Mythmaking and the consequence of "soul history" in Jim Harrison's Legends of the Fall

Studies in Short Fiction, Fall, 1999 by Patrick A. Smith

(3) By the time he writes the two Brown Dog novellas, the eponymous story coming 10 years after Legends of the Fall, Harrison has placed his protagonist in a context in which the best that he can hope for is to distinguish himself as an anti-mythic character.

(4) That Tristan lives well into his eighties is perhaps an indication that the burden of soul history is perpetuated by those who understand it best and yet are left to suffer its consequences.

(5) Harrison's view of the mingling of Native American and European cultures in Legends of the Fall is not the cynical interaction between the two that the author presents in the Brown Dog novellas.

WORKS CITED

Chenetier, Marc. "History in Contemporary American Fiction, or The Constrained Nightmare." History and Post-War Writing. Ed. Theo D'haen and Hans Bertens. Amsterdam: Kodopi, 1990. 147-69.

Claridge, Henry. "Writing on the Margin: E. L. Doctorow and American History." The New American Writing: Essays on American Literature since 1970. Ed. Graham Clarke. London: Vision, 1990. 9-28.

Douglas, Mary. Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology. London: Routledge, 1975.

Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. Rev. ed. New York: Stein and Day, 1966.

Harrison, Jim. Dalva. New York: Dutton/Seymour Lawrence, 1988.

--. Legends of the Fall. New York: Delta/Seymour Lawrence, 1979.

Opdahl, Keith. "Junk Food." Rev. of Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison. Nation 7 July 1979: 23-24.

Reilly, Edward C. Jim Harrison. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Roberson, William H. "A Good Day to Live: The Prose Works of Jim Harrison." Great Lakes Review 8.2-9.1 (1982-83): 29-37.

Roth, Philip. Reading Myself and Others. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985.

Stocking, Kathleen. "Hard Cases: Conversations with Jim Harrison and Tom McGuane, Riders of the Purple Rage." Detroit News Magazine (12 Aug. 1980): 14-15 .

Strout, Cushing. The Veracious Imagination: Essays on American History, Literature, and Biography. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan UP, 1981.

Tyson, Lois. Psychological Politics of the American Dream: The Commodification of Subjectivity in Twentieth-Century American Literature. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State UP, 1994.

Umphlett, Wiley Lee. Mythmakers of the American Dream: The Nostalgic Vision in Popular Culture. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1983.

PATRICK A. SMITH teaches in the Department of English at Florida State University. His recent essays have appeared in Scribner's American Writers (ed. Jay Parini) and Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature. The author of The True Bones of My Life: Essays on the Fiction of Jim Harrison (Michigan State UP), he lives and writes in Quincy, Florida.