A Really Big Lunch

Description

New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison was one of America's most beloved writers, 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 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, the Kermit Lynch Newsletter and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison's pointed aperus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison's life over the last fifteen years. A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.

Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was the New York Times-bestselling author of thirty-nine previous books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, including Legends of the Fall, Dalva and Returning to Earth. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and winner of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, his work was published in twenty-seven languages.

The late Jim Harrison was one of the true greats when it came to writing about food. He combined an attention to detail with a glorious prose style and a massive appetite... A must read. * Observer * A celebration of eating well and drinking even better as a recipe for the good life... If this is the last we get from Harrison, it serves as a fitting memorial. * Kirkus * [His] gusto sparkles throughout this collection of magazine essays on food... the result is a tasty nosh for foodies with a literary bent. * Publishers Weekly * A Really Big Lunch showcases Harrison's enthusiastic, funny, and uncompromising views on how to eat, drink, and live well. His tone is conversational, generous, the sort of person with whom you'd want to share a 37-course lunch that lasts 11 hours . . . His writing is bodily, bawdy, sharp. The more we have of his voice, the better. * Boston Globe * The intimacy and enthusiasm of Harrison's food correspondent style makes reading A Really Big Lunch feel like sitting at a table during a really big lunch with the best, and smartest, and most entertaining of friends. * Salon * With an introduction from Harrison's longtime friend Mario Batali, this is for Harrison fans as well as a great addition to popular food and wine collections. * Booklist * Harrison writes with enough force to make your knees buckle and with infectious zeal that makes you turn the pages hungry for more . . . Jim Harrison has staked out a distinctive place in the world of food writing. -- Jane and Michael Stern * New York Times Book Review on THE RAW AND THE COOKED * Harrison is the American Rabelais, and he is at his irreverent and excessive best in this collection. -- John Skowles * San Diego Union-Tribune on THE RAW AND THE COOKED * Jim Harrison is the Henry Miller of food writing. His passion is infectious. . . By virtue of talent, Mr. Harrison would sit at the same table as A.J. Liebling and M.F.K. Fisher. -- Jeffrey Trachtenberg * Wall Street Journal on THE RAW AND THE COOKED * Jim Harrison is the Homer, the Michelangelo, the Lamborghini, the Willie Mays, the Secretariat of words, the peak of perfection in all writing, but achieves Jimi Hendrix solo perfection when he waxes the gristle about our most primordial need and luxury. -- Mario Batali * on THE RAW AND THE COOKED * A rumination on the unholy trinity of sex, death and food, this long-awaited collection of gastronomic essays reads like the love child of M.F.K. Fisher and James Thorne - on acid. Harrison . . . writes with a passion for language equal to his passion for good food. * Publishers Weekly on THE RAW AND THE COOKED *