True North

Rating:
Summary: True North Confirms Harrison's Reputation
Review: First let me say, Jim Harrison is the best "literary" writer working today. I formed that opinion based on some of his earlier work(Farmer, A Good Day To Die), and so had high expectations for True North. I wasn't disappointed.
The novel follows the quest of the protagonist, David Burkett, as he tries to come to terms with the evil done by his father to others, and to the land he loves. David finds more ambiguities than answers, though, and the clear sense of right and wrong that drives him begins to erode.
David's complex relationships with his family and to the natural world, as shaded by the past, are expertly explored. This is Harrison in top form.

Rating:
Summary: A Son's Redemption Journey through Humorville
Review: First of all, let say that I don't kno what book some of these
reviewers read. Esp. Publishers Weekly, Booklist,"Wendy" and "A
Shaggy Oedipus Joke" (don't you just love it, when someone uses jaded freudian jargon to hide behind??). It must not have been the same novel I read and loved. In each case, it seemed to say more about the reviewer than the book!!
So, the novel: I found it exhilirating, fascinating, stretching how Harrison wove his tale of fathers and sons, and the emotional, psychological journey most of us have to take.
And his use of current issues (like nuanced references to the DaVinci Code stirrings), theology, and especially right-wing christians were a scream (of course, unless you happen to be one.) Not to mention, his forays into sex.
All in all, a masterpiece and long-awaited. It just took him about 20 years, (which proves its worth.)

Rating:
Summary: Not for me, I guess
Review: I keep trying to read Harrison as many people I respect revere him. Yet again, I lost interest. Reading Harrison is like reading an intelligent and sensitive person's diary. His writing veers from insightful to deadly dull, with lots of meandering throughout.

Rating:
Summary: Meandering and dull
Review: Initially this seemed like a well written and compelling novel but after about 100 pages it became disjointed, uninteresting, and as unfocused as the protagonist. The writing was also a bit sloppy; for instance the author did not keep track of his own timeline. The protagonist takes his nephews to the zoo and professes not to be good with children at a point where these "children" should be in their late teens. All in all not worth the time.

Rating:
Summary: A Strange but Intoxicating Journey to Delayed Adulthood
Review: Jim Harrison is a writer's writer and a reader's writer and quite simply one of the best yarn spinners writing today. TRUE NORTH is a fine work of fiction that not only tells an intensely interesting story, it also exudes some of the more poetic prose and contemplative spiritual psychology that touches an audience of readers longing for books about environmentalism, about contemporary sexuality, about dysfunctional families, and about seeking sanity in a world apparently bent on squashing it.

Briefly, this is the story of David Burkett, born to Robber Barons in the Upper Penisula of Michigan who gained their wealth at the expense of destroying the timber lands which in turn deprived the Native Americans of their space and created a desecration of the land through logging and mining that permanently altered the target of their greed. But David wants revenge on his family's history, a history which includes his immediate family - a mother so lost in pills and alcohol and high society that she is unavailable, a father who is also an alcoholic, a pedophile, and in general a detestable boor who buys his way out of recurring run-ins with the law for raping young girls only to spend and squander the family fortune for his insatiable hedonism, and a sister Cynthia who, though younger than David, is brassy enough to escape this detestable family and run off with a half breed to disgrace the family she loathes. David attempts to avoid his genetic disposition by committing to right wing religion, but eventually fails in that and finds himself lusting after every female he encounters - never finding love, but never really knowing how to love. He finally decides his only salvation is to write a book that tells the public the truth about the environmental murderers of his family and his attempts to accomplish this mission fill the pages of this wondrous novel. How he finally arrives at a stage of self-realization and leaves his obsession with destroying the influence of his family's influence to discover that wearing the sins of his father around his neck has prevented him from looking up and ahead and seeing the beauty of nature and the connection with the meaning of life that this allows is the remarkable journey Harrison creates.

