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Michael Cleary's essay on Trout Fishing in America
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Richard Brautigan's Gold Nib: Artistic Independence in 'Trout Fishing in America'

by Michael Cleary?

As his works attract a new generation of young readers, Richard Brautigan continues to receive serious critical attention. In analyzing his fiction and poetry, a number of scholars have found that there is substance and structure to his work, that it is not like loading mercury with a pitchfork. From a perspective of sixteen years, it seems likely that Brautigan will escape his undeserved association with "pop" writers -— such relentlessly popular writers as McKuen, Rand, and Gibran. And none of Brautigan's works have attracted more vigorous analysis that his lyrical novel, Trout Fishing in America. It is his most enduring work, and one which reflects light on the style and scope of his contributions to contemporary literature.

Kenneth Seib has attempted to probe beneath the novel's convoluted structure and quicksilver philosophy; he discovered a "solid achievement ... conditioned by Brautigan's concern with the bankrupt ideals of the American past" [71]. This assessment remains the most comprehensive description of Brautigan's central theme, but it is only a starting point. Others have explored related aspects. Arlen J. Hansen has noted that although Brautigan is sometimes so highly personal as to be obscure, he nonetheless illustrates the transforming power of creative solipsism [14]. Terence Malley, after remarking on the lack of organization in the novel, goes on to declare that it is "ultimately a very ambitious book ... [a] combination of satire and nostalgia, of elegy and humor, of realistic description and fantasy" [181]. Thomas Hearron has examined the novel's magical transformation of reality through the deliberate use of progressively more literal applications of metaphors, substituting the imaginative world for the world of reality 26. Daniel L. Vanderwerken has shown how Brautigan addresses the essential opposition of an ideal and real America [32]. He also suggests a sub-theme which underlies the various interpretations of the book, but his focus does not allow for a close examination of its implications. Vanderwerken states that the narrator "expresses his hope of finding a unique style and voice for rendering his imaginative ideal ... and of making an individual contribution to one great tradition of American fiction" [40]. In Vanderwerken's view (and to some extent, Seib's), Brautigan's escape into imagination constitutes a perpetuation of the romantic literary tradition of Melville and Thoreau, and an implicit rejection of realistic fiction. In a similar vein, Malley suggests that the novel is a refutation of the American pastoral myth of freedom and tranquility.

It is this line which I will try to untangle. I believe that Trout Fishing in America can be read not as a rejection of a single literary tradition (realism or pastoral) and the rejuvenation of another (romanticism), but as an insistence that every artist must free himself from all literary shackles, and discover his unique artistic consciousness, one most compatible with his vision. This search for creative technique is an important allegorical dimension of the novel, as I hope to illustrate by a textual examination. It will be seen that at first the narrator (Brautigan makes no attempt to isolate himself from this persona) is attracted to traditional literary forms and tries to emulate them. However, this period of imitation later gives way to an intense search for his own creative mode, a search which culminates in the realization of the artist's responsibility to invent, not imitate.

The controlling metaphor for this manifesto of artistic independence is, of course, Trout Fishing in America. The metaphor is well chosen, for the book is a "fishing story" in the tradition of Izaak Walton's? The Compleat Angler (1653). Like Walton, Brautigan's leisurely narration moves beyond the mere lore of catching fish to consider the nature of man in a time of literary, moral, and social change; both books evidence a writing style that appears graceful, almost effortless. Trout Fishing in America also follows the tradition of Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea, two other novels which express their authors' stylistic independence from the mainstream of literary traditions. The association with Hemingway? is made both explicitly and implicitly in Brautigan's novel. Brautigan's use of natural settings, the descriptions of ritualistic behavior, the narrator's determined attempts to find a private peace are all clearly suggestive of Hemingway, most notably in his "Big Two-Heated River."

The first section of the novel describes the narrator's pursuit of a Trout Fishing in America with roots anchored to the mythic past. The association with a literary style is suggested in his stepfather's "way of describing trout as if they were a precious metal." His stepfather's narratives are so compelling that the narrator is inspired to launch his own angling expeditions, armed with the ancient means of catching trout: a pin and a piece of white string. There is a sense of mission and ritual in his search which ties him to the revered past. The discovery of Alonso Hagan's diary, with its meticulously recorded failures, convinces the narrator that he is the "somebody else" who "will have to go out there" and continue the quest for the trout.

