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Patricia Hernlund's essay on 'In Watermelon Sugar'
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Author's Intent: In Watermelon Sugar

by Patricia Hernlund?

Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar has become a fad book, popular in college classes because students have heard that it describes "their" way of life, and because their teachers have heard that Brautigan has achieved a desirable success in making no judgment — good or bad — about the way of life he presents; or achieved a lyric description of a successful counterculture; or written a book that succeeds on several grounds but has a "curious lack of emotion."

These viewpoints are unsatisfactory. Possibly the brevity and fast pace of the novel make it too easy to read superficially, but even at a fast pace the book has an unpleasant, negative effect. To propose that Brautigan intended to produce a negative statement of some significance warrants a thorough examination. However, proving negative intent is not a matter of a few references. The book, though brief, describes an entire society and its way of life, the life of the nameless narrator, and what the book jacket describes as "a story of love and betrayal." Brautigan presents his material in a fragmented time scheme that must be put into sequence before the details about the narrator and his society fall into place. Once chronology and the outlines of the society are established, Brautigan's division of the novel into three books is understandable; focusing the time scheme on three deaths reveals the reactions of the narrator and his society toward negative events and leads to a further revelation of the reactions toward positive events, completing the search for Brautigan's intention as it is revealed in the novel's effect.

There are four time sequences: the distant past, the narrator's life of twenty-eight years, the recent past of the narrator's twenty-ninth year, and the three days that constitute the present time of the novel. In the distant past, we find the beginning of the Forgotten Works — "nobody knows how old they are" (69) — then the cut-off date, 171 years ago, and after that several landmarks before the birth of the narrator. The cut-off date is a familiar device of science fiction and fantasy, in which the causative event can be a nuclear explosion or a simple rejection of the old ways for a new and presumed better way. Brautigan's new society has undergone some trauma and has rejected a past society. The Forgotten Works are all that remain of the society before the cut-off date. After that time came the tigers (12, 19, 58), the making of the vegetable statues (26, 58), and a progression of twenty-three books — the latest "thirty-five years ago" (9, 10). Significantly, three characters of the novel were born in this period, before the narrator. Brautigan gives us enough information to know that the narrator is twenty-nine (33, 35) and that Charley, inBOIL, and Old Chuck are much older.

The second sequence is the first twenty-eight years of the narrator's life. He lived with his parents in a shack by the river (33). "As a child" he sat on inBOIL's knee to hear stories "and Margaret was there" (62), presumably a child of the same age. When he was nine, the tigers came and killed his parents (33-5). He went to live in iDEATH at the invitation of Charley who, though he liked the tigers, felt that "we're going to have to get rid of them. Soon" (35). Hunting the tigers took about two years. When the last one was killed, brought to iDEATH and burned, the narrator was approximately twelve, and Pauline — the youngest character in the book — was six (31-2, 82, 92). The next event definitely took two years: inBOIL went "bad." At the beginning, he went "off by himself to the trout hatchery." At the end he fought with Charley and moved to the Forgotten Works (61-3). As the years passed twenty men joined him (61). Pauline was still a child, but "Margaret grew up to be a very pretty young woman and [she and the narrator] went steady together" (21, 64). Since "going steady" does mean "sleeping together" (128), the narrator and Margaret have, apparently, been lovers for at least one-third of their lives — nine years or more. During the latest five of these years (or more) the narrator has been making statues (12).

The third time sequence, during his twenty-ninth year but before the present time, is presented almost entirely in a flashback dream (68-102). The sequence begins on a Saturday about four months "ago" with signs of trouble between the narrator and Margaret (68-74). A month passes, with rumors that inBOIL is about to start something (75-77). The climactic events begin on Sunday when Charley asked inBOIL what he is up to (79). On the next day, Monday, the narrator decided Margaret was disgusting, refused to sleep with her, and later praised Pauline's painting; unable to sleep, he walked to the aqueduct and saw the girl with the lantern — not knowing she was Pauline (76-85). On Tuesday, when Margaret had gone to the Forgotten Works before dawn, inBOIL and his gang arrived at iDEATH during breakfast and killed themselves. At Pauline's suggestion, their bodies were burned in their shacks. As she watched, Pauline hugged the narrator, who noticed her body. Then Margaret, emerging from the Works, was told the happenings (86-102). The significance of the narrator's turning away from Margaret and inBOIL's death will be discussed later, but two points must be made here. The narrator and Margaret broke up, then inBOIL committed suicide, then the narrator started "going steady" with Pauline, in that order and with no overlap. Further, no necessary or implied connection exists between Margaret and inBOIL in the actual sequence of events, and three characters indicate that we are not to see a connection: Margaret herself, Fred and Pauline. The narrator, however, tries to convince the reader that a connection exists. We are not told when Pauline started sleeping with the narrator, but we do know they were sleeping together two months and three weeks after inBOIL's death (37).

