Jim Harrison- man of the midwest

This weeks readings were for me, very entertaining. I liked the story of a midwestern girl with a South American name. The thing about Harrison's work is that he appears to be a person who has very sensual details. It was hard at first to get into the storyline because of all the background he had to portray. I was reading at first the story of "Dalva" and somehow thought she was involved with a priest. Later on, I thought she was writing a letter to her son, but at the end the son turned into a daughter. What was up with that?
Background is an important detail in novels. Novels allow writers to expand on characters and situations that otherwise are shortened. I saw in his notebooks that it took him over three years to complete his work. He even mentioned that he thought he would go broke because the novel would be bad. He mentioned that his other work felt to him, to be the result of a suicide by a fellow compatriot. So to continue on in writing felt to be brave on his part. This makes me wonder how J.D. Salinger felt about copies of his book "The Catcher in the Rye," in the hands of all of those assassins.
Another thing about the notebooks was his mentioning of a woodpile. It reminded me of a place out on Canada Road that I dubbed woodpile gulch. My father and I were out on Canada Road on the Special Olympics Cycling team. I was traveling up this steep hill. At the top, the two of us rested and drank some water. As we were starting up again, my handlebars slipped over the side and I fell into the ditch. I saw my life flash before my eyes. I remember coming too and my father remarking how I looked cool flipping around like that.
Jim Harrison's "Letters Yesenin" were to me just typical letters from another writer to another writer. I did not take much out of them, other than his advice to up and becoming writers. He said to think of writing projects as like having your hair on fire. You just got to stop that "fire" by putting it out with your words on a page. That is such good advice.