. Our unnamed narrator is a vastly interesting character as Mr. Harrison reveals small bits of his backstory throughout the book, but never enough about him to create a completely full, or even remotely accurate, picture of the man. And yet the bits about him that are revealed are consistently interesting. He has a kid, he is (or was) married, he is well travelled, he reads D.H. Lawrence, etc.
I think the thing I liked most about this book, published in 1973, is that I’m not sure it would be published in today’s censorious environment. These characters are not woke, they are not sanitized versions of eco terrorists. They are real people. Real disgusting people. Who they really are would contradict the modern (false) narrative of their eco agenda. Thus, it could not be shared. “Sensitive” (and by that I mean censors) editors would not publish it.
Quotes:
• “She was an as#$*!e and I couldn’t have loved her at gunpoint.”
• “…I felt very melancholy pondering all the little cheats people pull on one another.”
• “Perhaps the movies have an eternal stranglehold on me as I either fall “in love” at first sight or not at all.”
• “It is so easy to become fatigued with love.”
• “So many good women fall in love with maniacs I thought.”
• “I’ve always wondered how people who don’t know anything about history get by, but I’ve realized if you are ignorant of history you’re not lost in it.”
• “I reflected stupidly on how much everyone needed the night to give at least the appearance of a fresh start.”
• “How could she be a foot away and still so distant?”
• “I wasn’t use to questioning the essential truth of the way I lived.”
• “Being oblique and directionless is the least attractive characteristic if you want to get screwed. A moron will get laid a lot if he has the self-assurance of an average ward heeler.”
• “I knew in my drunkenness that I had lost any remnant of control and would somehow merely have to wait and see what I would do.”
The final realization that our narrator has is about as honest a self-reflection as a person could have about themselves. It is a perfect ending for this text. A GOOD DAY TO DIE is one of the more intriguing reads that I have had in a while, and for that alone it was worth the trip through its 176 pages.
May 9, 2021
I don’t write reviews.
Harrison’s style is slick and painterly. I had no issues there. In fact, it was this loose brushwork that kept me reading to the end. I really enjoy those moments when I read a phrase so delectable and precious that I have to read it again.
The storyline was alright. The characters, however, were painful people with which to spend time. Reviewers claim the problem was misogyny, but they’re wrong. There was only self-hate in this story. The woman was as bad to others as they were to her. I felt like they were too old and had seen too much to be acting like such whiny toddlers. I did enjoy the wanderings in the first-person view of the main character. Sometimes.
“Watching the others now, through the sweet blur of whiskey, I began to realize just how tentative my interest in life itself was. I did not qualify even as an observer, let alone a pilgrim. Or to make it tiresome, I was not in the stands watching or in the field playing, I was down in some sub-basement regarding the whole base structure indifferently. My friends no longer existed, neither did my wife. I had no state or country, no governor or president. We used to call such people nihilists, but that is much too strong a word for a vacuum.”
“But they were only attitudes for me that were believed because one repeated them, like the lies one repeated until they owned their own inalterable reality.”
“We forget how hot humans are, how physical. Ninety-eight and six-tenths and damp.”
Harrison’s style is slick and painterly. I had no issues there. In fact, it was this loose brushwork that kept me reading to the end. I really enjoy those moments when I read a phrase so delectable and precious that I have to read it again.
The storyline was alright. The characters, however, were painful people with which to spend time. Reviewers claim the problem was misogyny, but they’re wrong. There was only self-hate in this story. The woman was as bad to others as they were to her. I felt like they were too old and had seen too much to be acting like such whiny toddlers. I did enjoy the wanderings in the first-person view of the main character. Sometimes.
“Watching the others now, through the sweet blur of whiskey, I began to realize just how tentative my interest in life itself was. I did not qualify even as an observer, let alone a pilgrim. Or to make it tiresome, I was not in the stands watching or in the field playing, I was down in some sub-basement regarding the whole base structure indifferently. My friends no longer existed, neither did my wife. I had no state or country, no governor or president. We used to call such people nihilists, but that is much too strong a word for a vacuum.”
“But they were only attitudes for me that were believed because one repeated them, like the lies one repeated until they owned their own inalterable reality.”
“We forget how hot humans are, how physical. Ninety-eight and six-tenths and damp.”
April 20, 2016
”I was struck again as I had been for years by how my fishing so hypnotically wiped the slate clean again though only for as long as I was in the river. For a few hours though all problems--money, sex, alcoholism, generalized craziness--disappeared in concentrating on the flow of water, the likely places for feeding trout to be, the clear current or in the eddies next to the grassy banks or behind the large rocks and boulders that broke the water’s surface, forming pockets behind them that always seemed to hold a fish or two.”
