Jim Harrison has had a long, colorful career as a writer. Since 1965, he has written fiction, including the novella Legends of the Fall, poetry, nonfiction and screenplays. He's also known for carousing in Hollywood - Harrison is old friends with Jack Nicholson - and being an avid hunter and fisherman.

Harrison often writes about the gorgeous upper peninsula of Michigan, a landscape peopled with Native American, Finnish, and Swedish heritage, which is where his latest novel, Returning to Earth, is set. The main character, Donald, a half-breed Chippewa-Finn, is tragically dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. The novel is a beautifully written account of Donald's passing and the effect on his multifaceted and multicultural family.

Harrison spoke with the Rocky about the novel and his vibrant writing life, in advance of his appearance in Denver next week.

Question: Returning to Earth is your 28th book. Do you find it easier or harder to write novels after all these years?

Answer: It's the same. Maybe it's a little harder because you know more. It depends on which book. I wrote the novella, Legends of the Fall, in nine days, but it's never happened again.

Q: Why did it come out so quickly?

A: Because I'd been thinking about it 10 years and then it just seemed like I was taking dictation, you know. I doubt if it will ever happen again.

Q: Returning to Earth is the beautiful, sad story of a man's passing. I was incredibly touched when I read the book, and then I later read that Donald's character was inspired by the recent death of your brother, John. Was it a difficult story to write?

A: No, not too much. There's an ancient historian, Nonnius, who said, "I am made a heap of all I've met." In other words, you use everything. That's the nature of the human mind, just to keep inventing. You draw, obviously, on what you know.

Q: The landscape of your writing is very lush. It makes me feel as if I've visited Michigan's upper peninsula.

A: It's intriguing because it's not so directly dramatic, of course, as the cordillera of the Rockies. But it has its own kind of charm because of all the forests and also the immensity of Lake Superior, which I think is 500 miles long - the big lake, as they call it.

Q: What about Returning to Earth? How did it emerge?

A: Well, a long time ago, I was walking with a friend in this vast area of stumps, white pines stumps that had preserved themselves. Actually, I was with a guy named Dan Gerber, he's a poet, and his family made baby food. But anyway, he looked tough at all those stumps and he said, "I'm glad my grandfather didn't do this." And then I started to think: What if you go down a number of generations and you have a very intelligent young man - how's he going to look at this? Because they cut 12 million acres. Everything went.

Q: Those images in the book are haunting.

A: Yeah, those vast stumps. I used to think they were sort of like ghost buffalo. It was tough. So anyway, then your mind accumulates images and ideas for a dozen years and characters and finally it came.

Q: Did it help you to write the dialogue by hearing your daughters talk?

A: Well, yes, I mean, I listen to everyone. A friend of mine pointed out that that's the trouble between older men and younger women in America, especially if they aren't educated. The words are the same, but they all mean something different (laughs). You think it's the same language, but it isn't.

Q: Speaking of language, you were an accomplished poet before you wrote your first novel. You've also written successful novellas and screenplays. Do you have a favorite genre?

A: No, I just float in and out. I mean my first calling was as a poet, actually, and that's sort of a religious thing. I mean, it seems to be to me. You ought to read all of Merrill Gilfillan. He's sort of a recluse, but he lives around Boulder. The novelist Tom McGuane said about him, "If anyone writes better prose in America, I don't know who it is." That's a big one. (Laughs). Tom isn't normally very generous.

Q: The two of you have had a longstanding friendship.

A: McGuane? Yeah, we met in college. We didn't particularly like each other. He was in Malaga in Spain when my first book of poetry came out, Plain Song. Some friend of his in Spain had read it, so when he returned to America we started trout fishing together. And we still are. We have a correspondence, oddly enough. It might be published at some point - thousands of pages.

Q: Do you send your work to each other?

A: No, Not really. Nobody sees my work. For years and years my editor was actually my oldest daughter, who is a writer, too. She writes mystery novels. She was my best editor. Now she's too busy, but I have a very good editor at Grove Atlantic. I can't deal with male editors. My daughter says it's a (penis) thing, that it's too competitive (laughs).

Q: How did you discover that you love to write?

A: My family was very literate. My dad is an agronomist, you know, agriculturist. He was a farm head, but he loved to read. So we went to the library every Saturday morning. Everybody was reading all the time.

Q: Both of your brothers went into academia.

A: Yeah, but I was the black sheep, as you might have noticed. I mean, if you read my first novel, Wolf, you'll see. I was a bad boy. I just couldn't stop. Even hitchhiked to Colorado when I was 16 to work. I guess Estes Park has changed in 50 years. That old Stanley Hotel was very elegant in the 1950s. Very fancy. We even had a convention of the Supreme Court and federal judges. I got to spill Earl Warren's coffee.

Q: Were you friends with Jack Nicholson when they filmed The Shining at the Stanley?

A: Well, they did all the filming in England. That was the second unit that did the lodges. I was with him in London when he filmed The Shining, though, because we were working on my screenplay for Revenge with John Huston.

Q: It's fascinating; you were a screenwriter for over 20 years.

A: The reason, of course, to write for Hollywood is simply greed. The money is good, but then you spend it.

Q: Wasn't it fun spending it?

A: Yeah, at a point, but then I came from an essentially peasant family on both sides, somewhat educated but I couldn't get used to it. I'm much happier on one-quarter my previous income. I mean, I quit writing for Hollywood a dozen years ago because I couldn't take it anymore.

Q: Your next book is a comedy.

A: Well, sort of a Chekovian comedy. It's called The English Major. After Returning to Earth, I sat there for four days and I needed to levitate my melancholy. So I started writing this other book, but very slowly. During the time I wrote it, I fished for 70 days, so that helped.

Harrison facts

• Harrison was blinded in his left eye at age 7, when a friend accidentally wounded him with a piece of glass.

• He cites his influences as William Faulkner, Fyodor Dostoevsky and James Joyce.

Ashley Simpson Shires is a freelance writer from Boulder. Her short fiction has been published in journals including the Brooklyn Review and the American Literary Review.

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