There are many people qualified to critically assess the work of Jim Harrison, an author of fundamental literary value who could also be considered Michigan’s unofficial poet laureate. I am not one of those people. I am only someone who has read Harrison’s work rapturously and at times shared in a life force that emanates from it. As such I can do little else besides thank him, which is what this is however meandering it turns out to be.

Harrison introduced me to the joy of literary writing in a way that school was unable to. The literature I read in high school was at times beautiful as well as shocking (Manchild in the Promised Land comes to mind as I write this). My mother gave me my first Harrison book, a more recent work called The English Major, the summer after my senior year. Reading it was a revelatory experience. I was unable to close the book once I opened it not because I was gripped with anticipation of what would happen next, as had often been the case reading my father’s crime novels, but because the world seen through Harrison’s eyes was so immensely pleasing I couldn’t bear to leave. There is little in the book that should immediately concern a seventeen-year-old — the protagonist, Cliff, has recently divorced his wife and sets off on a road trip, his aim being to visit all fifty states. Yet I felt that somehow the book understood me completely and introduced me to the parts of myself even I couldn’t apprehend. The fact that I still feel this when reading Harrison’s work is a testament to his genius.

I’m writing this now having just completed a fresh read of True North. The novel is Harrison’s great epic of his home state — while Michigan plays a role in the majority of his fiction and stars in some of it, in True North the mitten truly takes center stage. The first time I read it was in a breathless blitz through Harrison’s work as a teenager having newly discovered him. At that time I identified profoundly with the protagonist, David Burkett, not because I hated my father (I don’t) but because I too was unsure whether to take my thoughts seriously or do the healthy thing and dismiss them. The feeling of being trapped in a bottomless pit of introspection spoke to me. Upon the second reading I found myself more drawn to the character of Michigan, the state. There is a personal reason for this: I have lived in Michigan my whole quarter-century of life and now I am preparing to leave for the first time. I will be attending Duke Divinity School in North Carolina to study theology (attending seminary places me in good company among Harrison’s characters, as the notorious Brown Dog as well as Burkett were both young seminarians at one point). What I’m saying is that I’m so sappy and emotional that I haven’t even left Michigan and I’m already nostalgic about it.

It’s fair to say I didn’t truly love Michigan until Harrison taught me the how and why. I grew up in Ann Arbor with a child’s ignorance of my tremendous privilege, vaguely aware that I was happy in my current locale though doubtful that other states even existed. I enjoyed certain aspects of Michigan life other residents despised, such as the bitter cold of winter; I am generally invigorated by freezing temperatures though the recent “arctic vortex” was a bit much. There was also the sense that Michigan was unique and uncommonly beautiful among the states in the union. The ridiculously expansive Great Lakes speak to its uniqueness while a backpacking trip to Pictured Rocks when I was in eighth grade convinced me that the natural landscape of Michigan is unmatched.

But obviously these are geographic markers, which speak to a description of a state but contribute only peripherally to its character. Before I read Harrison, Michigan was simply the place I happened to live. His writing gave my home state its singular animation akin to the breath of life God puffed into his clay figurine named Adam. Harrison composed a loose mythology of Michigan that featured tortured heroes like Burkett and Joseph from Farmer (an earlier novel), endearing mischief-makers like Brown Dog (a character Harrison said he wrote with the intention of creating a “totally free man”) and mind-bending anti-heroes like Swanson from Wolf: A False Memoir. Taken together Harrison’s myriad characters melted into a vivid ethos that hung over my home state like a mist and still does. I guess this is that “breath of life” I was just talking about.

I should be clear: I am personally not at all similar to Harrison’s Michigander protagonists who are often swashbuckling, hard-drinking and sex-crazed in varying degrees. I am not any of those things; I’m about to go to seminary, for God’s sake (pun intended). Another common characteristic we don’t share is a familiarity, really an intimacy, with the natural world. Farmers and former farmers dot Harrison’s work, and general nature lovers fill in the spaces between them. It sounds stupid to say nature is central to Harrison’s writing but it’s the truth. Like any living human being I am often awestruck by natural beauty though my interest in the nuts and bolts of the natural world is similar to that of what the sports world calls a “casual fan.” I enjoy outdoor adventures but I share no special bond with nature similar to what I have with, say, basketball, a sport I love dearly.

But that’s not really the point, is it? If we are exactly like the characters we read in books then what are we learning from them? I used to want to be like a Harrison character but I quickly grew out of that phase however painful the process was. When I stopped imitating them, that’s when I started learning from them, and they have taught me so very much.

From the people created in Harrison’s amazing brain I learned to seek freedom through reading; books, like atoms in the literal sense, can be the figurative building blocks of life. I learned that self-seeking is a sacred exercise but that going too far into your own head can lead to disaster; when it strikes it is best to turn outward (this is a lesson I still haven’t completely internalized though I’m getting there). I learned that sex is not scary — something my timid teenage self desperately needed to hear — but is actually a lovely romping gift best enjoyed when everyone’s on the same page. I learned that materialism mutes life and that it’s okay to think popular culture is mostly stupid; take money where you can get it but if you allow it to govern your life you turn dull and your eyes go vacant. These are only a few of the lessons Harrison taught me through his writing. The idea that “lessons” should be infused into fiction writing is repellent but I tend to think reading great fiction should be a learning experience somehow. Harrison, for me, has been a steadfast and loving guide.

Naturally I forgot one of the most important of his lessons: it’s perfectly fine to be an intellectual and something. What I mean by this is that many males in my generation, if they have an inclination toward deeper thought (or if they only think they do), they feel the need to shape their whole identity around this impulse. This parading is meaningless and can be exasperating to others. Someone once told me he didn’t think I was smart because I was wearing gym shorts, but I think he was only trying to start a fight. I’m getting off track. The real lesson is that writing isn’t something that must define who you are. I write a lot. For a while, I was paid to write things about basketball on the internet. But my creative writing collapsed in on itself under the notion that it defined me. Harrison taught me that it’s okay to write simply because you must and to read for similar reasons. You can be a farmer, a retired art dealer, a worried teenager, a fighter pilot — hell, even a minister — and still lead a life of the mind.