Pauline and Fred have been concerned about Margaret's broken heart for some time (27, 100), but they report their concern to the narrator and urge him to help Margaret during the fourth and last time sequence, the three days that are the "present time" of the novel. The narrator spends Tuesday writing. After dinner, Old Chuck recounts a dream of the tigers. Later, the narrator makes love to Pauline, and she, apparently reminded by Old Chuck's dream, also talks about the tigers. After Pauline is asleep, the narrator cures his recurrent insomnia by walking. Reminded by Pauline's talk, he remembers how the tigers killed his parents (1-37). Wednesday is divided in two parts (38-61 and 105-129), interrupted by the narrator's dream about the past four months. After breakfast on this day, the narrator goes to the watermelon works with Fred, then goes home by way of the river where a new tomb — soon to be Margaret's — collapses during construction. Back at his shack, the narrator destroys a note from Margaret, plants seeds, muses, and then takes the nap leading to his recurrent dream (the third time sequence). He then goes to lunch and to the statue of mirrors, where he sees the image of Margaret's suicide. That evening after dinner, Margaret's room is bricked up and her body placed in the trout hatchery to await burial. The narrator and Pauline again make love, and the narrator is again insomniac. Thursday, the black and soundless day the narrator likes best, is spent on Margaret's funeral and preparation for the dance that will follow after sunset, when sound returns (130-138).

The four time sequences, through the point of view of the nameless narrator, are fragmented into a multiplicity of detail. The fragmentation is also true of setting; but once the details of both are put in order, we can see a fully realized world. The society is composed of 375 people distributed between a town, where most live, a group of outlying "shacks," and a place named iDEATH, which has characteristics of both a house and an outdoor landscape. The society is "in watermelon sugar," at a low-lying point between hills and the Forgotten Works. The climate is temperate, and the vegetation is abundant, watered by a great many rivulets, creeks, and rivers. The main crop is watermelon. In our world, watermelons are singular as a food product with no by-products except pickles made from the rind instead of the pulp. At iDEATH, however, the pulp is processed at the watermelon works to produce watermelon sugar, which is then used to make and build almost everything in the community. Though lighting in the tombs is provided by foxfire (51), the street lights and the many lanterns burn a mixture of watermelon sugar and trout oil (25, 28, 83). Since we are not told of any special process, we must assume the trout are killed to obtain the oil for the mixture. Some natural, unprocessed materials are also used, such as pine and rocks or stones, but the community depends heavily on its local industry, the watermelon factory, to satisfy its needs. Barter is used instead of money (65); horses, not automobiles are used — for work rather than carrying people, for no one travels out of the environs of the community; they travel "to the length of our dreams" because they "have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar" (1).

The setting mixes familiar with strange in another use of fantasy or science fiction technique, but only the initial break with "this world" is difficult; the details of "that world" are tangible and consistent. Every Tuesday is gold — a calendar effect. Everyone uses the same building materials — no one experiments. The inhabitants have not returned to nature so much as they have developed an efficient, closed community. The community is arranged around a well-defined set of principles and procedures. Charley, who "knows about everything there is" (7), has been leader or spokesman for a long time. Some seventeen years ago he lit the match to burn the last tiger (31), and "a few short months ago" he lit the match to burn in BOIL and his gang (60, 100). He also decides who performs what work. At the end he decides what kind of funeral Margaret will have and presides when her room is bricked up. Presumably, everyone contributes to the community. The twelve men at the watermelon works, including Fred, contribute a great deal and are fine craftsmen if not artists. The workers at the shingle factory, the tomb crew, the doctor and schoolteacher, the waitress, all contribute. Old Chuck lights lanterns. The young girl brings strawberries; Pauline and Al cook; Charley leads. But the narrator's life as a contributor to the community is not particularly successful. He is the only living artist and bad at his work: "I had never had much luck at statues. I was thinking about getting a job down at the Watermelon Works" (75). But he does not. Finally, a month before the "present time," Charley tells him: "You don't seem to like making statues or doing anything else. Why don't you write a book?" (9). The narrator does not decide to write a book; he lacks the volition. Who writes the book is unimportant; whether it is good or not does not really matter — Al is a poor cook, too. People may be curious about the book, but the principle of the society is that people stay busy to stay out of mischief (13), a Puritan and Victorian work ethic. The need is for contribution, not excellence, and yet the only people who offer less to the community than the narrator are Margaret, whose art form is collecting, and inBOIL, who breaks the only taboo — he speaks against the community.

