OFF TO THE SIDE (2012)

In this meandering memoir from the author of Legends of the Fall, Harrison, 65, recounts how he lost the vision in his left eye as a child, his virginity to a Greenwich Village hooker as a teen, and his patience with Hollywood after two decades of unhappy dalliance with the movie biz. A man's man ever since his hardscrabble Michigan upbringing, he's the sort of fellow who knows about wine and can quote Rimbaud -- but also riffs extensively on hunting, fishing, and strip bars. Despite flashes of wit, he can be maddeningly repetitive and tangential: Virtually every chapter has a paragraph that begins ''Back to...'' In the end, you might be inclined to agree with his assessment that ''writers aren't anecdotally all that interesting.''