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Off to the Side
Off to the Side: A Memoir | Jim Harrison
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Selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Off to the Side is the tale of one of America's most beloved writers. Jim Harrison traces his upbringing in Michigan amid the austerities of the Depression and the Second World War, and the seemingly greater austerities of his starchy Swedish forebears. He chronicles his coming-of-age, from a boy drunk with books to a young man making his way among fellow writers he deeply admires — including Peter Matthiessen, Robert Lowell, W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg. Harrison discusses forthrightly the life-changing experience of becoming a father, and the minor cognitive dissonance that ensued when this boy from the "heartland" somehow ended up a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. He gives free rein to his "seven obsessions" — alcohol, food, stripping, hunting and fishing (and the dogs who have accompanied him in both), religion, the road, and our place in the natural world — which he elucidates with earthy wisdom and an elegant sense of connectedness. Off to the Side is a work of great beauty and importance, a triumphant achievement that captures the writing life and brings all of us clues for living.
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"Only recently have I realized the degree to which these books were my religious texts and their unavowed intent was to teach me the secrets of reality, in short to explain the meaning of life."

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"Books can be so utterly powerful to someone quite vulnerable in their teens, the eyes clouded with hormones, and a wistful heart looking for an artistic Eden far from the shovel and hoe, the locker room slugfests, the urge to find a girl other than your sister who actually reads books."