Although inBOIL moves to the Forgotten Works, he has not left the community or been punished. The Works may be viewed with some restraint, as reminder of the past trauma, but they are also viewed as a useful scrap heap and a curiosity. The millions of old books become fuel after inBOIL uses them to barter for food, and a forgotten thing is used as a bridge in the living room of iDEATH — again at inBOIL's initiative (22, 65). The curiosity is seen in Charley's and Pauline's reading the "old" books (19, 21), in the "new" book written about the Works (9-10), and in the forgotten things collected by Fred (6-7, 22-23, 45), the narrator (57), and Margaret, who finds them "beautiful" (73) or "cute" (78). In contrast, the narrator thinks the forgotten things are "kind of ugly, if you want the truth" (73). Only he finds an unpleasant one (71). Only he communicates a sense of revulsion, at variance with the rest of the society and his own actions. The revulsion is not so much against the Works as it is against inBOIL and his gang who live there and "drink the stuff" (78). They brood against the community; that is repulsive to the narrator.

The impression of scope or coverage of a society with a long history and a narrator with a complex life is a valuable effect, but it is not necessarily a result of Brautigan's intention for the novel as a whole, unless other clues lead us to an understanding that the author has consciously handled his material toward a given end. One such clue is the use of the narrator's viewpoint as the filter through which the reader learns the time sequences and knowledge of the society. We have seen several instances, so far, of the narrator's negative character and his unreliability as an informant: he argues a connection between inBOIL and Margaret which is not borne out by the time sequences or the words of other characters; he alone sees the Forgotten Works as repulsive; within the society, he lacks contribution, lacks volition, and lacks satisfaction. These negative characteristics do not make him totally unreliable so much as they make him a typical member of his society with exaggeration of certain traits.

The division of the novel into three books, each having death as its central episode, is the device that focuses our attention on the flaws in the narrator and his society. The pattern of death is intentional, for the novel is written in these three units that cross time sequences to fix our attention on the theme. Although paradoxical, the division into three units of death does perform the function of gathering and explaining the fragmented time sequences and details, the contradictory aspects of the narrator's viewpoint, and the variety of attitudes the society takes to ward off certain emotions.

The first book, "In Watermelon Sugar," establishes the setting, introduces characters, and gives exposition — all in fragmented time — but it has its strongest effect on the reader in the one scene where the tigers kill and eat the narrator's parents. Brautigan is quite explicit about the disturbing aspects of the deaths:

^My parents didn't even have time to say anything before they were dead ... One of the tigers started eating my mother. He bit her arm off and started chewing on it. (33)

... He took a bite out of my father. (34)

"We're awfully sorry we had to kill your parents and eat them." ... "All right." I said. "And thanks for helping me with my arithmetic." (35)^
Brautigan's selection achieves the effect of disgust in most readers — disgust at the eating more than at the killing itself. The juxtaposition of the reader's reaction with the lack of reaction in the tigers and the narrator serves to intensify the scene by making it more memorable and more disturbing.