Despite repeated frustrations, seventeen years later the narrator continues his search. It is difficult to find a trace of the trout, and he admits that "sometimes it was so bad that it just left me standing there, not knowing which way to jump." In trying to resurrect the past, he finds no assistance from artifacts. A decrepit outhouse seems to suggest some esoteric key, but the message it conveys speaks only of the estrangement of past and present: "The old guy who built me ... [is] dead now and I don't want anyone else to touch me. He built me with loving care. Leave me along ... There's no mystery here."

Metaphorically, the narrator's search for Trout Fishing in America is the writer's attempt to imitate the accomplishments of literary predecessors. His efforts to draw present relevance from past forms is again echoed in the chapter, "The Year the Trout Came Up Hayman Creek." The obviously admiring narrator introduces us to a recluse independent of the demands of both past (books) and future (children). His penchant for living in the present, on his own terms, reflects the self-sufficiency of the artist and his art. The futility of universal solutions is shown when the fish and game workers stock Hayman Creek with trout from another location, only to have the fish turn belly up and die. The message seems clear: each species—and each artist's style—thrives only in its native environment; it cannot be imposed forcibly on others, no matter how well intentioned.

"The Autopsy of Trout Fishing in America" illustrates the narrator's growing awareness of the hopelessness of stylistic imagination. The corpse (Byron, we are told) is dead, but it is "a long way from Idaho, a long way from Stanley Basin, Little Redfish Lake, the Big Lost River and from Lake Josephus and the Big Wood River." The narrator has scouted these locales before concluding that the trout fishing of the past is dead, out of his reach. Significantly, the last location mentioned here — the Big Wood River — is where he "Last ... Saw Trout Fishing in America." The narrator informs us that Hemingway (whose style Brautigan parodies in the section on the Kool-Aid Wino) died at the same time that the narrator spoke with Trout Fishing in America. However, the narrator is unaware of the death until later, when he has finally abandoned his attempts to imitate earlier artists. Only then can he "bury" the ghosts of Byron, Hemingway, and others.

It is the character of Trout Fishing in America who ultimately advises the narrator of the challenge and difficulties of gaining artistic freedom. In their last meeting, the narrator is told that the past is a tantalizing prey, but forever elusive. The symbol once more is the trout: "I know that fish who just struck. You'll never catch him... Go on ahead and try for him. He'll hit a couple of times more, but you won't catch him." It is immediately after this exchange that the narrator begins to accept the futility of chasing the traditions of the past. In the next chapter, "In the California Bush," he has abandoned his pursuit, and has begun to make a place for himself—and his art—in the present: "I've come home from Trout Fishing in America, the highway bent its long smooth anchor about my neck and then stopped. Now I live in this place. It took my whole life to get here." The highway's anchor symbolically links him to his time: "I live in this place." The colonial three-cornered hats and old-fashioned recipes and string fishing lines of earlier chapters are gone, replaced by the more contemporary hot dogs, Popeyes, and Goodwill stores of the present. "I live in this place." Like his predecessors in the westering movement, he has escaped from the East (New York) through the West and is stopped on the west coast (San Francisco) with no more reason to venture. He can no longer follow the inroads of those who came before; he can only learn from them. Inevitably, though, he must turn away from the triumphs of others and discover a contemporary frontier of the imagination. It is the same break with the past which Trout Fishing in America Shorty experiences with the narrator's daughter in the park. Amused by Shorty for a time, the child soon turns away to other things, escaping his immobile presence, widening the space between them like a river growing larger and larger. Such distinctions between past and present become increasingly frequent in the novel, and each occurrence moves the narrator closer to accepting the separation of the two. However, his awareness of the basic discrepancy does not conclude in a dramatic revelation. Rather, his understanding comes slowly, like the slow-moving creeks and rivers which flow through the book. The water appears to be the same, but is inexorably changing.

The narrator's sojourns to the Trout Fishing in America Hotel (he is still a transient, still looking for some artistic base) also illustrate the tendency of the past to blur our image of the present. In this section, the metaphor is the different types of wallpaper which the narrator attempts to distinguish and categorize in order to define his own perspective:

No matter how many times you pass that part of the third floor, you cannot remember the color of the wallpaper or what the design is. All you know is that part of the wallpaper is new. It is different from the old wallpaper. But you cannot remember what that looks like either.

Like Henry James' "Figure in the Carpet," the special dimensions of an artist's work are unique to his time and temperament; they are as difficult to define as they are impossible to ignore.

