Jim Harrison's ninth and funniest novel begins with the sort of glib and earthy reality for which Harrison is famous: "It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn't."

When Cliff's wife, Vivian (we aren't supplied with last names), dumps him for a high school flame and his beloved dog, Lola, dies (in typical Harrison fashion, it is debatable which loss he mourns the most), our hero embarks on a trip from Michigan to the West Coast that is worthy of Sal Paradise in his 60s.

Armed with enough Wellbutrin and Viagra to endure the trip, Cliff, a former high school English teacher turned farmer, discovers a creative urge: to rename both the birds of North America and the states after the Native Americans who once inhabited them.

On the road, Cliff connects with his gay Hollywood producer son, Robert, who inordinately accents every fifth word whether he needs to or not, "Dad, let's face it YOU never were in sync WITH Mom"; has a physically painful affair with a married 40-year-old ex-student, Marybelle; and visits an old buddy's snake farm in Arizona.

Much of the book is about the hazards of getting what you want. Cliff is physically, and hilariously, damaged by the nonstop sex with Marybelle, causing him to long for the solitude of the farm that Vivian swindled him out of during their divorce.

The thrill of reading a Harrison novel is not so much the unfolding plot, but the glimpse we get into the quirky psyches of his characters. We also watch as the sacred and profane are harmonized to a Dionysian pitch.

When Cliff realizes that he's been thinking about a waitress's behind every five minutes, he opines that he has transfigured her "into a modern Beatrice, an unapproachable young woman who had fueled Dante's 'Divina Commedia' as surely as pork had fueled our western movement to the mighty shores of the Pacific."

Harrison's stream-of-consciousness technique, honed to perfection since his 1988 masterpiece, "Dalva," enables him to portray the fecundity found within the most ordinary aspects of everyday life. The result is often uproarious, but edgy, humor; humor that not only reveals the complexity of his characters, but also reminds us that Harrison is a renowned poet.

While Cliff's interest in the derrieres of most every woman he meets gets a little tiresome and Harrison's puzzling aversion to the simple comma reaches phobic proportions, his appreciation for life's pleasures, his hallowing of the everyday, his celebration of food and smells and nature and color produce a feast of what makes us human and of what makes it so hard to leave our troubled planet.

"The English Major" is the most recent installment in what has become a prodigious achievement in American letters.