Brown Dog : novellas

Title:

Author:

Harrison, Jim, 1937- author.

Personal Author:

Harrison, Jim, 1937- author.

ISBN:

9780802120113

Physical Description:

525 pages ; 24 cm

Abstract:

An anthology of all of the Brown Dog novellas includes a previously unpublished story and follows the down-on-his-luck Michigan Native American's misadventures with an overindulgent lifestyle, his two adopted children, and an ersatz activist who steals his bearskin.

Subject Term:

Indians of North America -- Michigan -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Michigan -- Fiction.

Genre:

Short stories.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	FICTION HARRISO	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

"Among the most indelible American novelists of the last hundred years. . . . [Harrison] remains at the height of his powers."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times on The River Swimmer

New York Times best-selling author Jim Harrison is one of America's most beloved writers, and of all his creations, Brown Dog, a bawdy, reckless, down-on-his-luck Michigan Indian, has earned cult status with readers in the more than two decades since his first appearance. For the first time, Brown Dog gathers all the Brown Dog novellas, including one never-published one, into one volume--the ideal introduction (or reintroduction) to Harrison's irresistible Everyman.

In these novellas, BD rescues the preserved body of an Indian from Lake Superior's cold waters; overindulges in food, drink, and women while just scraping by in Michigan's Upper Peninsula; wanders Los Angeles in search of an ersatz Native activist who stole his bearskin; adopts two Native children; and flees the authorities, then returns across the Canadian border aboard an Indian rock band's tour bus. The collection culminates with He Dog, never before published, which finds BD marginally employed and still looking for love (or sometimes just a few beers and a roll in the hay), as he goes on a road trip from Michigan to Montana and back, arriving home to the prospect of family stability and, perhaps, a chance at redemption.

Brown Dog underscores Harrison's place as one of America's most irrepressible writers, and one of the finest practitioners of the novella form.

Praise for Jim Harrison's Brown Dog:

"There is broad comedy in the writing, but also tenderness, and never a moment when the reader isn't rooting for Brown Dog to get it right. . . . We would all be the poorer if deprived of Jim Harrison's first-rate stories."-- The New York Times Book Review on The Summer He Didn't Die

"Brown Dog, an old friend to fans of Harrison, . . . boasts the rare ability to reject the frills and artificial complexities of modern life and keep to the basics. . . . Like reading a book describing dear friends."-- Miami Herald on The Farmer's Daughter

"A 21st-century version of Huck Finn."-- The Charleston Gazette on The Farmer's Daughter

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Pity poor Brown Dog, the Everyman of the North Woods, whose luck would be nonexistent were it not bad. Still, Brown Dog's countenance is as cheerful as Don Quixote's was woeful. Harrison's comic hero--and in some ways alter ego--is as quixotic as they come, depending on kind winds to blow him a little money, some booze and a bit of righteous loving. In this exercise in well-effected repackaging, Brown Dog's tales are lifted from other Harrison collections (e.g., The Farmer's Daughter, 2009, and The Summer He Didn't Die, 2005) and gathered in a single volume, which is just right. When we first met Brown Dog, he was a barroom horndog generally taken for an Indian (though, at first, he's not so sure of that: "Now I'm no more Indian than a keg of nails") and able to wheedle a drink or two out of passing anthropologists for his trouble. He was also the haunted discoverer of the body of an unmistakably authentic Indian below the waters of Lake Superior, waters so cold that bodies do not bloat and float in them. That body will turn up from time to time as Brown Dog leaves the Upper Peninsula on sometimes-unwanted quests--to Los Angeles, for instance, to hunt down a bearskin that's been stolen from him and to Canada, in the company of some Native rockers. But mostly he hangs around in the pines, always just barely a step ahead of the law and in trouble in every other way; when we leave him in the hitherto unpublished novella He Dog, he is a step away from being pounded by "a strapping woman" named Big Cheryl, who reckons that the experience might just do B.D. some good. Rollicking, expertly observed, beautifully written. Any new book by Harrison is cause for joy, and having all the Brown Dog stories in one place is no exception.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.