Feature: MSU's Three Literary Lions of the 21st Century
Three contemporary writers—MSU’s Richard Ford, Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane—are on the verge of iconic status in American literature.
“Students,” the professor intones. “You only have one question on your final exam.
“Three men, protagonists in the novels of Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane and Richard Ford meet for lunch. The three men, Frank Bascombe (Lay of the Land), Tom Skelton (Ninety Two in the Shade) and Brown Dog (The Summer He Didn’t Die), discuss their recent lives and their futures.
“What did they talk about and how did they interact with each other? Use your readings from Harrison, Ford and McGuane to discuss issues and themes that are relevant to their writing. You may also expound on how the authors’ personal lives intersect with their fictional characters. Feel free to invite other characters from the novels we have read to lunch. You have two hours. Open your blue books and begin.”
This scene did not actually take place, but it very well could in the future, especially as the writings of these MSU graduates come into prominence. Richard Ford, Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane, middle-aged and at the height of their writing careers, all took similar blue book tests while they were at MSU in the 1960s. Today, their novels are being dissected by writing classes as the authors continue to pile up accolades.
For instance, this past year the three writers achieved a literary trifecta when all three received full page reviews in the New York Times. The reviews helped broaden their extensive readership and assure their place in America’s and MSU’s literary tradition.
This was not always the case. Each of them has served his time as a starving writer beset by self doubts and no paycheck. But they have endured to become literary lions of the 21st century.
Harrison, 69, grew up in small Michigan towns (Grayling and Haslett) and found his way to MSU, graduating with a B.A. in 1960 and an M.A. in 1966. He struggled early in his writing career and in his words “almost succumbed to the life of academia” before a few things clicked into place allowing him to write full time. His friendship with Tom McGuane was one of those fortunate clicks. Sometimes the stars align: They share the same birth date of December 11.
McGuane, 67, a Grosse Isle kid, with strong attachments to Michigan’s natural resources, especially the water, also found his way to MSU, where he met Harrison. He received his B.A. in 1962.
Like their writing, it’s tough to separate fact from fiction about Harrison’s and McGuane’s time on campus. One classmate recalls a professor throwing them out of a writing class with the admonition to come back when they were ready to write. Other stories have them holding court at one of the roundtables in the MSU Union grill talking about writing and writers. Regardless, both found parts of their writer’s voice while at MSU. Harrison’s upcoming book, a fictional look at college called The English Major, may shine more light on the topic.
Ford, 64, was a Southerner raised in Jackson, Mississippi, a city and state with one of the richest literary traditions in the world. Although his roots were Southern his time in Michigan helped focus his writing, which clearly has a Midwestern touch to it.
Harrison and McGuane always had their niche audiences and their lifestyles were more rough and tumble than Ford’s, often finding its way into their writing. Their short stories, novels and poetry always attracted the literary cognoscenti, and that proved to be a powerful magnet for Hollywood.
McGuane was at the vanguard, finding early on his writing was adaptable to the screen. He wrote The Sporting Club, which his friend Harrison helped place with a publisher. The sale of Sporting Club to Hollywood became his entree into the West Coast culture. He also would sell rights to Bushwhacked Piano and Ninety Two in the Shade. He became a hot property and went on to write screenplays for Rancho Deluxe (1973) and The Missouri Breaks (1976), which starred Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando.
This connection helped jump start Harrison’s writing career. McGuane invited Harrison to the filming of Missouri Breaks and Harrison quickly became friends with award-winning actor Nicholson. Nicholson would front Harrison the money so he could keep writing. And write he did. Harrison has written prodigiously over the last 40 years with 28 books to his credit, including 12 novels, three novellas, one children’s book, four non-fiction outings and numerous collections of poetry. He writes as comfortably about cooking up a batch of head cheese as he does about Blake, his poetic muse.
The Hollywood scene held McGuane much longer than Harrison. McGuane’s tempestuous relationship with actress Elizabeth Ashley was retold in her memoir, and he later married Hollywood starlet Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in Superman. By contrast, Harrison quickly discovered that life in tinseltown wasn’t to his liking. The money was good, though, and Harrison used a good portion of it to buy property in his idyllic Northern Michigan where he and his spouse Linda lived until a few years ago. Even though he would write the screenplay for Wolf (no relationship to his novel) and two novellas from Legends of the Fall would be made into movies, the seductive Hollywood lifestyle didn’t fit his Midwestern roots or sensibilities.
