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The English Major
“It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn’t.” With these words, Jim Harrison begins a riotous, moving novel that sends a sixty-something man, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, on a road trip across America. Cliff is armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds, the latter of which have been unjustly saddled with white men’s banal monikers up until now. His adventures take him through a whirlwind affair with a former student from his high-school-teacher days twenty-some years before, to a “snake farm” in Arizona owned by an old classmate, and to the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer who has just bought an apartment over the Presidio in San Francisco. Now in paperback, Jim Harrison’s riotous and moving cross-country novel, The English Major, is the map of a man’s journey into, and out of, himself. It is vintage Harrison—reflective, big-picture American, and replete with wicked wit.
272 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
377 people are currently reading
2277 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 649 reviews
January 27, 2022
“Time tricks us into thinking we’re part of her and then leaves us behind.”
I came across Jim Harrison later than I expected. I was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s ‘No Reservations’ and he was showcasing the beautiful landscapes of the state of Montana along with the not-so-beautiful Jim Harrison. The scruffy looking, wild-faced, cigarette-sucking, nasally-sounding Harrison seems like a figure from the old days. A man that looks so odd and unique, you can’t look away as he tells one of his many stories; Bourdain was usually the central figure, but during this episode, Harrison was the show. I probably saw this episode 5 or 6 years ago and it’s sad to say that I’m just now encountering his work for the first time.
In ‘The English Major’, Harrison’s protagonist, Cliff, has just fallen on some of his hardest times. He’s sixty years old. His wife, Vivian has left and divorced him for an old friend, his cherished dog Lola dies and now the ex-wife has found a way to kick him off the farm that he’s lived on for nearly four decades.
What does a man do with all these hardships facing him?
He hits the road. Yes, the road.
To find himself? No, to start a project on renaming the states and state birds of our nation to coincide with the Native American tribes who lived in said states.
On a Harley-Davidson? No, an old Ford Taurus that has 200,000+ miles and could break down at any time.
By himself? Absolutely not. He picks up an old student of his on his way out west from Michigan.
Get in trouble? No, but gets a good chaffing that requires penis salve.
See everything he wanted to see? Yes and more. This trip, this odyssey, was what Cliff needed in order to realize that no matter where he was, the concept of home took a grasp of his mind and body and brought him back to it.
Witty and comical, it was entertaining and showcased his writing style as easy-going, but very heavy on the story-telling aspect and that’s what I needed right now.
October 23, 2008
Harrison is like Garrison Keiler, a voice I treasure. Even when he is distressed, there's a warmth and deepness that soothes. Because he writes from a spirit that is pure and heartful. He always draws attention to the small details that we can so easily pass over in life, yet hold all the meaning for our spirit. This is a simple book, an easy read, not much of a plot, and not his greatest, but all in all I still really liked it.
February 10, 2013
Having struggled through the overly plotted machinations of Gone Girl it was a pleasure to dive into Jim Harrison's shaggy dog story road trip and reflection on late middle age crisis. When you are reading Harrison you cannot help but hope and feel that the fictional characters are proxy!s for the author. Harrison's protagonists are lusty learned men with big appetites for food drink and the beauty of Mother Nature. They all seem like people I want to meet and hang out with. On nearly every page of this road trip novel the hero Cliff a 60 year old retired farmer offers an aphorism or commentary that reflects on the joys or problems associated with modern America. Perhaps Harrison written to the already converted but I would consider my self one of the faithful . after reading this book I wanted to go out have a great meal, with a great drink and top it off with a night of unbridled lust . Harison makes you live life and love reading about people who do. I look forward to diving in to another novel by the prolific Harrison very soon.
January 8, 2009
I really loved the author's "Returning to Earth" and when I saw he had a new book out, I jumped on it. And while I saw some similar elements in this story--namely, Michigan and Native American references, I didn't like the main character in the way I liked the last ones. This guy was a dirty old man and made far too many references to his dick. Totally turned me off! And it's too bad, because it's such a lovely premise--divorced older man hits the road to visit each of the United States.
April 17, 2022
Better than the collections of novellas but not near the grandeur of Dalva. Cliff is sixty year old man, formerly a teacher in small town Michigan and for twenty five years a farmer he finds himself outside of his previous life. His wife has left him and sold the farm of which he receives but a tenth of payment. Thus he embarks on road trip by which the reader follows in an interesting if unlikely novel. The meditations on sex and technology appears as rants. His vistas are often impressive but the characters are flawed devices. Emerson is shadowed hero of this endeavor. Melville and Dickinson offer dark portents through the motel nights. The nod to Nabokov was appreciated.
I certainly am more conscious of the menace of snakes after reading 1100 pages of Harrison over the last week or so.
I certainly am more conscious of the menace of snakes after reading 1100 pages of Harrison over the last week or so.
August 27, 2009
"It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't."
Divorced by his wife of 38 years, farm sold out from under him, Cliff drives away from a green valley in Michigan in a 13-year old Taurus with a childhood wooden puzzle map of the United States on the passenger seat.
Satisfying, rich, personal account of coming to age, complete with OnStar, trout fishing, grown kids, renamed States, and as Cliff's friend AD calls it "strip-searching" a life.
Divorced by his wife of 38 years, farm sold out from under him, Cliff drives away from a green valley in Michigan in a 13-year old Taurus with a childhood wooden puzzle map of the United States on the passenger seat.
Satisfying, rich, personal account of coming to age, complete with OnStar, trout fishing, grown kids, renamed States, and as Cliff's friend AD calls it "strip-searching" a life.
