Page 30 - ARUBA TODAY

A30 PEOPLE & ARTS
Wednesday 5 april 2017
Feast for the soul: Jim Harrison on wine and food

ANN LEVIN station wagon.” Fully ex- sion of Iraq, which left your heart.
Associated Press pecting to be criticized, him seething. Consider this: “A several-
In 2004, Jim Harrison he offered a defense at “Maybe the rage comes hour walk in the forest
wrote an article for The the outset. “My response from the fact that our heals more wounds than
New Yorker about a ... is that none of us 12 body politic ... has been any doctor of my expe-
37-course lunch he ate disciples of gourmandise fed by Chef Bush a fresh rience.” ‘’Many people
in France “that likely cost wanted a new Volvo. skunk hacked up with an think a Ferrari is beauti-
as much as a new Volvo We wanted only lunch ax ...” he writes in 2003’s ful but it isn’t if you com-
and since lunch lasted “Eat or Die.” Later that pare it to a horse.” ‘’We
This cover image released approximately 11 hours year, in “Paris Rebel- all need to eat well in or-
by Grove Press shows, “A Re- we saved money by not lion,” he wonders, “Has der to dig the graves of
ally Big Lunch: Meditations on
Food and Life from the Roving having to buy dinner.” my country become a stockbrokers.”
Gourmand,” by Jim Harrison. Absurd? Yes, but also pack of wild hogs bent And just in case you won-
Associated Press funny and true and typi- on eating the world?” dered, he has no regrets
cal of Harrison, whose Faced with such dispir- about that 37-course
dry wit and mordant in- iting questions, Harri- meal.
sight are on glorious dis- son inevitably turns to “No question looms larg-
play in this new collec- food, wine and poetry er on a daily basis for
tion of essays published — and also hunting, fish- many of us than ‘What’s
a year after his death. ing, dogs, birds and the for lunch?’ and, when
Harrison, a prolific poet great outdoors. that has been resolved,
and novelist best known Nearly every piece, ex- ‘What’s for dinner?’
for “Legends of the Fall,” cept perhaps the recipe There have been mutter-
died of a heart attack at for bear posole, first pub- ings that the whole food
age 78. lished in “The Montana thing has gone too far in
While nominally about Writers’ Cookbook,” has America, but I think not.
wine and food — his a saying wise enough Good food is a benign
friend Mario Batali wrote to carry in your wallet. weapon against the
the introduction — what Some will flat out break sodden way we live.”q
distinguishes the essays
are Harrison’s poetic
sensibility, metaphysi-
cal musings and moral
outrage at the state of
our nation. Several were
written around the inva-