In The River Swimmer (Grove Press, $25), Jim Harrison once again demonstrates why he is perhaps the best American writer working in the largely ignored novella form. In 鈥淭he Land of Unlikeness,鈥 the first of the two long stories that comprise the book, we meet Clive, a failed artist and divorc茅 in his mid-sixties who travels back to his Michigan home to drive his bird-crazed mother around the countryside, seduce boyhood flames, and rediscover his love for painting.
The River Swimmer.The superior title story centers on Thad, a Michigan farmboy with a deep love of rivers and girls, in that order. He has a somewhat supernatural talent for navigating waterways, once swimming from the farm, which is on an island in an unnamed river, to Chicago, his clothes in tow in a fanny pack. Growing up, Thad is befriended by 鈥渨ater babies鈥濃攊nfant water spirits who live in a pond on the island. Eventually, in France, he鈥檚 injured when a powerboat hits him, and while convalescing back home, he manages to slip into the water-baby pond, from which the little sea-monkey creatures egg him onward, to the mouth of the river and, eventually, Lake Michigan.
The River Swimmer probably won鈥檛 earn Harrison a new audience鈥攍oyal readers will find the well-worn characters and settings and the themes of wild love and regret as comfortable as a wine-stained flannel shirt. But you get the sense that the author doesn鈥檛 really care, and that鈥檚 exactly why you should.