July 1, 2016
Mes premiers pas avec Jim Harrison ont été extraordinaires, un voyage avec Cliff, un sexagénaire fraîchement divorcé, blessé mais encore plein de vigueur et qui n’a pas l’intention de se laisser abattre, malgré un coup dur porté par son ex-femme : la vente de la ferme familiale du Michigan.
A travers cette odyssée, qui nous fera franchir les frontières de certains états des Etats-Unis, son ancienne vie refait surface de temps à autre, comment se débarrasser de tant d’années à vivre au rythme des saisons, et des cerisiers ? Difficile pour cet homme d’être « libre » de nouveau.
Son projet ? Traverser tous les états en se débarrassant à chaque frontière d’un morceau du puzzle des Etats-Unis qui l’accompagne. Il part donc à l’aventure avec un peu d’argent et l’adresse d’une ancienne élève, Marybelle, qui lui fera redécouvrir les joies du sexe et qui ne le laissera pas tranquille une seconde.
Un périple pendant lequel il rencontrera des personnages atypiques de l’Amérique d’aujourd’hui.
A travers cette odyssée, qui nous fera franchir les frontières de certains états des Etats-Unis, son ancienne vie refait surface de temps à autre, comment se débarrasser de tant d’années à vivre au rythme des saisons, et des cerisiers ? Difficile pour cet homme d’être « libre » de nouveau.
Son projet ? Traverser tous les états en se débarrassant à chaque frontière d’un morceau du puzzle des Etats-Unis qui l’accompagne. Il part donc à l’aventure avec un peu d’argent et l’adresse d’une ancienne élève, Marybelle, qui lui fera redécouvrir les joies du sexe et qui ne le laissera pas tranquille une seconde.
Un périple pendant lequel il rencontrera des personnages atypiques de l’Amérique d’aujourd’hui.
January 29, 2009
In the mood for an amusing road novel? This will fill the bill. Poor old Cliff, former English teacher and longtime farmer, at a high school class reunion, his wife of more than 30 years disappeared with a former classmate for hours and reappeared with grass stains on her knees. Bad sign. Soon she’s not only left Cliff for (ahem) greener pastures, but has sold the farm out from under him.
He takes off in his beater with the intent of visiting every state, giving it a new more suitable name, and at the same time renaming all the state birds and then some. On the way, he picks up a former student and rolls in the hay with her across several states. And true to the tradition of a good road novel, it’s a journey into himself as well as a trip awy.
It’s a good Harrison read. Funny, pointed, wickedly witty. Apt musings on people and places.
He takes off in his beater with the intent of visiting every state, giving it a new more suitable name, and at the same time renaming all the state birds and then some. On the way, he picks up a former student and rolls in the hay with her across several states. And true to the tradition of a good road novel, it’s a journey into himself as well as a trip awy.
It’s a good Harrison read. Funny, pointed, wickedly witty. Apt musings on people and places.
December 11, 2016
I thought this book was crude. I didn't get very far. I liked the idea upon which it was based -- the protagonist's quest to visit all 50 states after his wife leaves him, his dog dies, and he loses his farm. But the language was offensive, the descriptions crude and the more I got to know the protagonist, the less I liked him. Why go on reading? I didn't.
November 29, 2025
A Midwest farmer goes on the road to find himself. Or something like that. The farmer is well educated but the farm is really his wife's property, so when she decides to sell it, he must go in search of something new at a time in life when many men aged 45-65 are buying Porsches and Harley-Davidsons (it's an American obsession). Manifest Destiny, indeed.
The book consists of the farmer's adventures and the thoughts inside his head. He seems like a decent dude. He loved the farm, especially his beloved dog, who died before the farm was sold. Of course, the new owners aren't going to farm. Symbolic of the Bobo Class, they will tear out orchards and do kitchen renovations (it's an American obsession). The ex-farmer hits the road with the purpose of re-naming the states and the official "state birds" so they can be more in line with his old childhood wooden puzzle of the United States. As he leaves each state, he throws out that state's wooden piece, signifying another goodbye to the past.
This was my first Jim Harrison book and while it was a very easy read, I had a harder time trying to like anything about it. The characters are simply obnoxious, certainly not the stolid Midwesterners who all but hold up what's left of the old American ways. The farmer's wife has become a greedy real estate agent (it's an American obsession). The farmer's son has gone West to California where he works in The Industry and lives in a San Francisco flat. The woman who ends up travelling with the farmer is one of his ex-students, back when he was a teacher. She spends most of the novel sleeping with him and whining (it's an American obsession). I dreaded any new potential character, as they all seemed repulsive.
Where Harrison does excel is when he acknowledges the landscape of the Great Empty, where the skies are closer to the ground than on the coasts and one can still imagine what the land must have looked like before it was ruined by developers (it's an American obsession). But the constant thoughts of the main character and his one-track mind with having sex with younger women is, well, skanky. Maybe it might have seemed okay back in 2008, but the entire book is already dated. Maybe I just don't get Harrison. Maybe this is what it felt like to read Hemingway back in the 1920s and 1930s. But I doubt it.
Book Season = Summer (premature meatballs)
The book consists of the farmer's adventures and the thoughts inside his head. He seems like a decent dude. He loved the farm, especially his beloved dog, who died before the farm was sold. Of course, the new owners aren't going to farm. Symbolic of the Bobo Class, they will tear out orchards and do kitchen renovations (it's an American obsession). The ex-farmer hits the road with the purpose of re-naming the states and the official "state birds" so they can be more in line with his old childhood wooden puzzle of the United States. As he leaves each state, he throws out that state's wooden piece, signifying another goodbye to the past.