Jim Harrison looking like a ne’er-do-well.
Whenever I’ve tried to fish, I’ve spent the whole time thinking about all the other things I’d rather be doing, but if my life was as screwed up as the narrator of this novel, I, too, might develop a liking for fishing. He is a man trying to escape himself, like a man caught in a burning building looking for an open window. He does best when his mind can focus on one thing, like trying to catch a fish. The world is complicated, and his reactions to it are to be self-deprecating and constantly keeping himself wrapped in a cocoon of drugs and alcohol.
If Ernest Hemingway, Edward Abbey, and Hunter Thompson stayed up all night boozing, whoring, and writing, this manuscript, stained with blood, wine, semen, and unidentifiable powder substances, might be the result. The editor would need to read the wrinkled pages with gloves on.
Our narrator is a loser and is trapped in a loop that ensures that he remains a loser. To not be a loser invites responsibility and expectations. He chases women, but when they show interest, he nullifies that interest by seeing them as slobs, dopes, and sluts. He has wild thoughts of self-destruction. ”I would become a monk of violence and blow myself up---troublesome cock and brain full of romance---in a single deliciously orange explosion.”
But really he isn’t motivated enough to do much of anything, except drink himself into a coma. ”The bartender advertised last call and I ordered a triple Granddad as a suitable sleeping pill. Narcosis with the liver hit by a club.” When he meets Tim in a bar in Key West, he has found the spark plug that will finally motivate him to momentarily drift out of the rut of his life. Tim has recently returned from Vietnam, and the war experience has left him physically and mentally scarred and unhinged. He is up for anything, and fortunately for the Narrator, who is flat broke, he has a wallet full of money.
They decide to blow up a dam and pick up a dame.
Sylvia is Tim’s girlfriend, and what makes her a more puzzling character is that she seems way too sane to spend more than one evening watching these two guys get wasted and having to put up with Tim chasing everything in a skirt except her.
Whether through loyalty or boredom, she goes the distance.
The narrator falls head over heels in love with her. The unattainable Sylvia, because frankly Tim would probably kill him or put him in so much pain that he would wish that Tim had killed him. As Tim starts to realize how the narrator feels about Sylvia, it becomes a new form of torture that he can exploit for his amusement. As they drive across the country, staying in the same room, Sylvia and the narrator are spending more and more time together as Tim disappears on further adventures of debauchery that go beyond the endurance of the narrator. Tim enjoys dangling Sylvia in front of the narrator and gleefully watches the misery this causes.
The narrator is sporting almost a 24 hour hardon. If he had some duct tape, he’d tape it down to his belly. Sylvia may have started the journey chaste and demure in the face of his lust, but as she receives less and less attention from Tim, she starts to encourage a controlled amount of attention from the narrator.
Of course, it is all doomed.
”’I love you. I won’t tell him,’” but the word ‘love’ sounded flimsy and childish from my mouth.”
I’m not sure how autobiographical this novel is, but it certainly felt like Jim Harrison was exorcising some of his own demons. He is exploring his own dissatisfaction with his own weaknesses, his own meanness, his own self-hating, and his own small minded need for what he is unwilling to put enough effort into attaining. The narrator’s desire to escape, to fish, and to be in regions less inhabited is a reflection of Harrison’s own desires. Some readers found the machismo, ultra-heterosexual, drug and alcohol spree off putting. I certainly understand that, but in no way is this a celebration of that lifestyle or a veneration of being these three people.
It feels more like Harrison is sticking his thumb in an open wound in his own psyche.
I would have certainly enjoyed this book more in my twenties. This is one of those baffling things about being a lifetime reader, the books I realize, decades later, that I’ve never read. I’ve read many Harrison novels, but somehow never read this one. I have very fond memories of his book Farmer and intend to reread it in the near future to see if it still proves to be one of my favorite books by him.
Jim acquired some miles along the way.
R.I.P. Jim Harrison. December 11th, 1937-March 26th, 2016
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Jim Harrison looking like a ne’er-do-well.
Whenever I’ve tried to fish, I’ve spent the whole time thinking about all the other things I’d rather be doing, but if my life was as screwed up as the narrator of this novel, I, too, might develop a liking for fishing. He is a man trying to escape himself, like a man caught in a burning building looking for an open window. He does best when his mind can focus on one thing, like trying to catch a fish. The world is complicated, and his reactions to it are to be self-deprecating and constantly keeping himself wrapped in a cocoon of drugs and alcohol.
