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Brian Hogg's tribute to Brautigan
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Boo, Forever: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

by Brian Hogg?

A bitter irony still hangs over the death of Richard Brautigan. Beset by doubt and a stark loneliness, the once celebrated flower-power poet found the bitter twist of winter hard to reconcile. Never accepted by the New York literati, increasingly seen by the West Coast circle as a mere minor talent, several of Brautigan's obituaries unconsciously ran the cruelest cut — 'He was a favorite of the Beatles' — as if his fleeting fame came by association rather than through his writing gifts. Those who loved his work mourned his passing and recalled the simple warmth of his fragile style.

Richard Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington on January 30th 1935. Between then and the North Beach enclave days of San Francisco's 1950s, there's a gap the poet would usually refuse to fill. Obtuse about his childhood, only fragments can be pieced together, either through implicit glimpses seen in his writing or in the flippant biographical remarks reprinted on the dust jackets of his publications. A sister, Barbara. recalls Richard beginning to write in High School, but those early years of poverty and neglect were times Brautigan preferred to forget. When he was nine his mother abandoned both of her children in a hotel room in Great Falls, Montana, leaving them in the care of their stepfather, who worked there as a fry cook. Richard believed this man was his natural father until graduation, when his mother, who had since reclaimed her children, told him his surname was not 'Porterfield' but 'Brautigan'. His real father would meanwhile refuse to acknowledge that he had a son, even after the poet's death.

Not surprisingly. the adolescent Richard was given to bouts of depression. Having plucked up the courage to show a girl-friend an early, fumbling effort at literature, her criticism crushed his confidence. A pathetic crack at vandalism was his muddled response, culminating in a week in jail and a spell at Oregon State Hospital. Days after his discharge, around Christmas 1955, Brautigan left the Pacific Northwest and headed South.

Although at first he failed to match the notoriety of contemporaries such as Allen Ginsberg? or Gary Snyder, Richard was active around several of the North Beach haunts. He read regularly at the weekly Blabbermouth nights, held at The Place? on Upper Grant, and he also hung around the Co-Existence Bagel Shop?, a haven for itinerant radicals and poets. But as with his days in Tacoma and Eugene, Brautigan also avoided comment on the Beats, or, if pressed, would disclaim the period and argue he was never a part of it anyway. In a sense, he perhaps wasn't; Richard's work was somehow more tangible. Despite its eccentricity, his prose was warmer and seemed more a part of what would be rather than what was. Instead, he kept to the fringes, shy and uncertain, delivering telegrams around the San Franciscan City district, but mostly staying broke.

By the early 1960s Richard had married Ginny Alder?, but despite the birth of a child, Ianthe, the relationship would flounder. He wrote prolifically, some of his work was collected in limited mimeo editions and his early publications, The Galilee Hitch-Hiker, The Octopus Frontier, Lay The Marble Tea and All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace remain impossibly rare. A Confederate General From Big Sur was more widely available but a commercial disaster; selling, it's said, a mere 743 copies. Grove Press would thus drop their option and by 1966, Richard had neither publisher nor agent.

He nonetheless held three completed manuscripts, one of which, Trout Fishing in America, brought the writer his momentary fame. Written while he and Ginny were still together, they'd packed a Plymouth and moved to Snake River in Idaho. Something of that rural upheaval comes through in this book's pastoral urgency and it remains the author's definitive work. Illusive, atmospheric, funny and sad, returning to it now brings new avenues and perspectives. It is a remarkable work.

Trout Fishing in America was initially published by Donald Allen. a Grove representative who placed it with his non-profit house, the Four Seasons Foundation after scores had turned it down. 'I gather it was not about trout fishing,' Viking Press had reported back in 1962, but Allen's faith was rewarded when following his successful run the rights were sold to Delacorte who would, in turn, sell two million copies. Richard was a star.

I missed most of these occurences. The name 'Richard Brautigan' was one tacked to the small print of an album I'd discovered by Mad River. It had been dedicated to him and at a time when such remarks were scrupulously investigated, this was important. About the same time Rolling Stone was running Brautigan's short stories, and that characteristic stove-pipe hat was featured above a succession of wonderful, wistful glimpses into Richard's imagination. The third confirmation came on Paradise Bar and Grill, Mad River's second record, where Brautigan himself read one of his poems, 'Love's Not The Way To Treat A Friend' while guitarist David Robinson constructed the perfect counterpoint.