This was my first Jim Harrison book and while it was a very easy read, I had a harder time trying to like anything about it. The characters are simply obnoxious, certainly not the stolid Midwesterners who all but hold up what's left of the old American ways. The farmer's wife has become a greedy real estate agent (it's an American obsession). The farmer's son has gone West to California where he works in The Industry and lives in a San Francisco flat. The woman who ends up travelling with the farmer is one of his ex-students, back when he was a teacher. She spends most of the novel sleeping with him and whining (it's an American obsession). I dreaded any new potential character, as they all seemed repulsive.
Where Harrison does excel is when he acknowledges the landscape of the Great Empty, where the skies are closer to the ground than on the coasts and one can still imagine what the land must have looked like before it was ruined by developers (it's an American obsession). But the constant thoughts of the main character and his one-track mind with having sex with younger women is, well, skanky. Maybe it might have seemed okay back in 2008, but the entire book is already dated. Maybe I just don't get Harrison. Maybe this is what it felt like to read Hemingway back in the 1920s and 1930s. But I doubt it.
Book Season = Summer (premature meatballs)
July 7, 2013
We're in Nebraska with this maniac former farmer, laughing on every page. Is it because he's 60 and life is just beginning for him?
March 4, 2015
I changed my star rating for this book and edited out my former review; not fair, I decided, to an author who gives so much pleasure, even if some of his later work varies in tone and quality...Viva Jim Harrison!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 2, 2025
DNF disappointingly crude
December 23, 2019
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/th...
...With death we will become unknown to ourselves...
Two summers ago my wife and I sold our cabin in northern Michigan, trading it for a life on the road with our new Oliver travel trailer. Not having an additional place to maintain affords me more leisure and reading time. Of late I have been reintroduced to an old favorite by the name of Jim Harrison who died in 2016. He hailed from northern Michigan as do I. Through the years we traipsed in many of the same areas, both in the Upper Peninsula and the northwest side of lower Michigan. I was born on the east side near Lake Huron which is home to the Huron National Forest, and remains to this day my favorite place to be and where I wish to eventually die.
...Given the right tools men will always murder each other…
The early works of Jim Harrison proved crude and natural to the man I was. It is interesting to note that Harrison retained that Michigan edge until the end, even though he had moved to Livingston, Montana and had a small home in Patagonia, Arizona where he died of a heart attack while writing a poem. The English Major follows the story of an aging Cliff who takes a long road trip after leaving his farm and wife in Michigan due to their divorce. For sex, Cliff soon teams up on the road with a married ex-student from Minnesota.
...I was in the toilet again when I heard her call her husband a “lame-brained motherfucker.” My goodness, I thought, and on my way out there she was on her tummy poised to make another call when I left, her panties drawn up fletchingly in her butt crack.. This was a fanny that could start a war and I felt blessed that I had the use of it for the time being, knowing how much I’d miss it when it was gone. An English poet said, “Kiss the joy as it flies.” You bet I would…
Both my wife and I love the essays of Jim Harrison. He speaks to us. Yes, he ate too much, consumed an exorbitant amount of fine wines, but he lived another full life just with his many dogs through the years, nature hiking four miles a day, hunting and fishing, and writing in his workshed with a beloved dog on the floor beside him. This was the first novel I had tackled since his early work which I felt I had outgrown.
...Coffee requires coffee in it...
Cliff’s plan is to visit all fifty states and rename those he can, change the designated state birds and flowers where appropriate, and generally figure out where to go from his present situation as a divorced senior citizen. Road travel rarely provides good meals or coffee, and Cliff’s experience recounted in The English Major is no different.
...there was a vague pain of feeling sorry for myself. Dad once warned me about this when I was mourning the loss of a girlfriend to a quarterback. I was a lonely lineman. I moped and moped, and then when we were cutting wood on an icy October morning he told me that self-pity was a ruinous emotion. “Look at the world, not up your ass,” he said.
Today, in the last month of 2019, my brother under me wrestles with two incurable forms of cancer and never visibly mopes or complains. He suffers with grace. The quotation above reminds me that on Easter Sunday of 2010 I fell off the roof of my cabin in northern Michigan. It was a dumb mistake. I was broken nearly in two with my right leg and knee shattered and my left arm broken and dislocated. This same dying brother told me back then that I obviously hadn’t first listened for that popping sound, that being my head coming out of my ass. Funny how the analogy of an asshole comes into play in both moping and making dreadful mistakes.
...My dissipating thoughts of life in terms of victory or defeat came along willy-nilly from a culture that pretended that life was more solid than it actually was. The edges were actually blurred and moved along with the infinitely variable shape of a river…
The English Major came along at just the right time for me, as does most of what I choose. Reading it was fun and a diversion we serious ones all need from time to time. The point of the story is the best we can all do is carry on and enjoy what we have. For some that ain’t much. For others it feels bountiful. Nonetheless, the trail leads on forever, and like Cliff we can always hitch up the sled.
...With death we will become unknown to ourselves...
Two summers ago my wife and I sold our cabin in northern Michigan, trading it for a life on the road with our new Oliver travel trailer. Not having an additional place to maintain affords me more leisure and reading time. Of late I have been reintroduced to an old favorite by the name of Jim Harrison who died in 2016. He hailed from northern Michigan as do I. Through the years we traipsed in many of the same areas, both in the Upper Peninsula and the northwest side of lower Michigan. I was born on the east side near Lake Huron which is home to the Huron National Forest, and remains to this day my favorite place to be and where I wish to eventually die.