If Ernest Hemingway, Edward Abbey, and Hunter Thompson stayed up all night boozing, whoring, and writing, this manuscript, stained with blood, wine, semen, and unidentifiable powder substances, might be the result. The editor would need to read the wrinkled pages with gloves on.
Our narrator is a loser and is trapped in a loop that ensures that he remains a loser. To not be a loser invites responsibility and expectations. He chases women, but when they show interest, he nullifies that interest by seeing them as slobs, dopes, and sluts. He has wild thoughts of self-destruction. ”I would become a monk of violence and blow myself up---troublesome cock and brain full of romance---in a single deliciously orange explosion.”
But really he isn’t motivated enough to do much of anything, except drink himself into a coma. ”The bartender advertised last call and I ordered a triple Granddad as a suitable sleeping pill. Narcosis with the liver hit by a club.” When he meets Tim in a bar in Key West, he has found the spark plug that will finally motivate him to momentarily drift out of the rut of his life. Tim has recently returned from Vietnam, and the war experience has left him physically and mentally scarred and unhinged. He is up for anything, and fortunately for the Narrator, who is flat broke, he has a wallet full of money.
They decide to blow up a dam and pick up a dame.
Sylvia is Tim’s girlfriend, and what makes her a more puzzling character is that she seems way too sane to spend more than one evening watching these two guys get wasted and having to put up with Tim chasing everything in a skirt except her.
Whether through loyalty or boredom, she goes the distance.
The narrator falls head over heels in love with her. The unattainable Sylvia, because frankly Tim would probably kill him or put him in so much pain that he would wish that Tim had killed him. As Tim starts to realize how the narrator feels about Sylvia, it becomes a new form of torture that he can exploit for his amusement. As they drive across the country, staying in the same room, Sylvia and the narrator are spending more and more time together as Tim disappears on further adventures of debauchery that go beyond the endurance of the narrator. Tim enjoys dangling Sylvia in front of the narrator and gleefully watches the misery this causes.
The narrator is sporting almost a 24 hour hardon. If he had some duct tape, he’d tape it down to his belly. Sylvia may have started the journey chaste and demure in the face of his lust, but as she receives less and less attention from Tim, she starts to encourage a controlled amount of attention from the narrator.
Of course, it is all doomed.
”’I love you. I won’t tell him,’” but the word ‘love’ sounded flimsy and childish from my mouth.”
I’m not sure how autobiographical this novel is, but it certainly felt like Jim Harrison was exorcising some of his own demons. He is exploring his own dissatisfaction with his own weaknesses, his own meanness, his own self-hating, and his own small minded need for what he is unwilling to put enough effort into attaining. The narrator’s desire to escape, to fish, and to be in regions less inhabited is a reflection of Harrison’s own desires. Some readers found the machismo, ultra-heterosexual, drug and alcohol spree off putting. I certainly understand that, but in no way is this a celebration of that lifestyle or a veneration of being these three people.
It feels more like Harrison is sticking his thumb in an open wound in his own psyche.
I would have certainly enjoyed this book more in my twenties. This is one of those baffling things about being a lifetime reader, the books I realize, decades later, that I’ve never read. I’ve read many Harrison novels, but somehow never read this one. I have very fond memories of his book Farmer and intend to reread it in the near future to see if it still proves to be one of my favorite books by him.
Jim acquired some miles along the way.
R.I.P. Jim Harrison. December 11th, 1937-March 26th, 2016
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
August 27, 2011
Finished it because it has some very nice prose. Protagonist is an asshole (which would be fine for some other readers but) and overall it's pretty much your standard macho heterosexual jerk-off book. The one female character is even more one-dimensional than the two main male characters, etc., not a very rewarding read and wouldn't recommend it to others.
February 13, 2024
In the age of anything goes and not much is taboo (well, maybe just logic and truth) vulgarity is not necessarily. It diminished the writing for me. I seriously doubt it was any better in the 70s.
I hope the rest of his books are not written this way 😕
I hope the rest of his books are not written this way 😕
October 20, 2020
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/a-...
...I WENT BACK to my room and lolled around naked…
Never surprised with an opening like this in a Jim Harrison work of art. I cannot imagine what he was actually like in real life. Perhaps one day we’ll get a closer look at the man. I do know he was much softer than the hardness his work pretends to be. He for sure was a well-read intellect and lover of almost anything fine be it literature, wine, women, food, and any number of things.