Such counter-culture exploits embellished his role of hippie sage, however awkward Richard felt in such company. If the prose of Kerouac recalled the hard-bop of Dexter Gordon?, then the simple impressions of Brautigan's work had an empathy with San Franciscan rock. Yet Ianthe has suggested her father was tone deaf — this alternative society involvement came rather more through Richard's associations with the Diggers?.

The Diggers were guerillas, street radicals and activists, individuals who were the conscience of the movement, if not by choice, then by circumstance. Instrumental in countless projects, they are best recalled for the Free Food programme, which became the lone sustenance to droves of waifs drawn by the Bay Area promise of love, peace and happiness. Richard gave both the Diggers and Mad River his assistance, and was warmly remembered by Emmett Grogan (from the former) and Laurence Hammond? (of the latter) for his involvement.

Perhaps Richard's time alongside the Diggers inspired Please Plant This Book, his last independent publication. It was the ultimate in flower-power poesy; a seed packet containing eight individual holders, each containing real seeds for plants such as squash, daisies, parsley and lettuce. Instructions for growth were on one side, poems on the other, but statements such as this, alongside his new-found fame, only bemused and bewildered several longtime Beats. Lawrence Ferlinghetti was particularly snide, describing him as having 'a naif style ... a child-like voice ... the novelist the hippies needed, it was a non-literate age.' Brautigan remained sensitive to such criticism, but the eminent role he enjoyed at the time cushioned the more harrowing remarks.

This then was Richard Brautigan at the time of his first British publication. Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar, completed in 1964, were simultaneously published by Jonathan Cape in the summer of 1970. Sugar, although charming, was somewhat lighter in tone to its two predecessors and dealt with a cascade of bizarre characters and locations; iDEATH, inBOIL, the Forgotten Works and Pauline. Of all of Richard's novels, this comes closest to the emotional brevity of his poems, and as such carries an individual atmosphere. In many ways it reflected Brautigan's new environment, he'd taken a house in Bolinas, Marin County, across the bridge from San Francisco, although he still kept a city apartment. One of these, in Geary Street, friends best remember as a slum, but it nonetheless served as a kind of shrine to the poet's life and times; posters and handbills advertising his readings were pasted along the wall, galleys for his publications were similarly displayed, while shelves held several first editions set beside fragile fragments of a lost childhood. The floor was scattered with spare change: once when an overdue payment finally came through, Richard, in celebration, had strewn the floor with coins and then left them there. Over the years he'd simply add to them.

The success of Trout Fishing opened several floodgates, The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, a collection of poems written between '52 and '68 quickly followed it. Here's the place to find 'Death Is A Beautiful Car Parked Only', 'The Day They Busted The Grateful Dead' or the aching 'Boo, Forever?' and to experience the essential Brautigan wit. Cape then gave us The Confederate General, but held back (until 1973) on Richard's latest American publication, The Abortion - An Historical Romance. A more orthodox work, but with its own gentle power, it was somewhat eclipsed by Revenge of The Lawn, one of the writer's most satisfying works. It consisted of short stories, such as those already run in Rolling Stone, and it showed this literary genre the perfect foil for Brautigan's impulsive ingenuity. Such was his current standing that parts of the collection were previewed in Playboy, while the title piece became the lynch pin to Richard's ultimate acclamation, the release of his own LP record.

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Listening To Richard Brautigan had begun life as a Zapple project, the subsidiary label to the Beatles' Apple company. Ambitious plans were laid for a complete spoken-word catalogue, but as John Paul George and Ringo bickered and fragmented, so such dreams were abandoned. US Harvest, however, resurrected the tapes in 1971 and released the album which, with its combination of poems, anecdotes and telephones, gave an alternative insight into the author. Try 'Love Poem', which is read by eighteen other individuals, including filmmaker Bruce Conner? and fellow-poet Michael McClure?, to whom In Watermelon Sugar is dedicated.

