The River Swimmer: Novellas (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
I will read more by this author, though this book is terribly uneven. One story is mundane, following a sixty year old man through a month as his mother's caregiver. The other is fantastic, telling the story of a nineteen year old's marathon swims (impossible open water swims from the rural home island to Chicago, for example) , meetings with 13 water babies, sexual adventures with rich girls whose consumerism disgusts him, brushes with death, etc.The writing is strange too. Paragraphs run to as long as two pages, switching subject matter as many as three times without much in the way of transition. Yet I liked the writing! I don't know why. This was my fifth Harrison. Again novellas - two. The Land of Unlikeness and the title story. The second has a better title; the first is a better story. It raised a number of artistic issues that I think about I think about theater, but I don't do it anymore. One thing I've often pondered is artistic movements and how they work their way through art. Also, how actors integrate personal experience into character. It seems obvious in writing, perhaps less so in the other arts. I'm also interested in what comes in the next movement. Anyway, Clives intellectual process seems so familiar. Of course, its not a painter describing it, but a writer which no doubt makes it much more coherent. The River Swimmer is less gripping. Thad is a hodgepodge of Harrison archetypes. Brown Dog is there and his Indian daughter who talks to wild animals. His father and grandfather all speak with familiar voices. Early in the story Thad is a callow boy. Suddenly, he's a pretty mature thinker. Sentences come out of no where, and only through blind acceptance can you make them fit. I liked them both, the first more than the last.
What do You think about The River Swimmer: Novellas (2013)?
Disarmingly casual and almost roundabout, the way he writes. Then--pow. Loved this book.
—Giorgi
I confess that I'm prejudiced; everything Jim Harrison writes is a 5.
—Prabjit
Absolutely beautiful, the audiobook kept me going while knitting
—Jules
Excellent prose; strong stories. Just a pleasure to read.
—Aivis55
Harrison may be aging but his writing remains timeless.
—thelionqueen