...My own wife had driven me to the airport in addition to loaning me the fare, an emotionless process that followed months of talk where no one was really wrong because no one had ever been right…
Let’s forgive his unrevised use of the noun “loan” as a verb. Harrison claims he never revised, wrote longhand, and his oldest daughter transcribed. Not a great way of working as far as limiting mistakes in punctuation or meaning. But let’s segue and focus instead on the fact that most Jim Harrison characters are divorced or going through a divorce. Most are hard drinkers who overeat and indulge in as many vices as possible. Some of these characters begin to get tiring and become retreads due to how many books Harrison has written. But regardless, these reminders of bad behavior are generally good for us recovering fools. And some anecdotes are quite laughable. Generally, at least in his later works, there are characters we can like, or get to know, or feel like we know them. This novel fails to have any characters attractive and interesting enough to be worth knowing.
...My life might be a loathsome mess to an outsider but I cherished the notion that it was honest…
The most redeeming quality of this second-rate novel is the superb title. Hardly a better one in my opinion. Countless options to discover or venture out into with a title as all-consuming as this one. But a good title does not make a good novel. Hardly the case. To think I enjoyed this novel the first time I read it many years ago is some indication on how much I have changed, or grown, or it is hoped, evolved in both my character and discernment of great literature. This book is hardly even good entertainment. As Harrison aged and gained additional friends and life experiences his writing changed as well. As it should. But he had to begin here to get there. And I am grateful he never gave up the pen.
...If I did any good at all it might be to let a few miserable fish swim to that higher, cleaner water where they were surely meant to spawn, as surely anyway as we are meant to die or vote or drink or screw out our torpid days…
Harrison puts his own stamp on what I read. And it was hardly worth the effort to painfully slog my way to the end. But I did. And even in this book’s woeful inadequacies there is every reason to continue to explore all facets of Harrison’s writing. There are rewards aplenty for those of us with staying power.
...I WENT BACK to my room and lolled around naked…
Never surprised with an opening like this in a Jim Harrison work of art. I cannot imagine what he was actually like in real life. Perhaps one day we’ll get a closer look at the man. I do know he was much softer than the hardness his work pretends to be. He for sure was a well-read intellect and lover of almost anything fine be it literature, wine, women, food, and any number of things.
...My own wife had driven me to the airport in addition to loaning me the fare, an emotionless process that followed months of talk where no one was really wrong because no one had ever been right…
Let’s forgive his unrevised use of the noun “loan” as a verb. Harrison claims he never revised, wrote longhand, and his oldest daughter transcribed. Not a great way of working as far as limiting mistakes in punctuation or meaning. But let’s segue and focus instead on the fact that most Jim Harrison characters are divorced or going through a divorce. Most are hard drinkers who overeat and indulge in as many vices as possible. Some of these characters begin to get tiring and become retreads due to how many books Harrison has written. But regardless, these reminders of bad behavior are generally good for us recovering fools. And some anecdotes are quite laughable. Generally, at least in his later works, there are characters we can like, or get to know, or feel like we know them. This novel fails to have any characters attractive and interesting enough to be worth knowing.
...My life might be a loathsome mess to an outsider but I cherished the notion that it was honest…
The most redeeming quality of this second-rate novel is the superb title. Hardly a better one in my opinion. Countless options to discover or venture out into with a title as all-consuming as this one. But a good title does not make a good novel. Hardly the case. To think I enjoyed this novel the first time I read it many years ago is some indication on how much I have changed, or grown, or it is hoped, evolved in both my character and discernment of great literature. This book is hardly even good entertainment. As Harrison aged and gained additional friends and life experiences his writing changed as well. As it should. But he had to begin here to get there. And I am grateful he never gave up the pen.
...If I did any good at all it might be to let a few miserable fish swim to that higher, cleaner water where they were surely meant to spawn, as surely anyway as we are meant to die or vote or drink or screw out our torpid days…
Harrison puts his own stamp on what I read. And it was hardly worth the effort to painfully slog my way to the end. But I did. And even in this book’s woeful inadequacies there is every reason to continue to explore all facets of Harrison’s writing. There are rewards aplenty for those of us with staying power.
May 1, 2018
Three very different characters from the Florida Keys team up in an unlikely friendship on a road trip across the US for the most unlikely of reasons, to blow up a dam on the Clearwater in Idaho as a protest against its unethical construction, fuelled with a mass of drugs and alcohol. Tim is a Vietnam veteran with a battle-scarred face, finds a new friend in a fishing bum out of Key West retreating from society and the establishment. Shortly after they leave they are joined by Sylvia, a beautiful woman inexplicably attracted to Tim.
It’s an anti-establishment story written in the 70s with a subliminal message of the destruction caused by drugs and war, a dark exploration of America in that period, with a particularly powerful ending.