...Given the right tools men will always murder each other…
The early works of Jim Harrison proved crude and natural to the man I was. It is interesting to note that Harrison retained that Michigan edge until the end, even though he had moved to Livingston, Montana and had a small home in Patagonia, Arizona where he died of a heart attack while writing a poem. The English Major follows the story of an aging Cliff who takes a long road trip after leaving his farm and wife in Michigan due to their divorce. For sex, Cliff soon teams up on the road with a married ex-student from Minnesota.
...I was in the toilet again when I heard her call her husband a “lame-brained motherfucker.” My goodness, I thought, and on my way out there she was on her tummy poised to make another call when I left, her panties drawn up fletchingly in her butt crack.. This was a fanny that could start a war and I felt blessed that I had the use of it for the time being, knowing how much I’d miss it when it was gone. An English poet said, “Kiss the joy as it flies.” You bet I would…
Both my wife and I love the essays of Jim Harrison. He speaks to us. Yes, he ate too much, consumed an exorbitant amount of fine wines, but he lived another full life just with his many dogs through the years, nature hiking four miles a day, hunting and fishing, and writing in his workshed with a beloved dog on the floor beside him. This was the first novel I had tackled since his early work which I felt I had outgrown.
...Coffee requires coffee in it...
Cliff’s plan is to visit all fifty states and rename those he can, change the designated state birds and flowers where appropriate, and generally figure out where to go from his present situation as a divorced senior citizen. Road travel rarely provides good meals or coffee, and Cliff’s experience recounted in The English Major is no different.
...there was a vague pain of feeling sorry for myself. Dad once warned me about this when I was mourning the loss of a girlfriend to a quarterback. I was a lonely lineman. I moped and moped, and then when we were cutting wood on an icy October morning he told me that self-pity was a ruinous emotion. “Look at the world, not up your ass,” he said.
Today, in the last month of 2019, my brother under me wrestles with two incurable forms of cancer and never visibly mopes or complains. He suffers with grace. The quotation above reminds me that on Easter Sunday of 2010 I fell off the roof of my cabin in northern Michigan. It was a dumb mistake. I was broken nearly in two with my right leg and knee shattered and my left arm broken and dislocated. This same dying brother told me back then that I obviously hadn’t first listened for that popping sound, that being my head coming out of my ass. Funny how the analogy of an asshole comes into play in both moping and making dreadful mistakes.
...My dissipating thoughts of life in terms of victory or defeat came along willy-nilly from a culture that pretended that life was more solid than it actually was. The edges were actually blurred and moved along with the infinitely variable shape of a river…
The English Major came along at just the right time for me, as does most of what I choose. Reading it was fun and a diversion we serious ones all need from time to time. The point of the story is the best we can all do is carry on and enjoy what we have. For some that ain’t much. For others it feels bountiful. Nonetheless, the trail leads on forever, and like Cliff we can always hitch up the sled.
August 4, 2025
Monumentally boring. Being a proud English major, I was drawn to the title, but I could not like the protagonist Cliff, a selfish, coarse man of sixty who did not seem ever to grow beyond his adolescent sexual drive; he used every woman in the story, from his equally shallow ex-wife Vivian to his more casual acquaintances to satisfy his immediate wants/needs. The only redeeming plot occurrence was his adoption of a dog and his mother at the end-and this was mentioned almost as an afterthought. Crude and offensive language. Ugh!
June 3, 2025
Cliff's wife thinks he's boring and divorces him. Cliff was an English teacher for ten years, then left that to tend his wife's family orchard. He grows cherries and cattle -- or he did, b/c when Vivian divorces him, he loses his livelihood as Vivian sells her family's farm. Cliff takes his small cut of the proceeds, and decides to take a cross-country trip, ending up at his son's in San Francisco, with some fly-fishing along the way.
He hooks up (literally) with a former student in Wisconsin. She wants a ride to Montana, which works into Cliff's plans anyway. Cliff has an old map-of-the-United-States puzzle that he used to work all the time with his son. As he cross state lines, he throws out the piece of the puzzle for that state. He also tells us (the readers) the info that is on each of these puzzle pieces, eg state flower. From Cliff's global plan to aimlessly drive yet his methodical attention to the details on the puzzle pieces and the topography, I get the sense that Cliff's wife is right: he is plodding and not too interesting. When Cliff and his former student start having wild sex each night (she IS in her forties at this point, but I still think "ewwww, it's a student of his."), I don''t understand why I kept reading. Hoping for more references to his college English courses?
Cliff has no epiphanies by the end of the story, but ends up back home in the UP of Michigan, with his wife wanting him back and his son encouraging her to go back to her. Since Cliff has apparently not learned to think for himself on his long trip, he will thus will return to his boring life.
Bleh to all the descriptions of sex for a sixty-year-old man. Bleh to Cliff for not figuring anything out.
He hooks up (literally) with a former student in Wisconsin. She wants a ride to Montana, which works into Cliff's plans anyway. Cliff has an old map-of-the-United-States puzzle that he used to work all the time with his son. As he cross state lines, he throws out the piece of the puzzle for that state. He also tells us (the readers) the info that is on each of these puzzle pieces, eg state flower. From Cliff's global plan to aimlessly drive yet his methodical attention to the details on the puzzle pieces and the topography, I get the sense that Cliff's wife is right: he is plodding and not too interesting. When Cliff and his former student start having wild sex each night (she IS in her forties at this point, but I still think "ewwww, it's a student of his."), I don''t understand why I kept reading. Hoping for more references to his college English courses?
