Jim Harrison, who died on March 26th, 2016 at the age of 78, was one of those figures people call “larger than life.” A novelist, essayist, poet, screenplay writer and master of the novella, Harrison dealt in his work with issues such as mortality, illness, living the solitary life, redemption and absolution, work that, as the NY Times obituary said, captured the resonant, almost mythic soul of 20th-century rural America. Among his best known novels were Legends of the Fall and Wolf, both of which became major Hollywood films.

This interview was recorded while he was on tour in 2007 for his novel, Returning to Earth, which revisits characters from his 2005 novel, True North. The conversation was wide-ranging, touching on not only his work but also life in New York after 9/11, the columnist David Brooks, the education system, and life in Hollywood in the ’90s.

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