It’s an anti-establishment story written in the 70s with a subliminal message of the destruction caused by drugs and war, a dark exploration of America in that period, with a particularly powerful ending.
March 18, 2017
This reminds me of why I love Jim Harrison’s writing – it feels and moves like autobiography (in fact I can’t recall the narrator is named). It’s hard to imagine that it could be written without a great deal of personal experience. And therein lies its pathos – these 3 people were truly messed up at the outset and over a few days of a rollicking roadtrip out west they imbibe a vast quantity of uppers, downers, pot and alcohol. The whole concept was concocted on a passing remark the protagonist makes in a bar in the Florida Keys to a Vietnam vet stranger. They decide to blow up a dam out west and take off in an intoxicated roar, picking up Timmy’s (the vet) girlfriend Sylvia. She is a major part of the story as a naïve, natural beauty along for this truly insane ride. He is entranced and repelled, but mostly sexually driven, by her innocence and keeps lapsing into fantasies of love. Her boyfriend (Timmy) is off the deep end, so jacked up on speed he doesn’t see her anymore and can’t perform – so this odd threesome have some peculiar encounters along the way. This book has a brilliant climax, almost unpredictable in its unpredictability – it reminded me of Abby’s The Monkey Wrench Gang in time and place and social construction.
The story is told entirely and tightly within the mind of the narrator with frequent reveries backwards and forward fantasies interspersed. Harrison is very skillful with this, and he speeds and slows and blurs and sharpens the narrative in perfect tune with the narrator’s states of mind (often fueled by drugs or alcohol, regrets and/or epiphanies). This is what makes Harrison so prescient and his tales so readable for me. But be warned, he will not temper his intemperance or make himself any kind of hero – he is that brutally honest sort that lays bare his animalistic libido, misogyny, and shocking venality. He is not a good many and you will not like him. His road his narrow and alternates between bliss and horror. Amazing he had the calm to ever write, but maybe those were times like the nature days, when he removed himself for periods of time from his obviously wild lifestyle. I refuse to read about him until I’ve consumed all his art.
My interest in Harrison was when I lived in Michigan and once traveled the west coast in his old stomping grounds. He is a man of nature, and his fishing interest and descriptions are immaculate (I an connect there). It occurred to me that he is like his character Tristan (Legends of the Fall) who can live away from civilization for long stretches to get right, then come back into town for massive excesses of whoring, drinking and eating; followed by a return to the purity of nature. He must have been like that, RIP o troubled one.
Here are some memorable quotes:
On Timmy the Vietnam vet (p. 42): “His time in Vietnam had changed things. When she visited him in the hospital in San Diego he still liked and wanted her but he had been through too much shit, too many drugs and Saigon whores for it to ever be quite the same again. She kept bringing up the idea of marriage until he became more and more abusive. It occurred to me that I had done something similar a number of times: You have ceased loving someone but you are still hanging on, so you begin to mistreat them.”
On his superiority complex… (p. 69): “It was all very pitiable in a way. These two didn’t seem to below to the twentieth century although they bore so many of its characteristic scars. I’ve always wondered how people who don’t know anything about history get by, but I realized if you are ignorant of history you are not lost in it. Sylvia was only intent, it seemed, on some age old mating procedure and felt a certain desperation in having given over six or seven years to a man who’s conception of a proper life must have come from an old Errol Flynn movie. So simple and almost charming if you didn’t know and care for them, a particularly curious country song set into action. And she would out of an almost biological drive probably return home and marry finally someone she didn’t love at all but have children she did love.”
On revealed misogyny behind “love”… (p. 156): “’You’re just like him and I couldn’t go through that again’….I began to deny this but she turned and walked up the steps and through the tavern door. I smoked a cigarette and felt a kind of palpable sleaziness that I hadn’t known in years. Perhaps I was like him. I thought of myself as much smarter but that made no difference to her or to me for that matter. I stood there trying to pull from airy nothing, from the exhaust of passing cars, some real difference between Tim and myself that I could use to assure her that my love was solid and that I would take care of her. But I couldn’t and I never really intended to. I wanted to have her for a year. Or less. ……….I knew in my drunkenness that I had lost any remnant of control and would somehow merely have to wait and see what I would do.”
The story is told entirely and tightly within the mind of the narrator with frequent reveries backwards and forward fantasies interspersed. Harrison is very skillful with this, and he speeds and slows and blurs and sharpens the narrative in perfect tune with the narrator’s states of mind (often fueled by drugs or alcohol, regrets and/or epiphanies). This is what makes Harrison so prescient and his tales so readable for me. But be warned, he will not temper his intemperance or make himself any kind of hero – he is that brutally honest sort that lays bare his animalistic libido, misogyny, and shocking venality. He is not a good many and you will not like him. His road his narrow and alternates between bliss and horror. Amazing he had the calm to ever write, but maybe those were times like the nature days, when he removed himself for periods of time from his obviously wild lifestyle. I refuse to read about him until I’ve consumed all his art.
