Joyce Bahle’s heartfelt mission keeps Jim Harrison’s writing alive
This photo by Bob Wargo from late Fall of 1980 shows Joyce Bahle with Jim Harrison, dictaphone in hand, in front of the granary on his Lake Leelanau farm. While meandering Leelanau County’s open roads, Harrison would dictate sentences, describe landscapes, and offer to-do lists for Bahle to transcribe.
Aide-de-camp follows in writer’s footsteps to France
This past October, longtime Suttons Bay resident Joyce Harrington Bahle and her son Andrew flew to Paris and walked through the Jardins du Luxembourg, the gardens in which their late friend Jim Harrison loved to stroll by the pear trees.
Harrison wrote about “flaneuring” in Paris in his 2014 essay “Truly Older”:
“My behavior there seems a bit peculiar to some of my local friends. I get up very early and walk three or four hours, often having an omelet full of lardons to fuel my effort. I usually walk through the Luxembourg Gardens first, stopping to look at le jardin fruitier first, a small fenced garden of fruit trees that was begun in the 17th century. As I slowly fatigue I stop at cafés for reasons of energy and hydration for a verre de rouge. Any fool knows that red wine is the best energy drink if you keep it within two bottles. A light lunch and a nap and I’m ready for my ceaseless interviews in which I extravagantly fib about the past.”
Jim Harrison, the famous, versatile and prolific writer, novelist and poet who grew up in Reed City, Michigan, and spent 35 years in Leelanau County, is all but worshipped in France. Indeed, Bahle learned of a recent reading of Harrison’s work in a small town in the Provence region attended by more than 100 people—evidence, that his work is likely to occupy an important place on French bookshelves far into the future.
Joyce and Andrew—a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences —were in France to catch the Oct. 15 premier of Seule la terre est éternelle (“The Earth is All That Lasts”), a documentary about Harrison, at the 2019 Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon.
Their trip was also a journey in the writer’s footsteps. Harrison traveled often to France, but with his friend Peter Lewis—not with his beloved wife Linda, his daughters, or Joyce. He had tickets to travel there the month after he died, and the pear trees in the Luxembourg Gardens may not have been far from his mind when he passed away on March 26, 2016, at his home in Patagonia, Arizona. Linda had died five months before.
“Some of us believe Jim wanted to die in France,” said Joyce.
In Paris and Lyon, the Bahles would meet many French and literary friends of Harrison with whom Joyce had corresponded via phone and email during her four decades of working with him but with whom she had never shared a meal.
Those faithful, enduring relationships are important to Joyce and even more so as she embarks on the next phase of sharing Harrison’s legacy with the world.
Working with Jim
Joyce Harrington began working as Jim Harrison’s aide-de-camp in 1979 following a handshake in the granary and writing studio behind the author’s house in Lake Leelanau. They had met at the Bluebird in Leland. She agreed to be his assistant for a trial period of six months—equal parts literary assistant, business manager, and guardian, freeing Harrison to lead a prolific, international writer’s life that would produce hundreds of poems, novels, essays and screenplays.
He would write on legal pads, with his preferred Razor Point pens, and she would copy them in her office where she typed the words he shared with the world. After Jim and Linda Harrison left Lake Leelanau in 2002 and moved to Montana to be closer to their daughters Jamie and Anna, he would fax his handwritten words to Bahle’s office.
“The most cherished times in my life’s work with Jim were receiving these freshly penned poems to type,” Bahle wrote in a September 2018 letter to promote Harrison’s poetic legacy. “When I heard the hum of the fax, my own heart would race when I saw a new poem appear. I would type it upon arrival—no heed paid to time of day or day of the week—the poems were always our most important work.”
Through the years, through the work, Joyce, Jim and Linda became like family. The bond and trust between Joyce and Jim grew even stronger after Linda passed away in October 2015.
“I was down in Patagonia not long before he died, sitting by the fire,” said Joyce, “Jim said to me ‘I don’t worry one bit about you when I’m gone’. I said ‘Jim, that’s really unfair. The problem is that you’re not just my employer… We’re very close. I’m going to continue doing the work you entrusted in me. But there will be an emotional time for me and the loss in my heart forever.’”
Harrison died at his writing desk days before Easter 2016, his notebook open to a handwritten draft of an untitled poem—the last words of a legendary writer who took his vows as an artist at age 19, according to Copper Canyon Press, which two months earlier had published his final book of poetry, Dead Man’s Float.
News of Jim Harrison’s passing spread across the world. Praises were sung for him by many who his words had touched. But Joyce Bahle needed time to settle before she could speak publicly about working with Harrison. An early invitation to speak at Leland’s Old Art Building about Harrison was politely declined. The wound was too fresh.
