EPISODE · Nov 8, 2019 · 23 MIN
Jim Harrison: “You’ve Made Quite a Living From Your Fibs”
from Writers Off the Page: From the TIFA Archives · host Toronto Public Library
Works by Jim HarrisonThe Road HomeLegends of the FallDalvaTrue North Works about Jim HarrisonOff to the Side: a MemoirJim Harrison, the Art of Fiction, No. 104 (Paris Review article, summer 1988)Jim Harrison, the Mozart of the Prairies (New Yorker article, March 2016) Other Related Books or MaterialsThe Raw and the Cooked: Cooking Your Life by Jim Harrison (Esquire article, June 1991)Wallace Stevens: poems About the HostNovelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and principal of St. Michael’s College, where he holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters. He is the author of three novels: Original Prin, Beggar's Feast, and Governor of the Northern Province. His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (2006) and IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize (2012), and named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Selection (2012 and 2019) and Globe and Mail Best Book (2018). He contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, First Things, Commonweal, Harper’s, Financial Times (UK), Guardian, New Statesman, Globe and Mail, and National Post, in addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio. He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017. Music is by Yuka From the ArchivesWriters Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is the first series associated with the Toronto Public Library’s multi-year digital initiative, From the Archives, which presents curated and digitized audio, video and other content from some of Canada’s biggest cultural institutions and organizations.**Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.
What this episode covers
In this first part of two, American novelist and poet, Jim Harrison, talks in expansive and at times rambling terms with Ian Brown about writing his masterpiece, Legends of the Fall, in only nine days, and how his iconic character, Dalva, a complex and tragic female protagonist, came to him, as well as what he does to get over the sensation that he’s trapped in the lives of his characters.
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Jim Harrison: “You’ve Made Quite a Living From Your Fibs”
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