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by Herb Caen
Richard Brautigan, the late novelist-poet, was a man of delightful whimsy. The first time I met him, he was standing at a Powell St. cable car stop, handing out seed packets on which he had written poems, a different one on each packet "Here," he'd say, handing one to a bemused passenger, "please plant this book" ... Over the weekend, he was still very much topic A in the local literary world. There appears little doubt now that he shot himself - his long-dead body was found Thurs. in his Bolinas? house - but whether he was depressed or drunk or both was a subject of long conjecture among his peers. "Richard's problem," said one writer, "was that his readers grew up but he didn't." "A guy who drinks that much shouldn't keep a gun around the house," said another. "Nobody should keep a gun around the house. Many's the night I was drunk and depressed enough to shoot myself." ... "Last time I ran into him at Enrico's," said a third, "he was way down because nobody wanted to publish him anymore," which brings up an irony. His N.Y. agent, not having heard from Richard for an alarmingly long time, hired the S.F. private eye who found Brautigan dead. The agent had news that might have saved Brautigan's life: an offer of a two-book contract.
Mary Ann Gilderbloom, a close friend, remembers that Brautigan seemed haunted by the inscription on a headstone in Bolinas marking the grave of a young girl who died a century ago. "In a Far Better World," it reads. "He kept repeating that," says Mary Ann. "I hope it's where he is."
Brautigan is mentioned again in Caen's column on the next day:
Another footnote to a headline: It now develops that poet-novelist Richard Brautigan killed himself with a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum he borrowed last March — not for that purpose — from Jimmy Sakata, owner of the Cho-Cho Japanese restaurant on Kearny, for years a favorite Brautigan hangout. "He said he liked to have a gun around," recalls Jimmy, "and would return it in a few months. Last time I saw him, about a month ago, he said he wouldn't be around for a while, 'too much work to do.' He was in such a turmoil — the divorce, the publishing problems. I guess now I'll get my gun back."
San Francisco Chronicle?
October 29, 1984: 17 & October 30, 1984: 21
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