I’m attempting to read the second novella in Jim Harrison’s The River Swimmer River Swimmer, but I keep flipping back to the first one. It’s not exactly powerful in the normal sense of the word, but its language has a quiet beauty that sinks into my brain like a pebble into a pond. Here’s one quote that particularly grabbed my brain by the nose hairs and made me pay attention:
Suddenly he was preoccupied with the idea that song or music came before language. He had visited Lascaux in Dordogne several times, also Altamira in Spain. He tried to imagine primitive men singing as they painted before they had a defined language. Maybe they sand scatting like the jazz singer Annie Ross, harmonic nonsense syllables. They probably sang because they loved what they were doing.
Here’s hoping you all found something to sing to this weekend.