Cliff has no epiphanies by the end of the story, but ends up back home in the UP of Michigan, with his wife wanting him back and his son encouraging her to go back to her. Since Cliff has apparently not learned to think for himself on his long trip, he will thus will return to his boring life.
Bleh to all the descriptions of sex for a sixty-year-old man. Bleh to Cliff for not figuring anything out.
March 17, 2025
Irreverent. Witty. At times, laugh-out-loud hilarious. And very (very!) sexy. Still, it was ultimately disappointing…and boring.
Cliff is 60 years old. After giving up a 10-year career as a high school English teacher to raise cherries on the family farm in Michigan, he is stunned when his wife of 38 years divorces him to take off with an old high school boyfriend who drives a flashy Italian sports car. In the process, she took just about everything, including Cliff's home and farm. So he sets off on a road trip in an ancient Ford Taurus with the idea of traveling to all 50 states. Cliff has an intense fear of flying so he hasn't figured out how he will visit Alaska and Hawaii. Along the way, he has a bizarre plan to rename all the states and the state birds.
Early on in the trip, he meets up with a former student named Marybelle in Morris, Minnesota. She's now 43, unhappily married, and very moody. Marybelle told Cliff that a cousin of hers in Bozeman, Montana is giving her her old car, so she hitches a ride with her old teacher to pick it up. This quickly develops into a lively, somewhat acrobatic, and even rather crude, sexual relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile, in what is essentially a travel journal we have lots of flashbacks to Cliff's earlier life, including his failed marriage to Viv, his beloved dead dog Lola, and his gay son Robert who is living in San Francisco and making a fortune as an inflential movie producer. In addition, there is a lot of introspection into what went wrong along the way.
The moral of it all? Change can be valuable at every stage of life if we figure out how to embrace it and benefit from it.
The prose is not quite stream-of-consciousness, but it's close, and at times it's so flat that it seems to drag on and on. Too much thinking, too much mid-life crisis angst, and not enough interesting action.
A humorous note: Very occasionally I buy books just for the title without even reading the synopsis. This is one of those times. I was an English major in college. How perfect! Of course, soon after the purchase, it occurred to me that the English major may not be the collegiate literary type but rather the British army type. Turns out it was the former. And there are several well-intentioned jokes about English majors that I found enjoyable.
Still, it's a slow and ponderous read.
Cliff is 60 years old. After giving up a 10-year career as a high school English teacher to raise cherries on the family farm in Michigan, he is stunned when his wife of 38 years divorces him to take off with an old high school boyfriend who drives a flashy Italian sports car. In the process, she took just about everything, including Cliff's home and farm. So he sets off on a road trip in an ancient Ford Taurus with the idea of traveling to all 50 states. Cliff has an intense fear of flying so he hasn't figured out how he will visit Alaska and Hawaii. Along the way, he has a bizarre plan to rename all the states and the state birds.
Early on in the trip, he meets up with a former student named Marybelle in Morris, Minnesota. She's now 43, unhappily married, and very moody. Marybelle told Cliff that a cousin of hers in Bozeman, Montana is giving her her old car, so she hitches a ride with her old teacher to pick it up. This quickly develops into a lively, somewhat acrobatic, and even rather crude, sexual relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile, in what is essentially a travel journal we have lots of flashbacks to Cliff's earlier life, including his failed marriage to Viv, his beloved dead dog Lola, and his gay son Robert who is living in San Francisco and making a fortune as an inflential movie producer. In addition, there is a lot of introspection into what went wrong along the way.
The moral of it all? Change can be valuable at every stage of life if we figure out how to embrace it and benefit from it.
The prose is not quite stream-of-consciousness, but it's close, and at times it's so flat that it seems to drag on and on. Too much thinking, too much mid-life crisis angst, and not enough interesting action.
A humorous note: Very occasionally I buy books just for the title without even reading the synopsis. This is one of those times. I was an English major in college. How perfect! Of course, soon after the purchase, it occurred to me that the English major may not be the collegiate literary type but rather the British army type. Turns out it was the former. And there are several well-intentioned jokes about English majors that I found enjoyable.
Still, it's a slow and ponderous read.
November 5, 2021
I am on a streak of Jim Harrison books. This book is proof of that reading truism that you should try not to read an excellent book just before you read a less than excellent book. A good author loses in this circumstance.
In this book the main character is 60 years old and is engaged in a cross country trip by automobile after splitting up with his wife of many years. One has to wonder about a book where the titles are the names of the states. And included in each chapter is the state bird state flower and the state this and that. Not very original. And I continue to discover that this author suffers from a bit of repetition of relatively minor details. Regrettably I can’t remember if the details are repeated within the same book or are recalled from the last book. After a couple more of his upcoming books on my list, I should be able to be more clear on that aspect of his writing.
Our 60 year old hero is not really much of a hero. At the beginning of his trip he picks up a woman who used to be his student when he was a high school teacher. He is 60 and she is 40. They continue this automotive trip through the states with considerable sex. When she finally vanishes in the rearview mirror, he takes up with another woman. This fixation is not particularly intriguing to me. I wonder if I actually knew anything about the real character of this author if he would turn out to be a bit of a boring sexist. That would be disappointing. It might be that he was simply a product of his time and geographic location which was the upper portion of Michigan.
