Flash player not available.
Click on the covers for more information on the different editions, including their availability.
If you cannot view the image, download the most recent version of Flash Player
by Jaroslav KuÅ¡nÃr?
The literary work of Richard Brautigan oscillates between romantic idealization and parodic metafictional paradox, between idealization of the private and secluded self and the violence of public life imposed on it, between humor and tragedy, between lyrical imagery, almost linear narration and fragmentary narrative strategies. In his works Brautigan treats many American "myths" (such as the American dream, the success story, heroism) related to American experience and American cultural identify. Neil Schmitz argues that Brautigan
^... is par excellence the 'reader of myths' whom Roland Barthes describes at length in Mythologies, the interpretor who reads the 'mythical signifier'" ... as an "inextricable" whole made of meaning and form" (Schmitz 1973: 110).^
Many critics have commented on Brautigan's romantic vision of the world (Alsen, 1996; BaÅ¡tÃn, 1996); his recuperation of pastoral myths (Schmitz, 1973; Pütz, 1979), his emphasis on depiction of the secluded and alienated narrator (Schmitz, 1979; Clayton, 1971), his individualism and the symbolic power of imagination (Boyer, 1987) or his connection with counterculture (Boyer, 1987; Clayton, 1971; BaÅ¡tÃn, 1996). In my own book Poetika americkej postmodernej prózy (Richard Brautigan a Donald Barthelme) [Poetics of American Postmodern Fiction: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme], PreÅ¡ov: 2001), I have emphasized the role and function of parody, popular culture and metafiction in Richard Brautigan's works. In many of them, especially in his parodies of popular genres from the 1970's, Brautigan uses parody in order to criticize the role of popular culture and mass media in shaping and distorting people's perception and vision of the world.
In his posthumously, but only recently published novel (Brautigan died in 1984, his novel An Unfortunate Woman was published in 2000) he used the form of a genre with a traditionally fixed structure -— a journal, in which the narrator's strongly autobiographical entries (Brautigan's real journeys, his daughter, age, lecturing, local places where he lived and which he visited) are written in the poetic imagery with which the author treats the issues known from his earlier novels -— nostalgia for youth, ageing, alienation, solitude, negative aspects of commercialized society and even death. The form of a journal, or "a brief calendar map of one's journey through life" (Brautigan 2000: 99) as the unnamed narrator refers to it, enables Brautigan to stipulate the poetic framework through which he contemplates the passage of time and its role in the narrator's life. In contrast to Brautigan's earlier novel The Tokyo-Montana Express (1980), the narrator in this book seemingly gives a more chronological narration (the narrator's entries in the journal run from January 30, 1982 to June 28, 1982 -— that is until shortly before Brautigan's real death). This novel, however, is rather reminiscent of a traveller's journal or autobiography, describing the narrator recording journeys across the U.S.A., Canada, and Hawaii. In his study of American travel and autobiographical writing Travel Writing and Autobiographical Studies (2001) John D. Hazlett gives the basic features of travel writing, which are, in his view
^1. the fictionalization of the author-narrator,
2. the construction of the journey in a form that offers adventure or drama,
3. the conscious positioning of the author in relation to the "other" (which involves establishing distance or intimacy; meditations on national character, and a critique of U.S. culture), and finally
4. the conscious positioning of the author in relation to previous writers and other travelers (which involves demonstrating his superiority to them) (Hazlett 2001: 395)^
Brautigan's narration does not give a detailed description of geographical location, but focuses mostly on present or recent past events. The narrator in this novel is fictionalized and he offers a critique of U.S. culture, but Brautigan undermines the second aspect of Hazlett's characterization of travel writing (this novel is neither adventure nor drama), parodies the national character (Hazlett's third aspect of travel writing) and excludes the comments on previous writers (the fourth aspect). The narrator, a 47 ear-old writer reminiscent of Brautigan himself, argues that
"... one of the doomed purposes of this book is an attempt to keep the past and the present functioning simultaneously" (Brautigan 2000: 64).
