Over the years, I have harbored an ill-conceived prejudice against Jim Harrison. On the basis of a viewing of the film "Legends of the Fall," which I loathed, I perceived him as a he-man novelist, writing for an audience I felt no part of and consequently could not join. Nota bene that I didn't actually read the Legends of the Fall, so you see why I designate this prejudice ill-conceived; not-at-all-conceived may be a more honest way to put this, because that's what my view of Mr. Harrison represented, I'm loathe to admit.

In this, my third foray into the sublime world Jim Harrison created, I found myself, over and over, tempted to call him the Rabelais of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Like Gargantua and Pantagruel, Brown Dog is a suite of novellas about its eponymous character. Rabelais's book is five books, and Mr. Harrison's is six (though the final book, "He Dog" felt somewhat tacked on); both books' contents were composed over decades. Like Rabelais' characters Gargantua and Pantguel, B.D., as the eponymous Brown Dog is known in the novel, is a creature of his senses. In both books and in all three characters, intellect and compassion temper the sensual life. Both Rabelais and Harrison use earthy language, as the euphemism goes, to describe their characters' predilections and acts. Rabelais found himself, because of his characters, in trouble not only with the Catholic Church, but with the censors at the College de la Sorbonne as well. While we live in more enlightened times, Jim Harrison has his share of doctrinaire readers and critics who find B.D.'s modus vivendi, not to mention its characterizations, offensive.

When, in the fourth book, on page 334, while B.D. is on the lam to protect his fetal-alcohol afflicted "daughter" (family ties in these stories are amorphous, as is Brown Dog's own ethnicity, which he variously describes as "half-Indian"), he passes "Cape Gargantua," my perception of Mr. Harrison as an upper-midwest Rabelais, I thought, was vindicated. Surely this was no coincidence, and Jim Harrison was conceding that Rabelais's characters were Brown Dog's literary antecedents.

As well they may be. However, it turns out that Cape Gargantua, on the northeast shore of Lake Superior and part of Canada's breathtaking Lake Superior Provincial Park near Wawa, Ontario, is in fact a real place. It happens that it was on the itinerary of B.D.'s escape from the Upper Peninsula to Toronto.

In any case, designating Jim Harrison as Rabelaisian is unjustly reductive. Harrison, as it turns out, is a singular American voice, yet containing multitudes, as Walt Whitman so aptly said. He is Faulkner if Faulkner's novels were comprehensible. Hemingway if Hemingway liked himself and other people, Mark Twain in a semi-modernist voice, or T.C. Boyle if Boyle weren't smirking, supercilious, and overly enamored of his own clever style.

A FEW SPOILERS The book is a series of novellas taken from other sources, about the title character, a maybe-Native American ne'er do well living a subsistence life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He has to rank as one of the most unassuming characters in modern literature, but his adventures become epic, mostly the result of a series of poor decisions, usually involving women, that seem to lead him inexorably into trouble, drama and the occasional far away place. Hard to talk about without giving things away, but the stories take a serious turn when he becomes a foster dad, and it is that situation that pulls the various stories together and creates the arc of his growth. The final chapter seems slightly forced, tasked as it is with drawing in loose ends, but I found the ending hugely satisfying without seeming trite or fake happy. The title character tried my patience many times, but his heart won me over--not a guy I'm going to forget any time soon. I purchased the ebook on sale with half a dozen of his other titles, and I'm feeling very optimistic about it. ( )

4 ½ out of 5 stars
Brown Dog, B. D., may or may not be Indian. He may or may not have found his father's body at the bottom of Lake Superior. His main goals in life seem to be having sex with every woman possible, and get overly drunk as often as possible. He really likes women and he really likes drinking and he's not too concerned with legalities or political correctness.

And I love this guy. I'm a fairly new Jim Harrison reader, but I'm a fan. This series of novellas is a bit repetitive because they were first published as novellas, so there is a lot of catching up at the beginning of each one. But other than that, they hang together like a novel.

B.D. is about as nonjudgmental as you can get. And not much bothers him. He's got enough, but it never hurts to try for a little more. And he manages to get in trouble. A lot. What a great character is woven through these stories. They are a delight to read. ( )

Jim Harrison’s complicated uncomplicated character, Brown Dog, is a piece of work. A naturistic, drinking, working horn dog who lives on the edge of poverty and lawlessness, but is rich in his love of nature and fishing. He works just enough to get liquor money and his retirement fund goal is $1000. His story develops in the six novellas here, eventually he achieves almost contentment with Gretchen, the love of his life, an avowed lesbian social worker who is also the mother of his daughter. ( )

Highly entertaining stories. My complaints are few: overly dick-oriented (but that is part of the protagonist's distinguishing character); somewhat rambling; and an appalling lack of punctuation, particularly commas, which make the story hard to follow at times, requiring repeated readings of the same section to figure out what's going on or who's speaking. Otherwise, the stories are very colorful and engaging. Harrison really paints a complete, multi-textured picture of a very different sort of life from what anyone reading this book is familiar with. ( )