[Bourjaily is an American novelist and critic. In the following review of Legends of the Fall, he notes the effective manner in which Harrison establishes "credibility" in creating a sense of epic legend within the short story format.]

Writing novellas presents a problem easier to describe than to solve. What is needed is the intensity, steady focus and single mood of a short story, along with the full statement made in a novel, where the reader should sense that everything that matters has been said.

In "Legends of the Fall," the title piece and best of Jim Harrison's collection of three novellas—and it seems fair to rank them good, better and best—the usual way of combining intensity and breadth is discarded with engaging recklessness. In place of a single point of view and a restriction of time, place, number of scenes and characters, Mr. Harrison delivers, in 87 pages, a complete twogeneration family saga, set chiefly in Montana but with a cast large enough to populate episodes in Canada, France, Boston, Saratoga, San Francisco, Mexico, Havana, Mombasa and Singapore.

"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 story-teller, who deals in great vistas and vast distances. The story will take us through 50 years in the lives of Col. William Ludlow, United States Army, Ret., who knew Custer and escaped Sitting Bull; Ludlow's wife, Isabel, who had an affair with John Reed; and their three sons—one of whom, Tristan, is the novella's main character.

Tristan's adventures include running guns, opium and whisky with his Cornish grandfather's schooner and avenging one brother's death by scalping Germans Indian-style; his surviving brother becomes a United States Senator. Though the family ranch, a kind of principality, remains their base, the Ludlow brothers range far. There are tragedies, accidental and inflicted, a vendetta against Tristan by Irish mobsters, insanity—enough melodrama for a thousand-page novel. Yet in a novel, these events might seem too many and too much. 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.

In "Revenge," where Mr. Harrison tries to expand dramatically upon events, he is less successful—although, like "Legends of the Fall," this story begins auspiciously: "You could not tell, if you were a bird descending (and there was a bird descending, a vulture), if the naked man was dead or alive." Here is one author who knows how to word an invitation.

This naked man, who has been beaten almost to death, is an attractive, young, retired fighter pilot named Cochran, now a tennis hustler living in the Southwest. The time span of the story, a tale of violence unleashed by his adulterous liaison with the wife of a Mexican gang lord, is only a couple of months, long enough for Cochran's recovery and revenge. But the complicated sequence of events that unfolds in this brief span—the feats of the man of heroic strength, the abasement of the wildly desirable woman, the malevolence of the cruel but eventually repentant villain—is difficult to make convincing. "Revenge" is readable and at times exciting, but about half-way through, the author is betrayed by his own recognition that his characters must be reduced to believable proportions. It was the right intuition, but what was needed for it to work was the resourceful art to be found in "The Man Who Gave Up His Name."

"Nordstrom had taken to dancing alone." Thus begins the story of a character more interesting, more individual, more imagined than Cochran, the protagonist of "Revenge." Nordstrom, in early middle age, having had an acceptable marriage and a successful business career, decides to change his life.

What he wants is to get rid of the money and become the chef of some small restaurant by the sea—a choice of calling less eccentric than it may sound. Jim Harrison's culinary gusto is evident in all three novellas, from the Mexican feasting in "Revenge" to the venison and fried trout served up in "Legends of the Fall" and, in "The Man Who Gave Up His Name," a graduation dinner of "galantine of duck, mussels steamed in white wine, striped bass baked with fennel, leg of lamb . . . boned, butterflied then stuffed. . . . "

Nordstrom, like Mr. Harrison's other two characters, is compelled to acts of violent revenge on his way to self-realization. But this time the offense is both plausible and preposterous, the sequence of revenge scenes surprising and colorful—almost, in fact, lighthearted. It is in "The Man Who Gave Up His Name" that Mr. Harrison comes closest to combining the traditional economy of the novella with the more comprehensive narrative that works so well for him in the title story. The result is a character more affecting, perhaps, than the others. Though this story may not have the flawless, controlled quality of the title piece, Nordstrom is by far the most sympathetic figure in these three absorbing novellas.