Summary of Jim Harrison's Off to the Side

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The author’s childhood friend David Kilmer would heroically pursue the quest of sex with women, but he was not fixated. The author quit looking at the photos of women in his father’s medical books, as they were only included if something had gone haywire.

#2 My grandmother, Hulda, and grandfather, John, emigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1890. They met in Chicago and married, with modest savings, to buy a small farm in northern Michigan.

#3 I can return at will to a summer dawn in an upstairs room where I was confined. I hear the screen door of the pump shed slam and see my grandfather heading to the barn with two pails of milk skimmed for the calves.

#4 I remember my father and sister reading books in silence, or the smell of the aunts doing each other’s hair with Toni Home Permanents. The heaviness of the rye bread eaten with herring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822560086

IRB Media

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Insights on Jim Harrison's Off to the Side

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The author’s childhood friend David Kilmer would heroically pursue the quest of sex with women, but he was not fixated. The author quit looking at the photos of women in his father’s medical books, as they were only included if something had gone haywire.

#2

My grandmother, Hulda, and grandfather, John, emigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1890. They met in Chicago and married, with modest savings, to buy a small farm in northern Michigan.

#3

I can return at will to a summer dawn in an upstairs room where I was confined. I hear the screen door of the pump shed slam and see my grandfather heading to the barn with two pails of milk skimmed for the calves.

#4

I remember my father and sister reading books in silence, or the smell of the aunts doing each other’s hair with Toni Home Permanents. The heaviness of the rye bread eaten with herring.

#5

My father’s family were farmers, and they had five children. They were extremely even-tempered, and their family life was dominated by moods between morose Sundays and wild card games the night before.

#6

The golden years I had in Reed City from the ages of five to twelve were not really golden at all. I was lucky to have parents who took me fishing and hunting, and I was very grateful for it. However, I understand that people who watch a lot of TV never again seem to be able to adjust to the actual pace of life.

#7

The invention of diversions and the change in cultural behavior are part of an economic system that is beyond my understanding. I simply think of it as a matter of swimming in an anemic, sterile, and crowded swimming pool compared to swimming in a lake back in the woods.

#8

What we think of our hometown is our first substantial map of the world. In a city, it’s the neighborhood. Reed City was containable with clear borders of fields and woods two blocks from our five-bedroom house.

#9

The effects of the accident were long-term, and I lost the vision in my left eye. The consequences of her simple, violent gesture were long-range, and I was 4-F and unable to fight for my country in Vietnam.

#10

The author’s left eye was injured in a accident, and he was forced to cover it with a bandage for a month. The compensatory joys were his uncles coming home from the war, and the gradual joy he and his brother experienced when they got a baby sister.

#11

My father and his brothers built me a cabin on a remote lake fifteen miles from town. It was one thing to