Many thanks to Grove Atlantic for putting me on their review list (because of my interview with Jim Harrison here). They just sent an advance uncorrected proof of Harrison’s new collection of novellas, The Ancient Mistral, which will be released in March, 2016. The title novella, which poses as memoir, contains this, the best damned thing I’ve read today:

“In his writing downtime… he had evolved a theory, not ready for release, he called a ‘glimpse.’ The word was not quite right but would have to serve for the time being. In short it was typified by the way reality can break open and reveal its essence like bending linoleum until it broke and then you saw the black fiber underlying it. Standing on the bridge at Niagara Falls tempted by suicide was such a moment. Or holding Alice’s little dead body before burial. In both he had seen altogether too poignantly the sweep of life. Death gets your attention.”

I have a hunch all three novellas are filled with best things I’ve read in many days. So stand by. And as much as I love Harrison’s fiction, what I’m really excited about is the January release of his new collection of poems, Dead Man’s Float. These days, which have not been easy (not that I’m complaining), nothing gives me more consolation than poems by Jim Harrison.