A further collection of poetry, Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt, had already been published in America but there would not be a corresponding British version and in many ways, this unprecedented rush closed Brautigan's golden era. The critical gloss was now fading, to be replaced by a venom which Richard could neither understand nor cope with. 'Slight' and 'Inconsequential' were the usual comments, others were worse, but too often they ignored the impressionistic atmosphere of his work. Friends and supporters now gradually diminished.

Richard moved to Livingston, Montana around 1972/73, breaking away from his Geary Street/Bolinas circuit. He latterly bought a ranch at Pine Creek, having completed his next novel, The Hawkline Monster, in a rented cabin. Subtitled 'A Gothic Western', it was a weightier tome than might have been expected. Yet it seemed that Richard had sacrificed some of his own charm in order to placate more criticism, the plot is tight and rigid and although the moments of madness shine on, they are more defined and measured. It's been said that the novel was written with Hollywood in mind — a curious departure — and it thus sacrifices part of the writer's mischief in coming to terms with this different ambition.

Fortunately, this was a temporary sidestep. Of the novels which followed, two have survived successfully, Sombrero Fallout and Willard and his Bowling Trophies. They still inhabit that special Brautigan world; the former where the torn-up opening to a novel 'escapes' and begins a life of its own, is wonderfully inventive, while Willard cascades with offbeat characters, intertwining plots and a shock at the end. Only Dreaming of Babylon - A Private Eye Mystery smacks of the selfsame compromise which bedeviled The Hawkline Monster. Yet it too had a warmth of its own, and if greeted by a critical nadir, it still proved that Richard, despite the opposition, continued to define and hone his individual voice. One glance at a further collection of poetry, Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork, would undoubtedly confirm this; its title alone best explains the gentle surrealism defining Richard's work. Indeed had it not come from an earlier work, it could have been taken as a metaphor for his current situation.

Brautigan increasingly spent more time in Montana, while his personal life began its tragic collapse. He battled through the 1970s; alcoholism, insomnia and a wild paranoia tore at the heart of his character. Older acquaintances found it alarming: to equate the unpredictable now with the less-tortured past proved almost impossible. Yet the slide was halted temporarily when Richard discovered Japan. He was a hero there; he'd regained an audience who loved and found affinity in his work. Brautigan met his second wife, Akiko, in Tokyo and their brief time together was a last light in Richard's madness. A prolific burst came with The Tokyo-Montana Express and June 30th June 30th; both of which were autobiographical. The first catches moods and diversions in his life, and in retrospect offers a telling insight into the writer's last condition. The latter is a set of poems, written on Richard's first trip to Japan, and if the specific subject matter denies the natural and accustomed Brautigan catch-all, it remains a revealing collection.

Richard and Akiko split late in the 1970s, and he slid into a last despair. Readings on university campuses, once a rewarding pastime, confirmed him as a forgotten man when halls were left almost empty. A final novel, So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away, was published in 1982. and is a strange, almost clumsy piece, obviously Richard, yet written as if its very creation was painful. In real life be loved to shoot, but always did so alone, claiming he'd once had an accident. The inference is thus obvious, it would never be confirmed or denied, but it did explain the hesitancy over his childhood memories. Was this autobiographical, and a final confession before the end?

Little was heard of Richard Brautigan following its publication; when news did come it was of his suicide. Sometime around September 14th 1984 he shot himself wish a .44 Magnum. It was six weeks before his body was found, by which time it was unrecognizable. It now seemed light years from those heady days on Telegraph Avenue, when a poet could be mobbed rather like a lead guitarist. Lost forever was the man who loved basketball, chicken and Frank Lloyd Wright?, and who wrote like a dream. Like Hemingway? before him it withered into despair.

'I don't see him anymore.'
'I guess he's gone.'
'Maybe he went home.'

So ends that final novel, whose atmosphere of inevitable tragedy pastes it with a doom unlike any of Brautigan's other work. Perhaps, like (Phil Ochs? before him, the end of the 1960s left him with nowhere else to go. A wake was held at Enrico's?, the writer's favorite San Francisco tavern. Figures from the North Beach days assembled, just as they had done in 1970 when Margot Patterson Doss?, a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, organized a surprise birthday party. 'It's the Age of Aquarius,' Richard reportedly said. How tragic that particular promise would become.


Strange Things Are Happening? 1(2)
May/June 1988



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.