True North

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.

Rating:
Summary: A little disappointing
Review: While I am a big Jim Harrison fan, this book was a little disappointing in that it was a strained attempt at complex psychoanalysis which, frankly, got boring! No doubt Harrison is an artful writer, yet the web of relationships was so overwhelming in this book that you needed a diagram to sort through them all. The main theme seemed to be the moral bankruptcy of the protagonist's father but every single relationship from that one to his love for his dog dragged on and on. His relationships with all the women in his life as well as the men could have been novels standing alone.This book did not measure up to Harrison's masterpieces, like A Good day to die or Legends of the Fall.