In this book the main character is 60 years old and is engaged in a cross country trip by automobile after splitting up with his wife of many years. One has to wonder about a book where the titles are the names of the states. And included in each chapter is the state bird state flower and the state this and that. Not very original. And I continue to discover that this author suffers from a bit of repetition of relatively minor details. Regrettably I can’t remember if the details are repeated within the same book or are recalled from the last book. After a couple more of his upcoming books on my list, I should be able to be more clear on that aspect of his writing.
Our 60 year old hero is not really much of a hero. At the beginning of his trip he picks up a woman who used to be his student when he was a high school teacher. He is 60 and she is 40. They continue this automotive trip through the states with considerable sex. When she finally vanishes in the rearview mirror, he takes up with another woman. This fixation is not particularly intriguing to me. I wonder if I actually knew anything about the real character of this author if he would turn out to be a bit of a boring sexist. That would be disappointing. It might be that he was simply a product of his time and geographic location which was the upper portion of Michigan.
December 20, 2009
Festooned with guffaws and lousy with homely truths, the novel's first-person narration irritated me with its self-indulgence.
Oh it starts out promisingly enough with Cliff, a numb, over-the-hill farmer,talking out his troubles. Poor guy's split with his wife, his dog's dead, the farm's been sold. Worse still, his penis has become, uh, an unreliable friend. GONGGG!!! Yes boys and girls, it's time to take to the road. And we know what that means to English majors: a trip into one's own head. A long talk with one's Self. Or even a long mumble.
Pretty soon he's careening around the American West for close encounters with piss-ants, picaresques, homeward-looking angels, way-station madonnas and sloppy swains. The lunatic cast vibrates with energy enough to jump-start a moribund heart. Too bad you can't defibrillate a cinder; our hero's almost unreachable. Mostly, our burned-out old guy only wants to fish and to (f-word). Oh yeah, and to rename things. He thinks he can improve on the assigned names for American states and birds.
Can't think of much more to say, except that the title's a blotch on the escutcheon of us English majors.
Oh it starts out promisingly enough with Cliff, a numb, over-the-hill farmer,talking out his troubles. Poor guy's split with his wife, his dog's dead, the farm's been sold. Worse still, his penis has become, uh, an unreliable friend. GONGGG!!! Yes boys and girls, it's time to take to the road. And we know what that means to English majors: a trip into one's own head. A long talk with one's Self. Or even a long mumble.
Pretty soon he's careening around the American West for close encounters with piss-ants, picaresques, homeward-looking angels, way-station madonnas and sloppy swains. The lunatic cast vibrates with energy enough to jump-start a moribund heart. Too bad you can't defibrillate a cinder; our hero's almost unreachable. Mostly, our burned-out old guy only wants to fish and to (f-word). Oh yeah, and to rename things. He thinks he can improve on the assigned names for American states and birds.
Can't think of much more to say, except that the title's a blotch on the escutcheon of us English majors.
December 18, 2008
On the surface this is a travel novel. The narrator, Cliff, who has lost his farm and his wife in a divorce, hits the road to restore himself. He travels through the western U.S. on a mission to rename the birds and states of America. But his real journey is the one in his mind as he contemplates his past life and what makes life worth living. In the hands of the author Jim Harrison, this mind journey is made at 90 miles an hour while negotiating a thousand curves in the road making this novel a sheer delight at times. Harrison likes to think of himself as a man’s man; booze, sex, hunting dogs, trout fishing, and eating red meat are his life’s pleasures. This may bore the hell out of some readers but he can also be sentimental and wax poetically over the virtues of a good book. Harrison is at the top of his form here. Like driving cross country in a Cadillac Eldorado with the radio blasting, this book is just flat out fun.
September 18, 2015
I thoroughly enjoyed the protagonist's, Cliff, self-deprecating perspectives. He reminded me of a shaggy dog, a bit messy, but endearing. After finding himself without his faithful dog (RIP Lola), without his unfaithful wife and without his farm, he takes a road trip throughout the states. It's a great introspective journey filled with rekindled desires, self-awareness and intermittent fulfillment.
"I consoled myself with the idea that there was freedom in having this large portion of your past vaporize. Flumius fumus, or something like that, said Thomas Wolfe, my hero when I was a senior in high school. I think it meant that our life goes up in smoke." - Loc 1955.
"I consoled myself with the idea that there was freedom in having this large portion of your past vaporize. Flumius fumus, or something like that, said Thomas Wolfe, my hero when I was a senior in high school. I think it meant that our life goes up in smoke." - Loc 1955.
November 28, 2021
Not a fan. For a book penned in the 2000s, there are too many jokes in poor taste and it’s very sexist. It is as if the author gave the character permission to be an ass by blaming it on his friend the “drunk doctor”. Maybe it got better but it didn’t make the 100 page rule.
September 9, 2018
One last fling - that's what 60 year old Cliff wants in Harrison's mostly comedic novel. He's been raising cattle and tending an orchard for nearly 30 years in upper Michigan. He and his wife have just divorced and with some settlement money, he decides to take off on a cross-country auto trip.
He even has a rationale - he takes a puzzle that he found, one that his slow kid brother, now dead, used to like. Its pieces are made up of the 50 states, and as he passes through each, he'll discard a piece of the puzzle until it's gone. He's also decides to rename the states after Indian tribes and look for the state birds.