My interest in Harrison was when I lived in Michigan and once traveled the west coast in his old stomping grounds. He is a man of nature, and his fishing interest and descriptions are immaculate (I an connect there). It occurred to me that he is like his character Tristan (Legends of the Fall) who can live away from civilization for long stretches to get right, then come back into town for massive excesses of whoring, drinking and eating; followed by a return to the purity of nature. He must have been like that, RIP o troubled one.
Here are some memorable quotes:
On Timmy the Vietnam vet (p. 42): “His time in Vietnam had changed things. When she visited him in the hospital in San Diego he still liked and wanted her but he had been through too much shit, too many drugs and Saigon whores for it to ever be quite the same again. She kept bringing up the idea of marriage until he became more and more abusive. It occurred to me that I had done something similar a number of times: You have ceased loving someone but you are still hanging on, so you begin to mistreat them.”
On his superiority complex… (p. 69): “It was all very pitiable in a way. These two didn’t seem to below to the twentieth century although they bore so many of its characteristic scars. I’ve always wondered how people who don’t know anything about history get by, but I realized if you are ignorant of history you are not lost in it. Sylvia was only intent, it seemed, on some age old mating procedure and felt a certain desperation in having given over six or seven years to a man who’s conception of a proper life must have come from an old Errol Flynn movie. So simple and almost charming if you didn’t know and care for them, a particularly curious country song set into action. And she would out of an almost biological drive probably return home and marry finally someone she didn’t love at all but have children she did love.”
On revealed misogyny behind “love”… (p. 156): “’You’re just like him and I couldn’t go through that again’….I began to deny this but she turned and walked up the steps and through the tavern door. I smoked a cigarette and felt a kind of palpable sleaziness that I hadn’t known in years. Perhaps I was like him. I thought of myself as much smarter but that made no difference to her or to me for that matter. I stood there trying to pull from airy nothing, from the exhaust of passing cars, some real difference between Tim and myself that I could use to assure her that my love was solid and that I would take care of her. But I couldn’t and I never really intended to. I wanted to have her for a year. Or less. ……….I knew in my drunkenness that I had lost any remnant of control and would somehow merely have to wait and see what I would do.”
June 12, 2021
Horrible book, story, language, crudeness, rape. Don’t even crack the cover. Total waste and disgusting.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 6, 2021
This book was originally published in 1973 and then issued in the Audible version in 2019 after the death of the author. A number of his books have apparently been re-issued following is 2016 death.
I am beginning to think that reading a number of books by this particular author simultaneously back to back is possibly not the best approach to enjoying his writing. Looking through the list of additions of this book and seeing that there are a number of additions published in French reminded me that I had previously learned that this authors books had achieved a good deal of popularity in France. He observed that his French sales and popularity often exceeded that in the US and was a great benefit to him financially.
This is a slight repetition of other books in that it is experienced considerably on the road as 3 People drive from Florida up to Idaho with a plan to blow up a dam. There is considerable drinking and drugs and sex.
My previous experience with this author must’ve been with his more notable pieces of work as I would not say that the quality of this book is up to earlier ones that I experienced. I conclude this book with the uncertainty about what it was all about and what it is supposed to prove or show.
I am beginning to think that reading a number of books by this particular author simultaneously back to back is possibly not the best approach to enjoying his writing. Looking through the list of additions of this book and seeing that there are a number of additions published in French reminded me that I had previously learned that this authors books had achieved a good deal of popularity in France. He observed that his French sales and popularity often exceeded that in the US and was a great benefit to him financially.
This is a slight repetition of other books in that it is experienced considerably on the road as 3 People drive from Florida up to Idaho with a plan to blow up a dam. There is considerable drinking and drugs and sex.
My previous experience with this author must’ve been with his more notable pieces of work as I would not say that the quality of this book is up to earlier ones that I experienced. I conclude this book with the uncertainty about what it was all about and what it is supposed to prove or show.
March 8, 2018
I feel like I might have enjoyed this more as a younger, more reckless version of myself. The writing is masculine and alcohol/drug-fueled, calling to mind Hemingway, Bukowski, Palahniuk, etc etc. But nowadays I can't stomach the misogyny, the absence of strong female characters, and the complete lack of a moral compass. A good glimpse into our fairly recent and regrettable past.