Book Two, "inBOIL," develops the character of Margaret in preparation for the final book, but the build-up to inBOIL's immolation in the trout hatchery is the focus of the book. InBOIL claims that his suicide will demonstrate the meaning of iDEATH, that he is sacrificing himself and his gang for the understanding of the inhabitants. That Brautigan intended the reader to feel disgust as inBOIL and his followers mutilate themselves is obvious — the scene is memorable, particularly when juxtaposed to the inhuman lack of pity shown by the people of iDEATH. Their lack of response is like the narrator's when his parents were being chewed. As with the tigers, so with inBOIL; we expect their violence. What we do not expect are onlookers with no response except anger. Though the society does not like to interfere with anyone doing his own thing, it goes out of its way to prevent people from hurting each other. Yet the group which does not want to let Al know he cooks carrots badly is perfectly willing to let a group of men commit ritual suicide. Pauline "just kept getting madder and madder and madder." The narrator, however, has the proper "male" reaction, lacking anger, nausea, fear, or emotion. Charley, speaking to his dying brother, says only: "I hope you think you've proved something... I don't think you've proved anything" (94-95). The society has gone too far into its traumatized state to be reached by inBOIL's immolation. The reader, however, still has a response and sees the symbolism as inBOIL and his men systematically mutilate their senses. They cut off the opposing thumb that allows humans to grasp; then the nose, the sense of smell. In the precess, one man puts out an eye, part of sight. Hearing is next, followed by the rest of the fingers. Only the sense of taste is unmentioned. InBOIL's message is clear: the people of iDEATH have cut themselves off from every reality of the senses, except taste, to avoid being bothered by life.

The third book, "Margaret," amply demonstrates the communal deprivation. We have judged her contribution to the society as she pursued her hobby, until it became a hobby horse; but the narrator judges it as mysterious, then suspect, then dangerous. He also uses it as a reason for leaving Margaret. The two other people whose actions and speech we know, Fred and Pauline, do not see her actions as dangerous; they are concerned and do not think the narrator has behaved correctly. If we are to believe the narrator, the last straw in his relations with Margaret was her "performance at dinner," which "really disgusted" him, and is the basis for his saying that everyone has turned against her. The scene is too simple to contain so much meaning for the narrator. She explains, "I don't know anything. I just get forgotten things down there. They don't tell me anything. They're always very nice to me." Then "Margaret went right back to eating her carrots as if nothing had happened" (80). Nothing had happened, even if part of the community thinks Margaret is connected with inBOIL. The narrator, who should know her better than anyone else, can see her as virulent, worthy of nothing.

But is it that? Or is he simply a moral coward who could not face Margaret with an accusation because he had no reason at all except ennui for getting rid of her? He told her nothing except that he was involved with Pauline (27). Could the note he received from her on Wednesday morning have been a suicide note? He says "it did not please me and I threw it away, so not even time could find it" (57). Later in the morning, while thinking of Margaret, he naps and has a dream he has had before (60), in which we learn of the events leading to Margaret's suicide — a counterpoint, a microcosmic parallel, to inBOIL's suicide. We see Margaret's position as a woman in this society: she does not contribute food, the narrator rejects her body, and she dies. Her hobby intensifies as the narrator's difficulties with his statues increase. What were her choices if Charley had not assigned her to cooking and she had no children after nine years or more? She uses her loneliness in the only creative way she has — collecting. In our society she would at least have had a few rights as a common-law wife. Even in a simple tribe some mechanism would have allowed for "putting away" a spouse, but she is denied such an emotional confrontation in iDEATH. Everyone knew of her rejection, even Pete at the Watermelon Works (46-47). Yet the narrator did not know or understand Margaret's desperation, since he refused to receive it and deal with it. His lack of reaction is a displacement technique: he hates inBOIL; therefore, he associates Margaret with inBOIL; therefore, he can abandon, ignore, and forget her. Seen this way, Margaret's actual death is anticlimactic, for the narrator has considered her "dead" for months. By watching her suicide in the Statue of Mirrors and not even bothering to confirm it, he is removing himself from the former pattern of his life, from responsibility, and from death. With Margaret's suicide we finally understand that the narrator and his society do not respond with pity to the deaths of human beings because they do not have that emotion. Anger and rage are the only strong emotions in the whole novel, excepting the three scenes in which people cry for the tigers (31), Margaret cries while she is killing herself (113), and Pauline cries after Margaret is dead (121). The narrator's non-reaction to Margaret's hanging is to report it to Fred, to go with Fred to Margaret's brother, and to wait with the brother while Fred — not the narrator or her brother — cuts Margaret down.

