My friend Diane is an avid serious reader and told me about The English Major
, the latest novel from Jim Harrison. I associate Harrison with macho fishing and hunting backwoods stories, so the fact that a woman enjoyed the book was a strong recommendation. The book concerns a 60-year-old Michigan farmer whose wife divorces him (“he bores the tits off me”), prompting a road trip. Now that people are living so much longer, our built-up stock of midlife crisis/adjustment literature may be losing some of its relevance. There are plenty of novels about people who confront big changes in their 40s, but not about those who are 60 and have to plan out the next 20 or 30 years without some of the resources that they had planned on.