This story is never less than interesting and absorbing as a novel, but it is in the language of writing that Jim Harrison excels. His style includes free-association of sometimes a dozen thoughts and memories and observations in one paragraph. But he never loses us as readers. At times he stops for poetic words and the reader is strongly tempted to underline favorite passages as poems for re-reading later. "When you're sixteen your world is small and events easily conspire to make it even smaller. You have glimpses of greater dimensions but this perception easily retracts. Eros enlivens another world but not the simple world of masturbatory trance...Naturally during the act of love you're undisturbed by reality, a grace note I also found in trout fishing, but then lovemaking and fishing don't manage to dominate your life like you wished they could." "[Laurie] didn't so much die as withdraw, and her body under the sheet was still but there was an aura of departure that made me feel cold despite the warm room. Instead of pressing the button to call a nurse I listened to an aspect of emptiness I hadn't heard before as if her passing had stopped all other sound....When it was over I had nothing left about which to draw conclusions. My incomprehension was total. She was there and then she wasn't and though I understood the biological fact of death the whole ballooned outward from the mute sum of the parts." "...I recalled how a wonderfully cynical history professor had pointed out that when we came to America we were always discovering something like the source of the Mississippi that the Natives were already well aware of, but then our attitude to the Natives was not unlike Hitler's attitude toward the Jews. And the history of my family was not unlike the history of he United States. We were among the leading conquerors of a region and when we had thoroughly depleted its main resources we mythologized our destruction." "(Boating) With each stroke I'd think of something, say how all religions seemed to imitate and sacrifice themselves to temporal powers thus allowing greed to wrap itself in a semi-holy mantle, then after each strong stroke there was a long glide when I'd become utterly submerged in the sheer 'thingness' of life around me and be incapable of thought let alone comprehension: lake, water, sky, bird, my feet, my breathing." "I kept thinking that throughout the world there are sons and daughters with distorted wishes for what their parents should be, or hopeless wishes for what their parents should have been. Some of the most critical of us are afflicted with a paralysis over this, our brains too active with resentment to solidify function....My reaction had nothing to do with anger or curiosity but a mute acceptance of the human condition, the brain spinning tales before which we are quite helpless."

But one could continue quoting Harrison's writing and never touch on the moments of hilarity, of pathos, of tenderness, of unimaginable cruelty, all of which are blended in this amazing story. This is a novel to read again - like returning to your childhood to see if it really is what you remembered, or imagined. Highly recommended reading.

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: The book reminded me of a mixture of scenes from "Days of Our Lives" and "Catcher in the Rye". The book has its moments which makes the long read worthwhile. Do not let the first few chapters dissuade you. Jim Harrison is a great story teller especially when scenes are set in the Michigan Upper Peninsula and in this regard he does not disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: The book reminded me of a mixture of scenes from "Days of Our Lives" and "Catcher in the Rye". The book has its moments which makes the long read worthwhile. Do not let the first few chapters dissuade you. Jim Harrison is a great story teller especially when scenes are set in the Michigan Upper Peninsula and in this regard he does not disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: stays with you
Review: This was my first Jim Harrison book. Being from Michigan, I've been curious about him for years but foolishly stayed away because I didn't like the movie version of Legends of the Fall, which certainly isn't Harrison's fault. Now I have some catching up to do.
True North is one of those books that stays in your mind long after you've finished it. The reader lives for a time in the mind of a naive, complicated, unhappy, yet hopeful young man who struggles to make sense of the world and his own place in it. His emotional isolation is mirrored by the remoteness of the setting; the depiction of Michigan's Upper Peninsula wilderness is completely accurate. The narrative is nothing short of poetic. Harrison is clearly a master of language. This is truly a beautiful book.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Story!
Review: True North is riveting reading. I must admit I was not familiar with the author, Jim Harrison, until I read a book review in the L.A. Times about True North. The review was so well written, I couldn't wait to buy the book. As soon as I started reading it, I was so pleased to discover a new (to me) author whose writing is so rich and captivating.

I was fascinated with the depiction of this severly dysfunctional family as seen through the eyes of the central character, David Burke. All the characters, whether you like them or not (and there is one you should detest), are multi-dimensional and complex. David grows up with parents who are role models for what not to be, and a fiesty younger sister who turns out to be the most stable and rational member of the entire family. Over a period of decades, we witness David's struggle with his family's legacy, and watch how it shapes not only his romantic relationships, but his sense of right and wrong. David's journey is not an easy one as he searches for the meaning of his own life while trying to reconcile the sins of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. What is it that he is really looking for? Justice or peace? Read this outstanding book and find out.

