The English Major: A Novel - Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison has been called “a writer with immortality in him” by London’s Sunday Times and 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.” The English Major is a wryly funny novel that sparkles with the generous humanity of his vision.

“It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn’t.” With these words, Jim Harrison begins a riotous, moving novel that sends a sixty-something man, divorced and 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 and a mission to rename all the states and 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; and to the highoctane 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—and out of—himself, and it is vintage Harrison—reflective, big-picture American, and replete with wicked wit.

PRAISE
“[A] wistfully comic novel . . . Harrison has created a character of such appeal and self-deprecating wisdom that even the more fantastical episodes . . . acquire a charmingly philosophical air.” —The New Yorker

“The English Major is to midlife crisis what The Catcher in the Rye is to adolescence.”
—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

“[Harrison’s] sentences . . . fuse on the page with a power and blunt beauty. . . . Harrison creates delicious comic tension.” —Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review

“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 and think for themselves. . . . After 25 books Harrison is . . . closing in on the status of a national treasure.”
—Anthony Brandt, National Geographic Adventure

“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 and 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 and Zen-serious novel about being male, 60 and (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 and follow Cliff’s trail.” —Alan Cheuse, The Chicago Tribune

“After his wife leaves him for an old flame, [Cliff], the protagonist in Jim Harrison’s latest earthy novel, does what any red-blooded American man would do: he takes a road trip. . . . [Cliff]’s picaresque adventures give him time to reflect on ‘the high ideals we place on our lives like decals,’ and Harrison, in wry first person, captures his belated coming-of-age with wit and a touch of melancholy.” —Jason Daley, Outside Magazine

“An actual road trip with Jim Harrison would probably mimic this book: fun, angst, high times, with an admixture of erudite if often curmudgeonly observations on literature, history, sex, society and life its own self. . . . This is a master writer who has some important things to say about life and how to live it.” —Ron Antonucci, The Plain Dealer

“Farming, teaching, fishing, hunting and sex . . . Harrison has been brooding productively about these subjects for 30 years, and he’s become a funnier and deeper writer. . . . [The] trip allows Harrison lots of time to wax hilarious about a great many subjects. . . . [The English Major] is also a deeply serious novel, and a satisfying one.”
—Anthony Giardina, San Francisco Chronicle

“A funny, sexy meditation of growing old and how the way we change over the years can both add to the richness of life and, almost at the same time, leave us stultified when we don’t change often enough. . . . We get a vivid picture of the beauty to be found across vast portions of this country. Let’s hope Harrison will write a sequel.”
—Christopher Guerin, PopMatters

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

“[A] sly and mighty new novel.” —Dwight Garner, Papercuts, nytimes.com

“Jim Harrison is larger than life, a true legend . . . No other author has so inspired, amused or comforted me.” —Kathleen Johnson, Kansas City Star

“The prodigious and prolific literary writer creates one of his most engaging novels in years with this often-ribald tale . . . Harrison fills this fine novel with an often-surprising mix of serious life lessons and humorous observations about men, women and America today.”
—John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Cliff is a fine character whose irascible, raunchy, self-lacerating voice grabs you from the start.” —Stephen Amidon, The Globe and Mail

“Jim Harrison’s ninth and funniest novel begins with the sort of glib and earthy reality for which Harrison is famous: ‘It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't.’ . . . The English Major is the most recent installment in what has become a prodigious achievement in American letters.” —Charles W. Brice, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“[Harrison] tells his stories with a straightforward candor that puts the reader directly across from him at a table in a middle-American diner. . . . . quintessentially American. . . . A chronicle of self-examination along with a good bit of heartache and adventure.”
—David Varno, The Brooklyn Rail

“[The English Major] deals with the pain and confusion of losing that which is loved; but it also shows that those who refuse to just curl in a corner and die can make new beginnings though the trip can be lonely and arduous at times.”
—Bob Anderson, The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)

“Cliff’s eloquent running commentary is by far the book’s best feature and makes for a pleasurable, humorous read. From insightful cultural critique to inane observations, he finds something witty to say about almost everything that enters his consciousness.”
—Mike Frechette, Contrary

“[Cliff has] self-awareness and effortless wit. . . . This is Harrison noodling at his leisure. For longtime fans, no extra dressing is required.”
—Kristin Tillotson, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

“Funny, spirited . . . Harrison is consistently witty and engaging as he drives home his timeless theme: that change can be beneficial at any point in life.” —Publishers Weekly

“Harrison’s wit and gorgeous descriptions make the road trip a fascinating adventure. . . . a rollicking page-turner, full of Harrison’s biting humor and set against a rugged and beautiful landscape. The characters are quirky and come together (and apart) in a wacky, R-rated, Prairie Home Companion-sort of way.”
—Ashley Simpson Shires, The Rocky Mountain News

“The reader is seduced by Harrison’s ornery narrator. . . . If you enjoy reading a book that takes you to lots of fascinating places with minimal fuss, then you must check out The English Major. Jim Harrison writes fiction that feels so real you can believe that he has lived every moment of it. And perhaps he has.” —Vick Mickunas, Dayton Daily News

“A tongue-in-cheek road novel arguing that life doesn’t end at 60—even if your marriage has fallen apart, you’ve lost your farm, and your dog has died. . . . Harrison’s grizzled hero is most poignant during his reflective intercoital oases of solitude. That’s when he can really ponder the disappointments of his past—and the possibility of breaking free from them.”
—Drew Toal, Time Out New York

“Hilarious and profound.” —Dale Dauten, Arizona Daily Star

“My favorite living American novelist . . . a Falstaffian, Rabelaisian, Dionysian orgy-on-wheels . . . a fascinating tapestry of life in contemporary America as seen by an Aging White Male with a sharp eye and a devilishly funny (and bawdy and irreverent) sense of humor. . . . This is a fine book.” —John Greenya, The Washington Times

“Cliff is a mixture of redneck and intellectual, at home behind a tractor but also tuning in to NPR during his travels and musing about Lord Byron or Henry Miller in rambling stream-of-consciousness sentences. Very humorous and engaging.” —Jim Coan, Library Journal