An ambitious agenda, but Cliff gets getting pulled back into the past, first by an attractive former student (he taught school before he became a farmer). She has her own marital problems and they travel together, sex with a woman twenty years younger rejuvenating his libido and ego. Cliff has a gay son who lives in San Francisco, a son who thinks the divorce was a mistake and that Cliff should get back together with his mother.
Cliff tires of his former student as he makes his way due west across America to Washington state before he heads south to see his son. Marybelle begins to drive him crazy with her constant cell phone usage and he manages to shed her in Montana. He enjoys himself along the way - sex with Marybelle which finally wears him out, fly fishing, bird watching and noticing the changing landscape of America.
Eventually, Cliff listens to his son and ends up by going home, and getting a piece of property in the woods where he can settle. His plan of visiting all of the states has fizzled out in Arizona. "
Cliff ruminates, "Ten years of teaching and twenty five of farming had beaten my youthful idealism senseless, but now I felt that it had begun to bubble up again in me." . Cliff gives up on his travel plans, "Perhaps I had encountered a life's work too late in life?" So how does going home allow his idealism to "bubble up" again? He thinks vaguely of living a Thoreau type of existence and of getting another dog to replace his longtime best canine friend, Lola. Certainly a scaled down existence from his road trip.
The title refers to Cliff's college years when he thought of his immersion in literature as one of dedication to high ideals and lofty expression, but then as he works through his life, all of those lofty beautiful thoughts become mere "decals we paste on our lives." Harrison's novel could have been a tragic one, but instead this chronicle of a man awkwardly trying to come to terms with his aging self is full of humor and often exuberantly creative language.
He even has a rationale - he takes a puzzle that he found, one that his slow kid brother, now dead, used to like. Its pieces are made up of the 50 states, and as he passes through each, he'll discard a piece of the puzzle until it's gone. He's also decides to rename the states after Indian tribes and look for the state birds.
An ambitious agenda, but Cliff gets getting pulled back into the past, first by an attractive former student (he taught school before he became a farmer). She has her own marital problems and they travel together, sex with a woman twenty years younger rejuvenating his libido and ego. Cliff has a gay son who lives in San Francisco, a son who thinks the divorce was a mistake and that Cliff should get back together with his mother.
Cliff tires of his former student as he makes his way due west across America to Washington state before he heads south to see his son. Marybelle begins to drive him crazy with her constant cell phone usage and he manages to shed her in Montana. He enjoys himself along the way - sex with Marybelle which finally wears him out, fly fishing, bird watching and noticing the changing landscape of America.
Eventually, Cliff listens to his son and ends up by going home, and getting a piece of property in the woods where he can settle. His plan of visiting all of the states has fizzled out in Arizona. "
Cliff ruminates, "Ten years of teaching and twenty five of farming had beaten my youthful idealism senseless, but now I felt that it had begun to bubble up again in me." . Cliff gives up on his travel plans, "Perhaps I had encountered a life's work too late in life?" So how does going home allow his idealism to "bubble up" again? He thinks vaguely of living a Thoreau type of existence and of getting another dog to replace his longtime best canine friend, Lola. Certainly a scaled down existence from his road trip.
The title refers to Cliff's college years when he thought of his immersion in literature as one of dedication to high ideals and lofty expression, but then as he works through his life, all of those lofty beautiful thoughts become mere "decals we paste on our lives." Harrison's novel could have been a tragic one, but instead this chronicle of a man awkwardly trying to come to terms with his aging self is full of humor and often exuberantly creative language.
February 17, 2018
Gosh, I'm sure going to miss Cliff, the 60-something protagonist of this fictionalized iconic American road trip tale. It's not often that I find myself so intrigued by a character and the way he approaches the world. Cliff, an English major, after being an English teacher for 10 years and then a farmer for the last 30 years while married to Viv, is suddenly without a farm or a marriage after Viv leaves him for her high school sweetheart Fred after meeting him at their 4oth reunion. Thrust into a baffling world from the routine world he has known and loved as a farmer, and armed with a jigsaw puzzle of the United States in his back seat, Cliff takes off from his home state of Michigan on a road trip around the western United States. Whenever he crosses the border of a new state, he throws the jigsaw piece of that state into a body of water.
Says Cliff: "I was getting lightened up in my mind by the immensity of the landscape and the idea that moment by moment everything I saw was something I had never seen before." What better way to cure the blues than to take the quintessential American road trip?
Cliff loves to fish, and he stops now and then to take photographs of various varieties of cows. He ruminates about his beloved dog Lola, his extremely wealthy gay son Robert, his alcoholic doctor friend AD, the literature he read as an English major, his own aging but still lustful body, and his ex-wife, Vivian, a real estate shark who has swindled him out of most of his rightful share of their net worth. Cliff has sexual fantasies about nearly every woman he encounters, most notably waitresses in cafes and bars where he stops. He picks up his ex-student Marybelle, 20 years his junior, who accompanies him on part of his trip, alternately wearing him out with her relentless sexual appetite or annoying him by talking endlessly on her cell phone. After he drops her off, he flushes his own cell phone down a toilet so he can't be bothered by her, his son, or his ex-wife, who's always asking him to sign more papers.
Lacking any purpose in life, Cliff decides he'll embark on a project to rename the states and the birds of America. What a delightful character Jim Harrison has created, one I'll hold dear for a long time.
One more thing. Jim Harrison's writing is a pleasure. I'm going to seek out more of his books!
