The English Major

The English Major"It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't." With these words, Jim Harrison begins a riotous, moving novel that sends a sixty something man, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late blooming real estate shark of an ex wife, on a road trip across America. Cliff is armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds, the latter of which have been unjustly saddled with white men's banal

"It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't." With these words, Jim Harrison begins a riotous, moving novel that sends a sixty-something man, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, on a road trip across America. Cliff is armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds, the latter of which have been unjustly saddled with white men's banal monikers up until now. His adventures take him through a whirlwind affair with a former student from his high-school-teacher days twenty-some years before, to a "snake farm" in Arizona owned by an old classmate, and to the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer who has just bought an apartment over the Presidio in San Francisco. Now in paperback, Jim Harrison's riotous and moving cross-country novel, The English Major, is the map of a man's journey into, and out of, himself. It is vintage Harrison--reflective, big-picture American, and replete with wicked wit.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 10/01/2009
ISBN: 9780802144140
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.70d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 11/08/2009 pg. 36