A Really Big Lunch by Jim Harrison

Author Jim Harrison was a beloved writer, a muscular, brilliantly economic stylist with a salty wisdom. He also wrote some of the best essays on food around, earning praise as “the poet laureate of appetite” (Dallas Morning News). A Really Big Lunch, published on the one-year anniversary of Harrison’s death, collects many of his food pieces for the first time—and taps into his larger-than-life appetite with wit and verve.

Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch. From the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from Brick, Playboy, Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews. 

Jim Harrison is probably best known for his 1979 novella Legends of the Fall. You may not have read it, but you'll probably have seen it - a handsome young Brad Pitt wandering the plains of Montana sticks in the mind somewhat. Aside from this book though, Harrison wrote a range of fiction books, and huge amounts of poetry - but "A Really Big Lunch" focuses on his love for food and his adventures as a roving gourmand.  Harrison died in 2016, but this book is a wonderful tribute to the man - it's full of life, humour and an easy intimacy that draws the reader in and thrills them with descriptions of wonderful food and wine, as well as beautifully chosen prose. 

I don't think there could be any better epitaph than "He live life to the full" - and it's clear that this was the case with Harrison. "A Really Big Lunch" is full of essays that convey an infectious and almost inspiration desire for fun, food and fine wine through prose that's unbelievably enjoyable - salty and rude and like hearing fantastic tales from a naughty but beloved Uncle. The lunch of the title is the feature of a fantastic essay about a 37 course lunch Harrison once partook in - 11 hours of grazing on dishes that varied from a simple soup through to a a hare cooked in port wine inside a calf's bladder - all accompanied by 19 different types of wine. It rather sets the tone for the rest of the essays - they're packed full of excess and some foods that even a voracious eater like myself wouldn't dream of eating - but Harrison's lust for life and living makes them all wildly exciting and interesting - his wit pushing the reader through even the most horrific of meals. 
Of course, a life of excess isn't all that healthy, and Harrison's meditations on his deteriorating body certainly take on a bittersweet quality in the aftermath of his death. However, this collection of wonderful essays serves as a brilliant tribute to a great man - my face ached from grinning at the writing and my stomach hurt from pangs of envious humour. Many thanks to the publishers for the copy.