Jim Harrison

Authors of a certain age you don't want to bother.

Jim Harrison is an exception - for his age he runs on half the rocket plus. He hasn't changed since I met him in LA. Why were you in LA? he asks.

The movies and the blockbusting good feeling of LA before the storm of Bushism and the rest. Well, Jim does it very well, he signs hundreds of French editions of his latest French edition at L'arbre à  Lettres on the foot of rue Mouffetard; and it is a beautiful day.

Christian Bourgois, his former editor, is the loyal angel seated by his side at the table; a white-haired cavalier of the French intelligentsia, he should be recognized as bringing great world writers, mainly from the US, to a French post WWII reading public. Jim must be grateful for the attention and success his books grab here.

He just keeps autographing, talking about anything, answering question and spitting jokes, smoking cigarettes and sipping some great Burgundy wine: life is hard these days when you have to work to promote your work. How do you write? a serious clean-shaved white-shirted Frenchman asks, leaning over the table as though it was confidential. You know, you just write, you got to have some discipline...

And how do you get discipline? Well, you get up every morning, you have coffee, you drink, you do what you need to do, like signing these books -- what was your name, Emmanuelle? Here's one of the world's greatest living writer still selling his books like a bible salesman. With the exception that someone out there may become his literary heir.