Read
June 8, 2019While I love Jim Harrison and his books, I've now read his first two novels and they're maybe a bit too hornbally for me. The dude loved sex. I've read some later ones so I know he grows out of it but reading a book written in 1973 in 2019 really makes you question some things. That said, fantastic quality and it's always fun to chaotically rumble around the West with Jim, even if it the story was a little too sex crazed for my reading tastes.
March 7, 2021
Shout out to Hank who probably never reads these but got to listen to this with me on the trek back from AZ!
Checks all of the Harrison boxes
-Main character from Michigan
-Drug abuse
-Alcoholism
-A tour of western states
-General nihilism
-A male character obsessed with a female character
One of his better stories. I think. Getting repetitive in a way that is not endearing.
Checks all of the Harrison boxes
-Main character from Michigan
-Drug abuse
-Alcoholism
-A tour of western states
-General nihilism
-A male character obsessed with a female character
One of his better stories. I think. Getting repetitive in a way that is not endearing.
February 27, 2023
Great start, great finish, great descriptions of the lovely scenery, but every second paragraph is the narrator fantasising about shagging his mates girlfriend. By the hundredth time he’d mentioned “her sex” I was well and truly done caring about the loser.
May 21, 2023
This is one of Jim Harrison’s early novels. It was written in the 1970s and has that 70s feel to it. A drug and alcohol fueled road trip with a grand gesture in mind. There is a strong post Vietnam, antiestablishment vibe to it. Well worth reading if you are a Harrison fan.
December 13, 2025
This seems like the kind of book you and your boomer uncle would read and both like, but when you say to him "boy, the guy who wrote this must have been a real piece of shit, huh?" your uncle would get really offended.
July 31, 2018
Instantly, one of my favorite books.
February 10, 2025
Unlikable characters on an erratic eco-terrorist adventure. Carries an ominous feeling throughout. Lots of fishing too ;)
September 22, 2024
Le récit est agréablement porté par les trois personnages, imparfaits mais attachants. Leur quête n’est finalement qu’un prétexte pour passer une bonne lecture en leur compagnie :)
January 19, 2018
I suspect Jim Harrison is not for everyone, but I've enjoyed every book I've read so far. A Good Day To Die (1973) has many of the usual themes from other books. It is more plot driven than some of his other books. The narrator meets a recent Vietnam vet, Tim, in Key West and they hit it off on a boozy night. Then they decide to drive to the Grand Canyon and blow up a dam they think is being built there. On the way there they pick up Tim's ex-girl friend Sylvia, who causes sexual tension among the group as they speed west high on uppers and downers and steadily drinking as they tear up the highway with a trunk full of dynamite. This aspect of the novel calls to mind Bukoswki or Hunter S. Thompson. The narrator is a gourmand who also loving describes the meals he eats and is an outdoors man and a dedicated fisherman-this aspect calls to mind Hemingway. There's no way this can end well. It was a hell of a ride though.
February 17, 2020
I read this book before and found it disappointing. While Harrison’s writing is fine and his descriptions of the land through which the characters travel are well drawn it still comes across as the tale told by a horny teenager. Reading it again in memory of a friend whose recent passing reminded me of her delight in Harrison’s writing only left me let down again.
I may write a slightly more extensive review soon but suffice to say that, while Harrison is one of my favorite writers, I won’t recommend this book. Unless you really like stories written by a grown man acting like a frustrated, horny fifteen year old lusting repetitively after a woman he either wants to screw or doesn’t want to screw, don’t read this book.
Please consider reading one or more of his later novels like Legends of the Fall, True North, Sundog, The Great Leader or even his poetry and memoirs. He became a really good writer after this nonsense.
I may write a slightly more extensive review soon but suffice to say that, while Harrison is one of my favorite writers, I won’t recommend this book. Unless you really like stories written by a grown man acting like a frustrated, horny fifteen year old lusting repetitively after a woman he either wants to screw or doesn’t want to screw, don’t read this book.
Please consider reading one or more of his later novels like Legends of the Fall, True North, Sundog, The Great Leader or even his poetry and memoirs. He became a really good writer after this nonsense.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2014
Road movie au ton d'abord acide mettant en scène un vétéran du Vietnam qui a ce rêve fou de faire exploser un barrage du Grand Canyon. D'abord sombre, le récit met en scène l'alcool, la drogue, le sexe qui se mêlent ensuite aux désirs et souvenirs d'une autre vie. Pour se terminer dans une scène grand-guignolesque de vaches éclatées, de barrage fendu et de mort d'un membre de la fine équipe. Tout cela à un rythme sans concession.