Rating:
Summary: True North, Truly Wonderful
Review: True North, Truly Wonderful
David Burkett, the main character in Jim Harrison's new novel, True North, dedicates his life to Christ as a young man in order to spend less time thinking about himself. Everyone around him spends inordinate amounts of time in self-preoccupation while Burkett wants to create a life oriented toward others. His struggle to submerge ego is largely based upon guilt over the irretrievable damage his father and his immediate ancestors have done by clear-cutting millions of acres of white pine forests in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Readers follow David Burkett's struggle with his ego through nearly forty years of his life. Along the way we are treated to the massive range of Jim Harrison's intellect, to his amazing writing style which is reminiscent of Joyce and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in this book, a more accessible free-associative style than in Dalva or The Road Home, his two previous novels), and to the usual array of down home wisdom so abundant in his oevre.
Structurally, the novel is framed by Burkett's father's death, which, a la Ondaatje, the reader discovers in an italicized prologue. Burkett's father can only be described as a terrific sociopath, a negative example that Burkett attempts not to emulate. He sets off on a literary journey in which he wants to chronicle the damage his family has done to the UP. David Burkett is an apple that has fallen far from the tree and much of the novel describes his efforts to keep it that way. We witness Burkett's burgeoning sexuality and the ethical questions it poses first to Burkett as a young Christian and later to Burkett as a mature, less formally religious man trying to live a decent human life. There are, however, many formal musings about religion, the nature of love, relationships, and living with nature.
In True North, readers of Harrison novels and poetry will marvel at his ability to make nature and Burkett's dog, Carla, into major minor characters. For example, during a phone call in which he discovers that his mother is dying, Burkett mindlessly twirls a globe near his desk in his study. "For unclear dog reasons Carla hated and was frightened by the twirling globe and her barking mixed with the terrifying news seemed appropriate rather than irritating." As for nature, Harrison presents a conflict between Burkett and a lover that parallels a conflict that exists throughout our culture: whether we are to appreciate the present, whatever it is, or remember and attempt to reconcile what we have done in the past.
"One morning while drinking coffee on the riverbank I described to her what the river would have been like before its path had been gouged by thousands of giant logs during the timbering era. She said that I was cursed with this knowledge of a pre-Adamic Eden and that the river looked fine to her and so did the forest. I said that the river had achieved an explicit nature in the twelve thousand years since the glaciers and it had been shameful to destroy this nature in a few years of logging violence... . `I don't exclude people like you do,' she said, adding that she was pleased with her innocent eyes that were still overwhelmed by the beauty of her surroundings. I agreed but then said if we don't identify what we did wrong we'll keep on doing it. `I just don't want what's wrong to swallow your entire life, then you'd only be a critic reacting to what others have done badly. You won't have any balance in your life.' `Do you?' I asked... ."
Admirers of Harrison's poetry (collected in The Shape of the Journey) will enjoy the stridently lovely prose in True North. Harrison is often at his best when describing nature. In the following passage, he portrays David Burkett's love of the splendor of Grand Marais.
"I continued down the beach past the path to my tourist cabin toward the estuary of the Sucker River a mile or two distant. The moon's sheen on the water followed me as I walked for reasons not clear to me. It occurred to me that my own point of view was unique on earth but this was not a comforting idea. Wherever I stood and looked I was the only one there. The few sounds of the village diminished, and I mostly heard my feet in the damp sand, and then a loon call ahead in the estuarine area. To the left far out in Lake Superior the lights of a freighter made their slow passage to the west. I heard a coyote out on a forested promontory called Lonesome Point and single dog answering the coyote from the village. My heart fluttered when I flushed a plover from a thickish stand of beech grass. There was a dense smell of wild roses mixing with the odor of cold water."
In True North Harrison offers readers everything from speculations on the nature of religion to obscure references to Sartre, to a masterful inclusion of a line from one of his best poems ("The Theory and Practice of Rivers"). Not since Farmer, Harrison's first novel, has the author produced such a stunning piece of art.