Legends of the Fall

by Jim Harrison

Ebook, 2016

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Historical Fiction

Fiction

Collections

Your library, eBooks, Short form works

Description

Fiction. Literature. Romance. HTML: From one of America's most versatile and celebrated writers, Legends of the Fall is Jim Harrison's classic trilogy of epic novellas. The publication of this magnificent trilogy of short novels�??Legends of the Fall, Revenge, and The Man Who Gave Up His Name�??confirmed Jim Harrison's reputation as one of the finest American writers of his generation. These absorbing novellas explore the theme of revenge and the actions to which people resort when their lives or goals are threatened, adding up to an extraordinary vision of the twentieth-century man. Set in the Rocky Mountains, Legends of the Fall is the epic tale of three brothers and their lives of passion, madness, exploration, and danger at the beginning of World War I. In Revenge, love causes the course of a man's life to be savagely and irrevocably altered. And in The Man Who Gave Up His Name, a man named Nordstrom is unable to relinquish his consuming obsessions with women, dancing, and food… (more)

Media reviews

New York Times

The story’s narrative voice is arbitrary and godlike, always very distant but by turns lyrical and essayistic, superbly telling instead of showing... Not so much world-weary as cosmically tired, Harrison’s storytelling is sometimes hushed and sometime sonorous, rolling out on waves of

complicated syntax that are averse to commas. This tale of brothers has so much on its mind that the author’s choice of the compact novella form seems almost perverse, a kind of stunt. A Tolstoyan view of the world (“There is little to tell of happiness — happiness is only itself, placid, emotionally dormant”) must also make room for “the Cheyenne sense of fatality that what had happened had already happened.” By the time “Legends of the Fall” is finished, it has the reader believing that life is little more than death’s back story.

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The Federalist

Many “western” stories present love in a straightforward, simple manner. Not “Legends.” Here, we see all sides of the love coin: pure lust, sacrificial love, twisted, dependent love. While each might be momentarily satisfying for the reader and characters, it does not end well. Every single

romantic relationship in the story is inherently flawed, save for perhaps Tristan’s brief marriage to Isabel Two... The beautiful old American West, the passionate love scenes, the bond of familial ties—these all mesmerize us yet also, in the end, collude to reveal any person seeking true joy in these things will feel sad and hollow. For all its passion and grit, its love and scenery, “Legends” reminds us not only that we are flawed human beings but that none of the things we seek pleasure from—booze, sex, politics, nature—are ultimately satisfying, at least long-term.

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New York Times

“Legends of the Fall” begins: “Late in October 1914 three brothers rode from Choteau, Montana to Calgary, Alberta to enlist in the Great War. . .” In that sentence, Mr. Harrison discloses the method that will enable him to include so much in his novella without having it sound like a

synopsis. The opening line establishes both the voice and the manner of the epic storyteller, who deals in great vistas and vast distances. The story will take us through 50 years... In “Legends of the Fall,” the steady, singing, epic voice assures and reassures us that we are hearing‐as the title claims — legend, not reality. In compression, unexpectedly, lies credibility.

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