A Really Big Lunch

T

Todd Abrams

Todd Abrams
"...it is always good to question the terminology of our enthusiasms. We can say that wine is essentially female because it comes from the earth and we don't say 'father earth.' The best things are female, including females, and allowing this characterization energizes our imaginations in ways not possible to other terminology. Blatant, loudmouthed, bad wines are, of course, male." -- Jim Harrison

Since being turned on to Jim Harrison over a decade ago it seems I've had little choice but to consume his work (the essays in particular) as Jim himself would consume bottles of Tempier Bandol. One of the quickest ways to my heart is poetic, philosophical musings on food, drink, and nature. It doesn't hurt that much of the background is set in and around Leelanau and Grand Marais, Michigan, agricultural and forested landscapes of which I am familiar and regard with deep affection. And although Harrison is oft compared to another northern Michigan writer in Ernest Hemingway, there's thankfully little of Hemingway's bravado in Harrison's work.

So it was with great pleasure to receive a copy of A Really Big Lunch. It's a posthumous collection of Harrison's food essays that were first published in a broad range of journals, from Martha Stewart Living to Playboy. Perhaps most interesting to this board are the handful of essays that Harrison wrote for Kermit Lynch and were published as part of the newsletter -- for the cool fee of nine cases of wine each, or so the old salt told me the one time I met him at an MSU reading with Richard Ford and Tom McGuane.

This and his other collection of food essays, The Raw and the Cooked, belong on the bookshelf of every gourmand, right there next to MFK Fisher, Brillat-Savarin, Calvin Trillin, etc...
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Wheeee! Damn that Jim Harrison.

However, whyza dig at Papa?
Click to expand...

I've no beef with Hemingway. I've read (and re-read) most all of his work. Even if Hemingway was a miserable poet, many of his short stories are the height of the form. I just think the comparison is facile.
 
Come now, nobody considers Hemingway's poetry.

I grant you liberty of Harrison from comparisons, that said.

And, yes, EH's short stories are made from perfect.
 
A small handful of Hemingway's stories are indeed beautiful. And the Sun Also Rises. But there is an awful lot of dross. I will always remember "I fear the Indians of Cleveland" from the Old Man and the Sea--and not in a good way.
 
At the Freiburg Victoria, the bar is called "Hemingway's." One of its rooms housed the morning coffee service. We stayed six nights, so I spent a disproportionate share of time there. The walls were adorned with many images of the man, his compatriots and his exploits.

I love Big Daddy and his tales. I love the U.P. - I am a trout fisherman to the core. I have eaten countless fish, many pheasants and several deer taken of my own hand. Still, one wall featured a photo of him with a leopard he had shot; Papa smiling, albeit not enthusiastically, and the beautiful animal, still then, and forever. I have no beef with killing animals one eats, but that deflated my soul a bit. Made me like Jim Harrison more than I had before, his love of wine notwithstanding.
 
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