He once told an audience at a book signing in Chicago that he knew he was not cut out to be a Hollywood type when they wouldn’t let him smoke at an outdoor preview party.
All three writers find solace in nature, especially in the fall when they can stomp through the brush bird hunting with the dog out front. The only difference is Jim Harrison can turn a day’s hunt into a multi-course meal punctuated with the world’s best wines. Bird hunting is not an affectation for these writers—it is life. Harrison dedicated his first book to his bird dog, Millie, and to his friend Tom McGuane.
Ford’s path to literary fame initially took a detour and after publishing two novels he became a sportswriter at Inside Sports magazine, an experience that would later be fictionalized in the The Sportswriter (1986), the first of his trilogy about the male angst of growing up and growing old. His protagonist in the trilogy, Frank Bascombe, could arguably become the tragic, iconic literary male of his generation.
All three MSU writers have edgy senses of humor and their characters are immediately recognizable in our own relatives, friends, lovers and self. Death almost always lurks nearby.
Of the three, Harrison is the most prolific, often writing a book of poetry and a non-fiction or fiction book each year. Part of that success he attributes to the Midwest where there were fewer distractions and the use of a full-time manager. Harrison is most noted for his books, The Summer He Didn’t Die and The Beast God Forgot To Invent, featuring Brown Dog, a somewhat semi- biographical character.
Harrison is not a man of a few words when it comes to his love of literature, art, food or the outdoors. In a recent interview it was as easy for him to name the 25 courses at the previous day’s dinner hosted for him by Richard Ford as it was an impressive list of professors who made an impact on him while he was a student at MSU.
In pure Harrison fashion, however, what grabs him the most about his time on campus is his job working on a horticulture farm.
“It saved my brain,” he recalls, speaking from his home. “It was a big stabilizing factor for me. Farming is in my family.”
He also remembers the unique beauty of MSU’s campus. “I remember reading Joyce in the gardens behind the Library,” he recalls. “No other campus has that.”
In addition to developing a love for literature while on campus, Harrison said he hung out at the art department where he met MSU’s Artist in Residence John DeMartelly (1901-1979). “He had a big impact on my life,” recalls Harrison. “I helped him convert an MSU Quonset hut to a studio behind his home.
“That’s the stuff that adds to life,” Harrison notes.
Harrison is still adding stuff to his life and to others. MSU graduate and author Tom Bissell (see pp. 12-13, Spring 2007) credits Harrison as the inspiration for his writing career. And McGuane and Ford, likewise, credit Harrison with making their writing careers successful.
McGuane has written some 14 books including nine novels, three nonfiction works, two collections of short stories, and two screenplays. Jonathan Yardley in the New York Times once called him “a talent of Faulknerian potential.”
The Grosse Ile boy has found his home and family in Montana where he lives with his wife of 30 years, Laurie Buffett (sister of his Key West buddy, singer Jimmy Buffett). He was born to be a cowboy and many of his tales take place in the wide open spaces of Montana. His former life may read like one of his electric movie scripts, but he has now settled down to family, friends and heads of cattle.
And fishing. Indeed, McGuane, who has often written about fishing in his books and short stories, often jokes about how he “nearly fished himself out of college.”
He credits his faculty advisor, the legendary Russell Nye, for helping him focus on writing. “The support I got from him was the key for me,” McGuane recalled from his ranch in Montana recently.
McGuane has fond memories of his time at MSU and recalls when he and Harrison would be caught up in deep discussion about literature at the MSU Union and at Kewpie’s off campus. A tradition of weekly letters that he and Harrison started right after college has continued for nearly 45 years.
“Literature, at the time we were at MSU, was almost a religion,” remembers McGuane, who has clearly left behind an important hymnal for that worship when he was the founding editor of the Red Cedar Log, a student literary review.
The author much prefers writing short stories and his recent collection, GallatinCanyon, was named as a New York Times 100 Best Books of the Year for 2006.
“Some of those stories are in their 30th draft,” he says.
McGuane’s writing style is often compared to Hemingway’s, a comparison that he doesn’t duck. Onecritic recently called his latest collection of short stories “Hemingwayesque.” Years ago, another critic referred to McGuane as “Hemingway’s heir aberrant”—a reference to both his writing style and talent and to his adventuresome life.
