The English Major: a Novel

Description

A wrenchingly funny cross-country novel from the critically acclaimed author of Returning to Earth, The Summer He Didn’t Die, & True North.

Jim Harrison has been called “a writer with immortality in him” by London’s Sunday Times & The New York Times Book Review has written that “[his] storytelling instincts are nearly flawless.” Harrison’s last novel, Returning to Earth, was one of his most praised in years, hailed by The Plain Dealer as “an artistic achievement worthy of Faulkner.” Now Harrison gives us The English Major, a wryly funny novel that sparkles with the generous humanity of his vision.

“It used to be Cliff & Vivian & now it isn’t.” With these words, Jim Harrison begins a riotous, moving novel that sends a sixty-something man, divorced & robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, on a road trip across America, armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States & a mission to rename all the states & state birds to overcome the banal names men have given them. Cliff’s 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; & 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.

The English Major is the map of a man’s journey into—& out of—himself, & it is vintage Harrison—reflective, big-picture American, & replete with wicked wit.

WHAT THE EXPERTS ARE SAYING:
“Young men, old men, you see them hitting the road in the movies all the time. In novels it's been mostly young men. . . . In The English Major, a bawdy & engaging new novel by Jim Harrison, the best Midwestern-born writer never to leave the region, we get to see the older-man variation. . . . Told in an utterly believable, if somewhat flat-footed first-person voice (the old brown Taurus of modern American narration), the story remains the unflagging revelation of Cliff’s attempt to shed his former life by crossing the boundaries of as many states of the Union as he can reach in a year. . . . It's never too early to put aside a great Father's Day gift. Wives, daughters of America, for your reading Papa, this ribald, questing, utterly charming & Zen-serious novel about being male, 60 & (well, almost) alone, is the book of the year. Guys, if you can't wait to get going, you ought to just plunk down your $24 right away & follow Cliff’s trail.”—Alan Cheuse, The Chicago Tribune

“Harrison spins the common chaff of a road trip into gold. . . . peppered with his characteristic insights & asides. . . . After a long & idiosyncratic literary career, Harrison the storyteller is still at the top of his game.”—Tim McNulty, The Seattle Times

“Harrison’s language seems to come straight from America's center of gravity, the core of the country where people still live by a code & think for themselves. . . . After 25 books Harrison is . . . closing in on the status of a national treasure.” — Anthony Brandt, National Geographic Adventure

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
JIM HARRISON is the author of 25 books of fiction, nonfiction, & poetry. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and winner of a Guggenheim fellowship, he has had work published in 25 languages.