A year and a half later—on October 21, 2017—Bahle organized “A Really Big Tribute: An Evening of Life, Art, and Stories” for Harrison at the Traverse City Opera House. A star lineup of out-of-town guest speakers included: Joseph Bednarik, co-publisher of Copper Canyon Press; Judy Hottensen, association publisher at Grove Atlantic; Will Hearst of the Hearst Corporation in San Francisco; Irish author Colum McCann; Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, and poet Gary Snyder. Each shared unfiltered stories of knowing Harrison.
But it was Bahle who drew a standing ovation from the sellout crowd. In the final scene of the evening, she walked across the stage to a desk—Jim Harrison’s writing desk—where she turned on his desk lamp, unpacked his briefcase, lay down his jacket, propped up a copy of pages from the handwritten novella Brown Dog, set out his jar of feathers on the desk, moved a glass of water, then stood up and introduced herself to the crowd: “My name is Joyce Harrington Bahle.” Seven hundred guests stood and clapped. “That moment felt so surreal yet deeply spiritual to me,” she said later.
The Heart’s Work Project
Fast forward to today. Efforts are underway to keep Jim Harrison’s work alive and to share it with a new generation of readers, poets and writers—across the United States and the world.
Bahle appeared as a guest at Norm Wheeler’s “Celebrating Great Writers” discussion group at the Leland Library in September to discuss Harrison’s essay “Private Religion”.
In Lansing, the Library of Michigan is currently hosting a photographic exhibit until January 31, 2020 called “Friends”. The exhibit is a collection of photographs by Harrison’s close friend John “Bud” Schulz of St. Johns. The photographs, taken in 1971-72 at the author’s Lake Leelanau farm, show a youthful and exuberant Harrison with his wife, Linda, and daughters Jamie and Anna. He is seen tending to his horses and playing with his dog.
Other items on display at the Library of Michigan include Harrison’s writing desk, walking stick, artwork, and totems; numerous curios he collected from the natural world; and personal letters, all 60 of his books, broadsides, manuscripts, and jottings to help interpret his work.
Meanwhile, Bahle has teamed up with Joseph Bednarik and George Knotek, co-publishers of the nonprofit Copper Canyon Press, on “The Heart’s Work” project, a fundraising effort to keep Harrison’s poetry on the shelves of bookstores and libraries indefinitely.
Phase 1 of the Heart’s Work Project yielded a paperback release of Harrison’s final book of poetry, Dead Man’s Float, and The Essential Poems of Jim Harrison, which brings together his most important poetry. Phase 2 aims to publish The Complete Poems of Jim Harrison in a single volume and The Harrison Series, a multi-year project of releasing his individual poetry books as standalone volumes. Learn more about the Heart’s Work Project by emailing poetry@coppercanyonpress.org.
Harrison signed his first contract with Port Townsend, Washington-based Copper Canyon Press in 1997 because the author wanted a heightened attentiveness to design, production and editing—and he wanted his poetry books to stay in print. In the late ’90s, Harrison visited Copper Canyon to sign several hundred copies of a limited edition, reported Bednarik. He entered the press’ modest clapboard building, which had served as a cannon repair shop during World War I, stopped in the foyer, scanned the office space, and said in his trademark gravelly voice, “This sure doesn’t look like Random House.”
Bednarik, Harrison’s poetry editor at Copper Canyon, visited Michigan in October to view the Library of Michigan photo exhibit and to meet with Bahle. She hosted him at her Suttons Bay home, and they invited a few friends and Harrison supporters on October 8 for a “Hearts Work Circle”; a gathering of wine, cheeses and charcuterie, and to share with us their fundraising strategy for the Heart’s Work Project and to keep Harrison’s poetry in print and alive.
As we watched the autumn sun sink into Lake Leelanau in the distance, Bednarik initiated the discussion by reading Harrison’s poem “Bridge” which was published in Dead Man’s Float two months before he died:
“Most of my life was spent
building a bridge out over the sea
though the sea was too wide.
I’m proud of the bridge
hanging in the pure sea air. Machado
came for a visit and we sat on the
end of the bridge, which was his idea.
Now that I’m old the work goes slowly.
Even nearer death, I like it out here
high above the sea bundled
up for the arctic storms of late fall,
the resounding crash and moan of the sea,
the hundred-foot depth of the green troughs.
Sometimes the sea roars and howls like
the animal it is, a continent wide and alive.
What beauty in this the darkest music
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies.
So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above
the abyss. Tonight the moon will be in my lap.
This is my job, to study the universe
from my bridge. I have the sky, the sea, the faint
green streak of Canadian forest on the far shore.”
Viva la France
In Paris the following week, Joyce and Andrew Bahle stayed at Hotel Saint-Paul Rive Gauche, which is around the block from Harrison’s French literary publisher Flammarion in Place de l’Odeon. They dined with his literature editor Patrice Hoffman at the corner restaurant La Mediterranee. The dinner began with fresh radishes served with butter and salt, a dish that Harrison often ate as a child together with his father. Patrice had no idea of that story when he ordered it for the table but for Joyce it was a touching sign Jim was on her shoulder. For dinner, Joyce ate Dover Sole meunière, the flatfish that she and Harrison used to eat while in Grand Rapids on business. The wine that night included a Brouilly Pisse Vieille 2017. Dessert was a batter cake with Mirabelle Plums.
