At the bar I had a whiskey and a wonderful ham and Swiss sandwich. One thing that had gone wrong in America is the acceptance of bad ham. The bartender wasn’t busy and we talked about Jack London. He was curious about my strange accent and then said Jack London was still real popular in Russia. I told him I once started a campfire under a snow-laden fir tree and sure enough the snow fell off and doused the fire. It was a literary experiment. The bartender was pleased with the story and said literature can be dangerous and that when he was at Berkeley reading Dostoyevsky it sent him into a long depression. I told him my friend Doctor AD insisted that certain books should have safety labels posted on their covers.

 

Jim Harrison

“The English Major”