“It’s a Midwestern thing,” says McGuane, who now spends much of his time punching cows, following hockey and competing in local rodeo events.
Ford, who has written the fewest books of the three (six novels, three collections), is no shirker and makes points in the quality over quantity with Independence Day winning both the Pulitzer Award and the Pen Faulkner award in 1996.
Ford’s latest book, Lay of the Land, was started more than a decade ago in Montana where he “made notes.” The book moved with him to New Orleans and he finished it in Maine where he and his spouse, Kristina, have lived since 2000. In the 25 years it took for the trilogy to be completed Ford often turned to the skill he crafted early in his career, writing short magazine pieces.
Ford’s books are worth waiting for. Lay of the Land was selected as one of the Best 10 Books of 2006 by the New York Times and as a Time Top 10. McGuane’s book also popped up in the Times Best 100 for the year. Harrison may have been shut out of that honor, but another soon came along in May 2007 when he was named to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ford, who is also a member, was on hand for the induction ceremony.
The mutual friendship of MSU’s three iconic writers started more than 40 years ago in the classrooms of Berkey and Bessey, where McGuane and Harrison had classes. Although Ford did not know Harrison or McGuane while he was at MSU, they have since become close friends. Ford remembers meeting Harrison in 1977 after he wrote a blurb for Ford’s first book. “My wife and I drove up to Traverse City and had dinner with him and Linda,” says Ford. “His quote was a very much appreciated single act of graciousness.”
Ford would meet McGuane in 1983 while they both lived in Montana. “He was always a hero of mine,” Ford recalls from his home in Maine. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author originally came to MSU to escape some of the segregationist attitudes of the South and to attend MSU’s Hospitality School. At MSU he would meet Kristina Hensley, his future spouse, while bussing tables at Mason Hall.
Fortunately for the literary world, English professors like Carl Hartmann would inspire him to become a writer. “He was a wonderful teacher,” recalls Ford.
In the final analysis, whether it was because of outstanding faculty members like Nye and Hartmann, or whether it was because of an atmosphere that encourages creativity, MSU provided the setting where three literary talents were able to learn, develop and grow into giants.
Bill Castanier, ’73, is the literary reviewer for Lansing’s City Pulse weekly newspaper and also is a free lance writer in the Lansing area.
MAJOR WORKS: Jim Harrison
FICTION
Wolf (1971)
A Good Day to Die (1973)
Farmer (1976)
Legends of the Fall (1979)
Warlock (1981)
Sundog (1984)
Dalva (1988)
The Woman Lit By Fireflies (1990)
Julip (1994)
The Road Home (1998)
The Beast God Forgot to Invent (2000)
True North (2004)
The Summer He Didn’t Die (2005)
Returning To Earth(2007)
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
The Boy Who Ran to the Woods (2000)
POETRY
Plain Song (1965)
Locations (1968)
Outlyer and Ghazals (1971)
Letters to Yesenin (1973)
Returning to Earth(1977)
Selected & New Poems (1982)
The Theory & Practice of Rivers (1986)
The Theory & Practice of Rivers And New Poems (1989)
AfterIkky?& Other Poems (1996)
The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems (1998)
Braided Creek (with Ted Kooser) (2003)
Saving Daylight (2006)
ESSAYS
Just Before Dark (1991)
The Raw and The Cooked (2001)
MEMOIR
Off to the Side(2002)
MAJOR WORKS: Richard Ford
NOVELS
A Piece of My Heart(1976)
The Ultimate Good Luck (1981)
The Sportswriter(1986)
Wildlife (1990)
Independence Day(1995)
The Lay of the Land(2006)
STORY COLLECTIONS
Rock Springs(1987)
Women With Men: Three Stories(1997)
A Multitude of Sins (2002)
Vintage Ford(2004)
MAJOR WORKS: Thomas McGuane
FICTION
The Sporting Club(1969)
The Bushwacked Piano(1971)
Ninety-Two In The Shade(1973)
Panama(1978)
An Outside Chance(1980)
Nobody’s Angel (1981)
To Skin a Cat(1987)
Nothing But Blue Skies(1992)
Some Horses(1999)
The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing(2001)
The Cadence of Grass(2002)
GallatinCanyon(2006)
SCREEN PLAYS
Rancho Deluxe(1973)
The Missouri Breaks(1976)
FILM DIRECTING
92 In The Shade(1975)