Says Cliff: "I was getting lightened up in my mind by the immensity of the landscape and the idea that moment by moment everything I saw was something I had never seen before." What better way to cure the blues than to take the quintessential American road trip?
Cliff loves to fish, and he stops now and then to take photographs of various varieties of cows. He ruminates about his beloved dog Lola, his extremely wealthy gay son Robert, his alcoholic doctor friend AD, the literature he read as an English major, his own aging but still lustful body, and his ex-wife, Vivian, a real estate shark who has swindled him out of most of his rightful share of their net worth. Cliff has sexual fantasies about nearly every woman he encounters, most notably waitresses in cafes and bars where he stops. He picks up his ex-student Marybelle, 20 years his junior, who accompanies him on part of his trip, alternately wearing him out with her relentless sexual appetite or annoying him by talking endlessly on her cell phone. After he drops her off, he flushes his own cell phone down a toilet so he can't be bothered by her, his son, or his ex-wife, who's always asking him to sign more papers.
Lacking any purpose in life, Cliff decides he'll embark on a project to rename the states and the birds of America. What a delightful character Jim Harrison has created, one I'll hold dear for a long time.
One more thing. Jim Harrison's writing is a pleasure. I'm going to seek out more of his books!
November 4, 2018
I absolutely loved this book, probably because I’m the same age and gender of the protagonist. It should be required reading for all white males aged 60 or so. LOL.
Cliff is a former teacher and farmer who in short order has lost his beloved dog to death, his wife of 37 or so years to divorce , and his farm. So the antidote is a change of scenery from rural Michigan via a road trip. He hits the asphalt in an aging Ford Taurus with the goal of visiting every state with the idea of renaming them along with renaming the birds of North America. He’s carrying a childhood puzzle piece map of the USA and he discards each state piece once he leaves the state. The chapters are all titled by state.
It’s a journey of discovery and sexual reawakening. It’s also a meditation on a life richly lived or not. Harrison masterfully blends the rural with the urban, the bookish with the outdoors, and the past with the present. It was a great trip. I only wish he had spent more time in New Mexico.
Cliff is a former teacher and farmer who in short order has lost his beloved dog to death, his wife of 37 or so years to divorce , and his farm. So the antidote is a change of scenery from rural Michigan via a road trip. He hits the asphalt in an aging Ford Taurus with the goal of visiting every state with the idea of renaming them along with renaming the birds of North America. He’s carrying a childhood puzzle piece map of the USA and he discards each state piece once he leaves the state. The chapters are all titled by state.
It’s a journey of discovery and sexual reawakening. It’s also a meditation on a life richly lived or not. Harrison masterfully blends the rural with the urban, the bookish with the outdoors, and the past with the present. It was a great trip. I only wish he had spent more time in New Mexico.
July 19, 2013
You don't need to be an English major to enjoy this book, but it certainly adds to the fun since many different authors and their works are mentioned. But you will need an appreciation for salacious humor (laugh out loud funny, at times, but might be a little too ribald for some), a love of nature, and the ability to commiserate with a 60 year-old man on a road trip through the western states (he starts in Michigan) as he copes with divorce and the loss of his dog and his farm. Oh, and there's his ongoing personal project of re-naming all the states and birds such that they have names that he feels are more appropriate. That, in and of itself, is pretty funny.
I loved this book and highly recommend it. Great fun. I noticed that a couple reviewers here stated that you need to be a 60-something man to really get or enjoy this book. No, you don't.
I loved this book and highly recommend it. Great fun. I noticed that a couple reviewers here stated that you need to be a 60-something man to really get or enjoy this book. No, you don't.
May 7, 2017
The author sets us on a topsy-turvy road trip to really nowhere in particular. The book suffered from a loosely written plot. Come to think of it, I don't think there was even one to begin with. It ended not with a bang - a whimper.
An amusing tale of a older gent who had decided to take a road trip. His goal, visit all the states. Forty-eight anyway. It's something he'd always wanted to do and he had all the time in the world to do it. However, his plans get interrupted along the way by the people he meets. Even his son is vying for his attention. With all these distractions, he decides to cut his trip short.
An amusing tale of a older gent who had decided to take a road trip. His goal, visit all the states. Forty-eight anyway. It's something he'd always wanted to do and he had all the time in the world to do it. However, his plans get interrupted along the way by the people he meets. Even his son is vying for his attention. With all these distractions, he decides to cut his trip short.
July 31, 2012
I'm a huge Jim Harrison fan - this one was nicely done and amusing. Not his best but still enjoyable.
October 25, 2023
Not first-rate Jim Harrison, but always nice to have his voice.
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August 22, 2021A satisfying read. Many males of middle age will identify. Cliff, the protagonist of this first-person second coming-of-age novel, is an educated former school teacher who comes to despise his uninterested students snd takes up farming his father-in-law's fruit farm, nicely positioning himself between nature and literature. He farms both sweet and sour cherries, but his life itself turns sour when his wife of 38 years becomes a money-mad real-estate broker, has an affair, throws him out, sells the farm, and keeps the proceeds for herself.
What can cure this disease except for a road trip and a voracious sex-hungry delusional wasteland of a married former student he picks up along the way? Things do not so much pick up as swing back to the origins, his grandfather's burned-out old farm.
The story is an essay on contingency and its acceptance.
What can cure this disease except for a road trip and a voracious sex-hungry delusional wasteland of a married former student he picks up along the way? Things do not so much pick up as swing back to the origins, his grandfather's burned-out old farm.
The story is an essay on contingency and its acceptance.
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