January 11, 2008
I like Jim Harrison, but this is a dark side that I didn't quite appreciate
January 13, 2010
A strange artifact of a strange era.
July 14, 2016
Mytho-masculine b.s.
July 26, 2018
Stupid book about a childish imitation of love and a childish interpretation of fish. Neither matters.
October 29, 2025
I heard the Backlisted team talking about how great Jim Harrison's work is. They raved about his landscape and nature writing. Right up my alley! So I got a copy and immediately cracked it open... and finished it.
Overall, incredibly disappointing. It's about a privileged neurotic white guy drifting through life in the middle 1970s, repressing some unexplained trauma full-time. He meets another white guy (less privileged, more impulsive) and they go on a cross-country road trip to blow up a dam. It's very much a type of book, one of those modernist masterpieces where the characters struggle with inarticulate feelings across pages of interior monologue and ultimately say nothing to each other, usually in the rain. I don't think there's any actual rain in the book, but it felt very damp nonetheless. (Calls to mind the type of story described by Thom Jones as "about a guy who drives around a lake -- with ennui.)
The book is 102 pages long; 98 pages are set-up. Readable enough so long as you aren't interested in characters or character development or plot or dramatic conflict, if you're willing to read between the lines and guess about the things the characters can't say. One can write well and compellingly about characters wasting their lives (Denis Johnson does! Robert Stone pulls it off!) without making the reader feel like they're also wasting their lives.
To be clear, this book will appeal to some readers. (Although I think of them as the type who try on pith helmets in private and think golf is a man's sport. You know, self-loathing masochists.)
Overall, incredibly disappointing. It's about a privileged neurotic white guy drifting through life in the middle 1970s, repressing some unexplained trauma full-time. He meets another white guy (less privileged, more impulsive) and they go on a cross-country road trip to blow up a dam. It's very much a type of book, one of those modernist masterpieces where the characters struggle with inarticulate feelings across pages of interior monologue and ultimately say nothing to each other, usually in the rain. I don't think there's any actual rain in the book, but it felt very damp nonetheless. (Calls to mind the type of story described by Thom Jones as "about a guy who drives around a lake -- with ennui.)
The book is 102 pages long; 98 pages are set-up. Readable enough so long as you aren't interested in characters or character development or plot or dramatic conflict, if you're willing to read between the lines and guess about the things the characters can't say. One can write well and compellingly about characters wasting their lives (Denis Johnson does! Robert Stone pulls it off!) without making the reader feel like they're also wasting their lives.
To be clear, this book will appeal to some readers. (Although I think of them as the type who try on pith helmets in private and think golf is a man's sport. You know, self-loathing masochists.)
April 3, 2022
This is a riotous adventure with the three main characters cavorting in a variety of situations with their ultimate goal to blow up a Western dam with a kerosene and fertilizer bomb detonated with some sticks of dynamite. The man with experience in demolition and war is a Vietnam vet partnered with a lost individual who is a part time fisherman and full time dreamer. They share everything from wacky ideas to drug/alcohol consumption to the love of a Florida gal, Sylvia. Their road adventure seems typical of the freewheeling times of the early 1970's but the destruction and chaos they create is the heart of this fiction story. The author used this title which is said to be an expression uttered by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Native American tribe during their travails against the US Cavalry in the Indian Wars of the late 19th Century. The imagery and language is vibrant and author Harrison is masterful in creating suspense, sexual tension and plain nuttiness as these characters move in their inevitable drive toward their particular Gotterdamerung. A real wow of a tale and for anyone familiar with that period of Americana the settings and behaviors and references bring back a variety of memories. Does anyone remember the bombing of the lab at the University of Wisconsin? It is those kinds of things which might jar the alert reader; I was alert and do recommend this small volume.
April 4, 2021
I have no idea why I picked this up, it must have been recommended to me. But halfway into this book, I have to let it go. As great of a storyteller as Harrison obviously is, and as beautifully rendered are his discriptions of landscape and setting, the overt bonehead misogyny of this book is making it impossible for me to continue. Written in the early 70s, it tells the story of a washed-up poet, bruised by a divorce from his Wellesyn ex-wife who falls in with a drug addled VietNam vet and his doormat girlfriend, who the vet treats like dirt and with whom the poet "falls in love," though how, or why, one never really knows. Its a road trip from Florida to the Grand Canyon long on drinkin' and whorin' and short on character development, and like a teenage boner, it becomes tedious fast. I want to know what happens, but I do not want to spend a moment longer with any of these characters, so I'm putting it down and spending more time with Harrison's poetry, which is far more worthwhile than this horndog novel.
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