FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Jim Harrison￯﾿ﾽs writing fills your mouth. I￯﾿ﾽm not suggesting that you eat his pages -- that￯﾿ﾽs a personal decision -- but when one of Harrison￯﾿ﾽs hefty phrases rolls off a thick paragraph, you really must chew on it a while. Try this: ￯﾿ﾽWe proceeded through a soup of white beans and plump mussels, roasted eel, a simple pasta of basil and fresh tomatoes, roasted squab in garlic sauces, a number of bottles of Tuscan wine, a tasting of fine grappas.￯﾿ﾽ Or this: ￯﾿ﾽWe ate half a pound of Beluga with a bottle of Stolichnaya, a salmon in sorrel sauce, sweetbreads en croute, a miniature leg of lamb (the whole thing) with five wines, desserts, cheeses, ports. I stumbled to the toilet...in a near greasy faint.￯﾿ﾽ Harrison￯﾿ﾽs a glutton for language, whether high-flown or rank, and in this collection of his writing about food we are treated to a sensual overload of both.

The Raw and the Cooked is divided into three series of essays: Hunting for food, dining out, and culinary friendships. But despite this clever grouping, each essay seems separate, complete with its own memories and aromas. In ￯﾿ﾽHunger, Real and Unreal,￯﾿ﾽ for example, Harrison reflects on what makes a dish truly great. Though he has dined in the most extraordinary kitchens, Harrison reminds us that the most delicious meals are as simple as the one he shared with two gardeners in Normandy: ￯﾿ﾽThey had cored a half-dozen big red tomatoes, stuffed the tomatoes with softened cloves of garlic, added a sprig of thyme and a basil leaf and couple of tablespoons of soft cheese. They roasted the tomatoes until they softened and the cheese melted.... A simple snack, but indescribably delicious.￯﾿ﾽ In ￯﾿ﾽBack Home,￯﾿ﾽ Harrison offers up a tiny paean to the delights of cupboard food: Saltines, sardines, and head cheese with Chinese mustard.

Harrison is best known for his poetry and fiction; his work, including the popular Legends of the Fall and Wolf, has won him numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Here, Harrison digs into the sensory pleasures that infuse his meaty books. ￯﾿ﾽI love to cook, hunt, fish, read good books and not incidentally try to write them,￯﾿ﾽ he explains. ￯﾿ﾽAll of our sensualities and passions merge because we are one person and it￯﾿ﾽs best not to neglect any of these passions if we wish to fully live our lives.￯﾿ﾽ The Raw and the Cooked celebrates Harrison￯﾿ﾽs passions and our own, dish by dish. His reflections on food are rich and rare; lovers of food -- and lovers of Harrison -- will lick up each one. (Jesse Gale)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Jim Harrison is one of this country's most beloved writers, a muscular, brilliantly economic stylist with a salty wisdom. For over twenty years, he has also been writing some of the best essays on food around, now collected in a volume that caused the Santa Fe New Mexican to exclaim: "To read this book is to come away convinced that Harrison is a flat-out genius." From his legendary Smart and Esquire columns, to present-day pieces including a correspondence with French gourmet Gerard Oberle, fabulous pieces on food in France and America for Men's Journal, and a paean to the humble meatball, The Raw and the Cooked is a nine-course meal that will satisfy every appetite.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

A rumination on the unholy trinity of sex, death and food, this long-awaited collection of gastronomic essays reads like the love child of M.F.K. Fisher and James Thorne on acid. Harrison poet, novelist and screenplay writer perhaps best known for Legends of the Fall and Just Before Dark writes with a passion for language equal to his passion for good food. His thick, muscular phrases tumble off the tongue: you can almost hear him sampling the language as deliberately as he does his French burgundies, and with as much genuine pleasure. The essays filled with sightings of big names (Jack Nicholson, Peter Matthiessen) take readers from meals in Harrison's homes in northern Michigan and New Mexico, to delicacies in New York, Los Angeles and Paris; Harrison's palate, while refined, is refreshingly earthy. He is a lover of duck thighs, pigs' feet, calves' brains, foie gras, confit, sweetbreads, game birds and mussels, served with exquisite wines and "shovels of garlic." Perhaps not surprisingly, Harrison also ruminates on gout, weight and indigestion. But to him, the trade-off is worth it: "Only through the diligent use of sex and, you guessed it, food," he writes, "can we further ourselves, hurling our puny `I ams' into the face of twenty billion years of mute, cosmic history. With every fanny glance or savory bite you are telling a stone to take a hike, a mountain that you are alive, a star that you exist." Equally recommended for the literary crowd and armchair cooks (although perhaps not for vegetarians). (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

It is impossible to pigeonhole this collection of essays they are about hunting and cooking, eating and drinking, and are written in a style that is simultaneously sophisticated and earthy. The work is full of high literary references mixed with a unique patois of tough wisecracks, street slang, and lustrous imagery. Moving from the wilds of Michigan's pristine forests to international culinary meccas, Harrison sensually captures his epicurean philosophy, liberally sprinkled with crackling, dark humor: "Life is too short to approach a meal with the mincing steps of a Japanese prostitute." Harrison may be best known for his fiction (e.g., Legends of the Fall), but he has been writing articles on food criticism for more than 20 years. Most of us will never be lucky enough to share a meal with this "roving gourmand," but this volume provides a satisfying alternative. An essential purchase for all literary and culinary essay collections. Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., KY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews