"It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't." With these words, Jim Harrison sends his sixty-something protagonist, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late- blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, on a road trip across America, armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds to overcome the banal names men have given them. Cliff's adventures take him through a whirlwind affair with a former student from his high school-teacher days twenty- some years before, to a "snake farm" in Arizona owned by an old classmate; and to the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer in San Francisco.
The English Major is the map of a man's journey intoβand out ofβhimself, and it is vintage Harrisonβreflective, big- picture American, and replete with wicked wit.
Media Buzz
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - July 9, 2009 All Things Considered - October 27, 2008
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