Jim Harrison on Writing and Drinking
I like grit. I like love and death. I'm tired of irony.
“The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth.”
—Jim Harrison
Jim Harrison, the great poet and renowned writer of Legends of the Fall, died on this day in 2016 at his winter home in Patagonia, Arizona.
He was found dead at his writing desk like a true poet, a pen still in his hand, mid-composition of what would become his final, untitled poem.
The discovery was made by friends who had come to check on him, and it was writer and close friend Philip Caputo who shared the poignant details in a heartfelt Facebook post shortly after. Caputo described arriving at Harrison’s small adobe house near Sonoita Creek and finding him on the floor of his study, having fallen from his chair, likely due to a heart attack.
The scene painted a fitting end for a man who lived and breathed his craft: Harrison, at 78, had been in declining health, grieving the loss of his wife Linda the previous year, yet he remained devoted to writing until his last breath.
The unfinished poem, later published in the 2018 paperback edition of Dead Man’s Float, reflected his ruminations on mortality and the earth. Lines trailed off into scribbles as his strength waned.
Caputo called it “a poet’s death,” a romantic yet grounded testament to Harrison’s relentless creativity. His publisher, Grove Atlantic, confirmed the passing but didn’t specify a cause beyond natural decline, though the heart attack noted by Caputo aligns with accounts from those close to him.
Harrison’s death at his desk, surrounded by his tools—legal pads, cigarettes, and talismans like a dried rattlesnake—encapsulated the raw, unpolished vigor of a writer who never strayed far from the wildness that fueled his work.
Below, I want to share a reflective excerpt from Harrison’s memoir in which he ruminates on booze and the writing life. It’s a fantastic book that is exceptionally well-written. Jim Harrison lived an incredibly full life, and his voice, as his friend once said, was “as unique as the man himself.”
Let’s get to it.
It was already apparent that you had to utterly give your life over to language with minimal chance of success though that was far from a deterrent at the time.
The indomitable mixture of hormones and the daily budget of a quart of beer carried you along. The bartender at the White Horse Tavern who was said to have served Dylan Thomas his fatal nineteen double shots of whiskey advised me water was the best writing aid but the advice didn’t take…
Long ago I misplaced the list I used to keep of writers I knew who had to quit drinking to stay alive. I remember the number had reached nineteen and it must be nearly double that by now.
Perhaps it begins with alcohol dispelling the essential loneliness of a solo art, and then for many the habit gets out of hand and swallows the life. I wish I had never seen a certain photo of Faulkner, taken after he had emerged from shock treatments in an asylum for his binge drinking.
In the photo he looked like a bruised purple plum, or an old picture of a hanged man with a posse looking on telling jokes while their horses shuffled in the dust…
Drinking causes drinking. Heavy drinking causes heavy drinking. Light drinking causes light drinking… The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit, thus losing a pleasure that’s been with us forever. We don’t have much freedom in this life and it is self-cruelty to lose a piece of what we have because we are unable to control our craving…
In drinking, as in everything else, the path is the way. What you get in life is what you organize for yourself every day. There is an ocean of available wisdom from Lao-tzu to Jung to Rilke. It’s there in a preposterous quantity.
If you drink way too much it will kill you and the souls of those around you. If you moderate you can have a nice life.
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My favorite quote of his: From "Dalva" “Most women have intimations of a higher fidelity to the spirit and to a love beyond human weakness and imperfection.”
Thank you Jim - you throttled the awkward and unconscious body of American life and shook us, screaming “Live, damn you!”