A disgruntled corporate functionary, three brothers and their different fates, and an American pilot struggling with a Mexican crime lord articulate Harrison's vision of twentieth-century man in this trilogy of short novels

In this collection of novellas from Jim Harrison, the title novella is about an aging writer who spars with his estranged wife, weathers the slings and arrows of literary success, and tries to cope with the sow he buys on a whim. In ''Eggs,'' a woman reminisces about staying in London with her grandparents and collecting eggs at their country house. Years later, having never had a child, she attempts to do so. And in ''The Case of the Howling Buddhas,'' retired Detective Sunderson -- a recurring character from Harrison's New York Times bestseller The Big Seven -- is hired as a private investigator to look into a bizarre cult that achieves satori by howling along with howler monkeys at the zoo.

Product Description: New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison is one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. In The Ancient Minstrel, Harrison delivers three novellas that highlight his phenomenal range as a writer, shot through with his trademark wit and keen insight into the human condition...read more

Poetry Foundation Bestseller ListLos Angeles Times Book Prize finalistMichigan Notable BookHigh Plains Book Award finalistBalcones Prize finalist“A beautifully mysterious inquiry... Here Harrison—forthright, testy, funny, and profoundly discerning—a gruff romantic and a sage realist, tells tales about himself, from his dangerous obsession with Federico García Lorca to how he touched a bear’s head, reflects on his dance with the trickster age, and shares magnetizing visions of dogs, horses, birds, and rivers. Oscillating between drenching experience and intellectual musings, Harrison celebrates movement as the pulse of life, and art, which ‘scrubs the soul fresh.’” —Booklist“Harrison has written a nearly pitch-perfect book of poems, shining with the elemental force of Neruda's Odes or Matisse's paper cutouts....In Songs of Unreason,, his finest book of verse, Harrison has stripped his voice to the bare essentials--to what must be said, and only what must be said." —The Wichita Eagle“Songs of Unreason, Harrison’s latest collection of poetry, is a wonderful defense of the possibilities of living.… His are hard won lines, but never bitter, just broken in and thankful for the chance to have seen it all.” —The Industrial Worker Book Review“Unlike many contemporary poets, Harrison is philosophical, but his philosophy is nature-based and idiosyncratic: ‘Much that you see/ isn’t with your eyes./ Throughout the body are eyes.’… As in all good poetry, Harrison’s lines linger to be ruminated upon a third or fourth time, with each new reading revealing more substance and raising more questions.” —Library Journal“It wouldn’t be a Harrison collection without the poet, novelist, and food critic’s reverence for rivers, dogs, and women…his poems stun us simply, with the richness of the clarity, detail, and the immediacy of Harrison’s voice.” —Publishers WeeklyJim Harrison's compelling and provocative Songs of Unreason explores what it means to inhabit the world in atavistic, primitive, and totemistic ways. "This can be disturbing to the learned," Harrison admits. Using interconnected suites, brief lyrics, and rollicking narratives, Harrison's passions and concerns—creeks, thickets, time's effervescence, familial love—emerge by turns painful and celebratory, localized and exiled.