If the unraveling of the time sequences reveals the workings of the society, the unpleasant life of the narrator, and his typifying certain flaws of the society, the the three deaths reveal the society's defense against negative emotions. To stop here would be unfair. Surely, if Brautigan is presenting an entire world, he must deal with the positive emotions of pleasure or joy. Three avenues are open for such positive pleasures: sex, eating, and the intellectual pleasure found in faith that the life at iDEATH is suitable and good.

If the narrator cannot find satisfaction with Margaret, did he find sexual pleasure with Pauline? Pauline is willing. Though she denies that she ever thought he would be more than a friend (41), she physically encouraged the narrator at inBOIL's funeral (99). Yet when they make love, neither Pauline nor the narrator express much pleasure or satisfaction. Even though the narrator speaks of her body in lyric expression, they are not particularly good lyric expressions. For example while Pauline is dreaming of a lamb, the narrator describes her body as a bed of flowers. The description goes sour when he continues speaking of her body by saying "perhaps that is where the lamb sat down" (37). No love exists between them, just fulfilling of bodily needs. The sense of touch is used but yields no emotion in their first love-scene: "I liked Pauline's body and she said that she liked mine, too, and we couldn't think of anything to say... After making love we talked about the tigers" (30-31). The next love scene is even colder. On the night after Margaret's suicide, the narrator wants to make love with the lantern lit so that he can use the sense of sight. But if we remove that from the scene, it sounds more like masculinity problems than love. "Her eyes were red from crying. She looked very tired." Later, "she put her head back on the pillow and smiled ever so faintly. ... After while [sic] I let Pauline go to sleep." Then the narrator looks down at her and boasts: "Strange, how well Pauline has slept since we have been going together" (127-128). Yet his insomnia remains and takes him to Margaret's body. He is, as usual, completely unmoved:

^I went to the trout hatchery and stood there staring at the cold undelightful body now of Margaret... There were some fingerlings darting around in a tray that had a lantern by the edge of it, illuminating Margaret's face. I stared at the fingerlings. (129)

If sex does not produce joy, perhaps the sense of taste may give pleasure. A full catalogue of eating and drinking is not necessary to show that these actions do not yield gratification or pleasure but are instead given negative connotations. Brautigan obtains the effect in two ways, using repetition to create an air of boredom:

"Today's special is meat loaf, isn't it?" Doc Edwards said.
"Yes, 'Meat loaf for a gray day is the best way,' that's our motto," she said.
Everybody laughed. It was a good joke.
"I'll have some meat loaf," Fred said.
"What about you?" the waitress said. "Meat loaf?"
"Yes, meat loaf," I said.
"Three meat loaves," the waitress said. (107)

In addition to repetition, Brautigan uses juxtaposition. Food is again the vehicle most frequently used for contrast. Pleasant eating is juxtaposed with something unpleasant so that pleasure is negated by a sudden introduction of an opposing emotion:

"This stew really tastes good," Fred said. He put a big spoonful of stew in his mouth, almost spilling some on his overalls. "Ummm — good," he repeated, and then said under his breath, "lot better than carrots." (17)

I was still holding the spoon from the mush I was eating... One of the tigers started eating my mother. (33)^
All of Brautigan's techniques — repetition, juxtaposition, fragmentation of time and setting, use of strange lyricism and elements from fantasy and science fiction — come to us through the point of view of the nameless narrator and gradually accumulate toward characterization for negative effect. We obtain the final clue to Brautigan's intention for the novel as a whole when we come to the society's one claim to pure pleasure: communal pride. The narrator repeatedly tells us that he and the others like living in watermelon sugar, that it does suit them; or, in a more defiant vein, "there must be worse lives" (9). Indeed not. The "delicate balance in iDEATH" (1) is the delusion that they can maintain a neutral position disjunct from violence and death without also cutting themselves off from life's fullness. The basic error results in boredom, ritual, and sterility, devoid not only of pleasure but of all feeling and thus all real curiosity, vitality, or a reason for existence. Life in watermelon sugar may be literally the same as dying, since we are told of only one birth (106) to "balance" twenty-two suicides.

Seen in this way, In Watermelon Sugar is more than a fad book. It is not a description of "the students' way of life" or a lyric description of a successful counterculture. Brautigan judges his utopian commune and finds it wanting, and the "curious lack of emotion" is the very reason for the negative judgment. Brautigan reminds us that a worse thing than violence and death could be a life without pity or joy.


Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction? 16.1
1974: 5-17



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