The latter portion of the novel is concerned with the narrator's attempts to discover his individual attempts to discover his individual mode of expression. He rejects the too-popular art of the cinema which is quickly digested by the mass audience and taken as its own. The chapter on the Trout Fishing in America Parade, replete with clever bumper stickers, indicates the narrator's contempt for the fleeting popularity of mass culture's whims. Even Trout Fishing in America Shorty is destroyed by the acclaim afforded him by the movies: "Those good old days are over because Trout Fishing in America Shorty is famous. The movies have discarded him ... They'll milk it for all it's worth and make cream and butter from a pair of empty pants legs and a low budget."

Gradually, the narrator accepts the need for a private solution, one independent of the staid traditions of the past and the ephemeral popularity of the present. This acceptance of the legitimacy of an eccentric integrity is a recurring idea in the novel, one which broadens the theme and, to some extent, explains its popularity. The book is full of memorable characters, all moving to the silent beat of their private drummers. This is evident in the park scene when the beatnik eats a bag of apple turnovers, "gobbling them down like a turkey. It was probably a more valid protest than picketing missile bases." To encourage anything more than purely individual expression, Brautigan seems to be saying, is to accept a manufactured version of Trout Fishing in America sold by the foot for $6.50 a copy. It is the inauthentic adoption of someone else's view of reality.

Somewhere between the poetry of Byron and the cinema of the twentieth century, Brautigan must find a version of reality by which he can illuminate himself. The narrator's search for Trout Fishing in America has taught him that he cannot manufacture replicas of past artists and pass them off as his own. New eras, new artists, new audiences demand forms as current as the newspapers which swirl continually throughout the book.

Brautigan provides a clue to this thematic concern in "The Towel" chapter where he describes the photograph of the bush pilot and his wife (in high laced boots, like Brautigan's wife in the cover photograph). The man in the photo "had the same Spirit of St. Louis nobility and purpose of expression, except that his North Atlantic was the forests of Idaho." It is this "nobility and purpose" of daring the unknown creative regions that Brautigan pursues in his fiction. Like a writer's work, the "photograph guards the memory of a man. The photograph is all alone out there." Earlier, the narrator lacked confidence in his own instincts, dedicating himself to discovering the secrets of others. This was shown most effectively in the "Trout Death by Port Wine" chapter. Before his realization, he was dependent on the models of the past. For this reason, he criticized the drowning of trout in port wine on the grounds that such a mode of death had never been documented in twenty-two previous books on trout fishing, dating back to 1496. He did not consider (or did not have the conviction to follow) his impulse to "soothe its approach into death" as fitting and valid in its own right.

That the individual imagination is man's only lasting achievement is shown in the penultimate chapter, "Prelude to the Mayonnaise Chapter?." An artist's legacy is the work he leaves behind: "language does not leave fossils, at least not until it has become written." The cornerstone of the writer's work is the form he creates. It shapes his truths. He must not attempt to breathe life into old forms and fit them to his needs. His method is successful only so far as it interprets his vision. Popular acceptance does not reflect success, but indicates a too-familiar vehicle, a counterfeit version of reality. A "Walden Pond for Winos" is as valid a solution in the form of an asylum as it is a pastoral retreat in Massachusetts; the difference is in the singular conception of the writer devising it. (Incidentally, much can be made of the surface simplicity and underlying complexity in the works of Thoreau and Brautigan. Both writers rely on natural symbols and demand multi-leveled interpretation. Both insist that the validity of their "experiments" are relevant only to themselves; they do not seek converts, but encourage others to experiment on their own.)

Ultimately, Brautigan's understanding of artistic autonomy satisfies only himself; we must all discover our own trout. Future artists must not imitate his forms, but create their own. This is once more expressed in the chapter, "The Teddy Roosevelt Chingader?." The artist's dependence on his singular imagination is symbolized by a guarantee for a pair of socks he has bought. Like so much of Brautigan's imagery, the symbol is whimsical and delightful: "I wish I hadn't lost that guarantee. That was a shame. I've had to face the fact that new socks are not going to be a family heirloom. Losing the guarantee took care of that. All future generations are on their own."

It is apparent that Trout Fishing in America has a structural design and a number of controlling ideas. The search for artistic technique is one of the themes which circles out and back beneath the opaque surface of the novel. Such a reading offers another level of understanding to a work which operates on many levels. In a very real way (and I would have shuddered to hear myself say it a couple of years ago), it is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Angler. It is significant that the last Trout Fishing metaphor is "The Trout Fishing in America Nib," the narrator's gold-tipped fountain pen which clearly represents his coming to terms with his artistic purpose: "A good nib is very impressionable. After a while it takes on the personality of the writer. Nobody else can write with it. This pen becomes just like a person's shadow. It's the only pen to have."


English Record? 35
Second Quarter 1984: 18-20



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