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by Patty Campbell
My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance; that something die.
There is evil for you.
We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true.
I give you a holy word: DISARM.
There is evil for you.
We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true.
I give you a holy word: DISARM.
So it goes in an editorial in the Midland City Bugle-Observer in 1944, according to Kurt Vonnegut? in his new novel, Deadeye Dick. The bereaved is the editor of a small town newspaper and the innocent murderer is twelve-year-old Rudy Waltz. The victim is the editor's pregnant wife, who is struck down by a stray bullet while she vacuums. The bullet is casually fired into the air by Rudy from the cupola of his father's house in a moment of idle bravado. The woman is buried, the editor moves away, but Rudy (now known as Deadeye Dick) and his parents stay on in Midland City to live lives shriveled and blasted by the consequences of that one ill-fated moment.
The evil power of guns, even in the hands of innocents who mean no evil, is the theme of three powerful new novels by three acknowledged masters of the form. They are the previously mentioned Deadeye Dick, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away by that darling of the sixties, Richard Brautigan, and A Midnight Clear by William Wharton?, author of Birdy and Dad. All three writers have proven YA [Young Adult] appeal, and their latest novels should have the magic for that hard-to-reach group — sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys.
In each the sharp crack of a foolishly misfired bullet hangs over the pages, but the real story is about adolescent lives forever after twisted into remorse and guilt by the bullet's fatal impact. In the hands of less skillful writers, this grim theme could be unbearable, but Vonnegut and Brautigan, and to a lesser extent Wharton, are wise in their awareness of the human comedy, the cosmic belly laugh, and the bizarre ironies of a snickering fate. These books are fun to read. It is only later that we notice that the grin is on the face of a skull.
Deadeye Dick is the story of Rudy Waltz, who, like Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse Five, is a meek, small-town pharmacist. His childhood, up until the moment he pulls the trigger in the cupola, has been spent happily with his cheerful, egomaniacal father and his colorless mother in what is probably the only medieval tower in Ohio. The father, Otto Waltz, sustained by the family wealth, has lived a flamboyant life wenching and drinking in Vienna, sharing student escapades with Adolf Hitler, and building himself a fictitious reputation as a painter. The world's famous and infamous stop by to visit on their way through the Midwest (the night Eleanor Roosevelt comes to dinner is Vonnegut at his best). All this is ruined on the day Otto awards his twelve-year-old son the key to the gun room. The rest is aftermath. The town takes casual but lasting retribution. Years later, after Rudy has lived a lifetime of atonement, the United States government, in an equally casual and lasting misfire, destroys the entire population of Midland City with a neutron bomb. An ironic mega-metaphor for Rudy's innocent murder — or perhaps the reverse.
In outline, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away seems to be a very similar story. A lonely, young boy is shooting in a field with an older boy whom he idolizes; a stray bullet goes wrong and severs the older boy's femoral artery. The jury acquits the young killer of his friend's death. The kids at school stop speaking to him. The boy atones symbolically by throwing himself into an obsession with hamburgers: Should he have bought a hamburger instead of bullets on the fateful day?
Brautigan, however, is a far gentler soul than Vonnegut. Vonnegut can be savagely cynical, but Brautigan is amused end bemused, entranced and baffled by all that goes on and may or may not mean something. His characters are nice, if somewhat peculiar, people who just do the best they can. The music is sad, but the melody is pleasing to the ear and somehow consoling.
Vonnegut and Brautigan are fascinated with time. Their novels are puzzles pulled apart into little pieces and put back together in disjointed sections until the whole pattern emerges. For this reason, these books require a bit of literary sophistication from readers --although sometimes YAS seem to have an easier time with nonlinear narratives than older people.
In So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, the sudden, arbitrary death of a young person is echoed by several events that brush the boy's life in his early years: Does the future influence the present? The foreground event in the book continues to happen as a fixed point in time, while the rest of the narrative is assembled behind it. A large, heavy couple in bib overalls and tennis shoes drive an old pickup truck down a dirt road toward a pond. The truckbed contains their living room furniture. When they arrive at the pond, they unload it all, sit on the sofa, and fish. The narrator watches this pointless moment, which goes on like the drone in a bagpipe performance. This sequence is allowed to finish happening only at the end of the novel, when the story of the accidental shooting is complete. The effect is to impose a sense of order and completion on what is otherwise a tale of the random meaninglessness of human pain.
Wilson Library Bulletin?
December 1982: 334-335
Copyright note: My purpose in putting this material on the web is to provide Brautigan scholars and fans with ideas for further research into Richard Brautigan's work. It is used here in accordance with fair use guidelines. No attempt is made regarding commercial duplication and/or dissemination. If you are the author of this article or hold the copyright and would like me to remove your article from the Brautigan Archives, please contact me at birgit at cybernetic-meadows.net.
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