During the exquisite meal which lasted two and a half hours, Patrice described why Harrison is so beloved in France—his artful depiction of the inhabitants of rural America and the landscapes he cherished, his forthright discussion of sex and desire, and his constant celebration of food and drink.
In Lyon for the Lumiere Film Festival, they dined at Comptoir Abel Café, where Harrison enjoyed many meals of pike quenelle, chicken morels, and gratin crayfish with his friend Abel at the bistro fashioned with polished floors, shimmering woodwork, French ceilings and vast mirrors. Joyce ate the quenelle of pike in homemade gratin—a meal said to take them three days to prepare.
Their dinner partners were Francois Busnel, co-director of the documentary about Harrison (Joyce gifted him one of Jim’s used Razor Point pens), Harrison’s longtime friend Jim Fergus, author of A Thousand White Women and whom he introduced to France, and restaurateur Peter Lewis, who travelled often with Harrison to France. Joyce was also reacquainted with Brice Matthieussent, Harrison’s French translator who had visited Harrison in Leelanau County in 1992.
While waiting in line to enter the theater to see the documentary the next day, Bahle was approached by Thierry Frémaux, director of the Lumiere Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival.
“I didn’t know Thierry except by phone all these years, but he came through the crowd and walked right up to me and gave me a kiss, a kiss, a hug, a hug. ‘Joyce, I’m so happy you are here with us,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t have ever had Jim if it wasn’t for you. We all knew that.”
Once in the theater, Bahle was asked to join Frémaux, co-directors Busnel and Soland and Fergus and Lewis on stage to share words with the audience.
“I laughed because Jim told me that he would be invited up on stage and they’d speak in English to him but then they’d speak French [to the crowd],” said Bahle. “Jim would get to sit back and have his wine and smoke his cigarette.”
Meals with Jim
Joyce Bahle had told me before her France trip that she expected to have “the big cry” while watching the documentary, in a dark theater away from the spotlight cast on her while working for Jim Harrison and since he died nearly four years ago. But she didn’t cry. Instead, she analyzed the film, coolly and calmly, perhaps summoning the presence she had provided Harrison all those years: turning his hand-written (and later faxed) pages into print; corresponding with the editors, the agents, the press hounds; ordering the special signs for his Lake Leelanau driveway that asked people to stay away “unless you have called first. This means you.”
The film itself is a beautiful portrait of Harrison in some of the isolated and beautiful places that he most loved. The film offers both an intimate view of how Harrison worked and lived and collection of funny and wide ranging conversations with some of his close friends.
After watching “The Earth is All That Lasts” (the name echoes a Sioux Indian saying that Harrison was fond of), the entourage moved to Le Passage Restaurant through a traboule passage that is typical of the old city of Lyon. The restaurant’s décor was reminiscent of a theater, said Bahle, with red curtains waiting to open the show of French cuisine, and the only guests allowed in that night were actors and directors. A table waited for them, and a bounty of wine and risotto, veal and cheeses followed.
Thierry Frémaux, walked among the tables, introducing the honored guests in French. Bahle could make out little more than “Jim Harrison!” and “Joyce Bahle!” Then he introduced Martin Scorsese, who was seated at the table beside her, and in Lyon to premier his film The Irishman. Frémont told him that Harrison’s longtime aide-de-camp was in the room, and Bahle—not one to chase autographs—smiled when she overheard Scorsese respond that “my wife is a huge fan of Jim Harrison”.
Back in Paris, Joyce and Andrew were treated to one last unforgettable dinner near the Moulin Rouge in the home of Mathieu Bourgois and Caroline Emmet (and their 14-year-old son Samuel, whose middle name “James” is in honor of Jim Harrison). Mathieu is the son of the late Christian Bourgois, Harrison’s first literary publisher in France. Each time Harrison visited Paris, Bourgois would cook him an extraordinary meal.
To reach Bourgois’ home the Bahles exited their Uber, walked up the street and entered a beautiful, mahogany-walled elevator—like a piece of art, Joyce recalled. She couldn’t believe Harrison, who was claustrophobic, would ever have entered that elevator.
Before catching the train back to Paris, Bourgois had shopped all over Lyon for the fishes, meats and cheeses he would serve his guests. With the cheeses they drank a bottle of Bandol, Harrison’s favorite wine.
Before flying home to the United States, Joyce and Andrew took one more walk through the Luxembourg Gardens with their suitcases in tow in search of the jardin fruitier, but they were rushed and a cab was waiting.
“As they say—next time,” concluded Joyce.
Read our ode to Harrison “Northern Michigan authors remember Jim Harrison” published on GlenArbor.com several days after he died in March 2016.