This statement not only reveals one of the key themes of the book—time, but it also confirms the metafictional status of the narrator who, in contrast to Brautigan's other book entitled So The Wind Won't Bow it All Away (in which he uses the related genre of fictional autobiography based on the narrator's childhood), deals mostly with present events. In her study on autobiography The Power of (Auto) Biography in Recent Literary Studies (2001), Isabel Durán argues that
^"Autobiography —- the story of a distinctive culture written in individual characters and from within -— offers a privileged access to an experience (the American experience, the Black experience and so on) that no other variety of literature can offer. That is, autobiography renders in a peculiarly direct and faithful way the experience and the vision of a people—a group, a particular identity" (Durán 2001: 382).^
Although Brautigan's novel presents the narrator's experience as marginalized (because of his ageing, and because of his rejection of commercial and mainstream culture), he undermines the seriousness of this experience through playful parody. The narrator's awareness of his status and his way of addressing the reader suggests [the] other relevant theme of the book:
^"Now I'll get back to the rest of this book, whose main theme is an unfortunate woman. I'm actually writing about something quite serious, but I'm doing it in a roundabout way, including varieties of time and human experience, which even tragedy cannot escape from" (Brautigan 2000: 75).^
Playing with both the reader and time, in addition to the passage of time itself, the narrator develops other themes related to misfortune and its symbolic meaning such as solitude, ageing and death, which the woman who has hanged herself represents. This woman and another dying of cancer are mentioned in several places in the book (pp. 24; 90; 93) and represent, in Brautigan's understanding, not only death but also solitude and loneliness, as well as the lack of motivation for living a purposeful life. Brautigan further develops his imagery of death by introducing the cemetery (pages 23; 33), tombstones (36) and shrines (36). Brautigan's narrator mostly describes his boredom, his eating habits, and his observation of weather and nature:
^"Anyway, I had nothing to occupy myself with last night, so I made a huge pot of spaghetti sauce starting from scratch, slicing onions, mushrooms, a green pepper, etc. (97) ... Being forty-seven years old hasn't slowed me down that much, but the other 95% of my life is very normal, quiet and often boring" (80).
The narrator's frequent interruptions of the linearity of his narration by referring to the momentary subject of his writing again refers to the lack of both inspiration and motivation, as if the narrator wanted to fill out the blank spaces in the notebook which much be completed willy-nilly:
and this manifests itself again, as if with relief, in the following extract:
For Brautigan's narrator, not only death but also life represent stillness, emptiness and solitude. Despite his detached, secluded and individualistic writing. In this case the fictional journal means for the narrator a constant attempt to establish communication with both natural and human worlds (women, lovers, friends, neighbours, his daughter) and to postpone death by writing a story (of his life), which is the scheme reminiscent of the Scheherezade story. Brautigan's narrator's attempts to establish contact with human beings fail very often not only because of the narrator's antipathy to some people (an Alaskan politician, a feminist student), but also because of his egocentrism and even narcissism, which is unable to develop deeper relationships either with men or with women. Although he has friends, they are either too far away from his residence (Chicago friends and others), or they are only formal partners for communication in his loneliness (his neighbors). His narcissistic ego does not allow him to overcome formal sexual experience and develop emotional relationships with either girlfriends or other women, including his daughter. He argues that
^"I could not afford the luxury of a complicated love life. I had a simple love life and often when I have a simple love life, I don't have any love life at all. I sort of miss it, but the complications all return soon enough, and I find myself occupying sleepless nights, wondering how I lost control of the heart's basic events again" (Brautigan 2000: 21).
Brautigan's narrator is in the position of an eternal traveller observing life, but who is incapable of grasping either time or life in the position of real man or writer. He comments on his traveller's status in the following way:
On the other hand, the narrator expresses his inability to control time both as an ageing man and a writer:
For Brautigan, the narrator's inability to control the passing of time, life and even writing is a symbolic expression of his failure both to lead a purposeful life and to produce any successful writing. His narrator further argues that
For the symbolic expression of such failure Brautigan uses not only these direct statements and the framework of the journal genre, but also the method and imagery of "displacement", "incompleteness" and the literary techniques which the narrator himself refers to as "... inconclusive fragments, sophomoric humor, cheap tricks, detailess details" (109). These methods and techniques enable him to undermine the traditional narrative and compositional techniques of the popular genres whose framework he uses (autobiography, diary, travel book), and at the same time symbolically to express the failure of the capacity of the individual and the writer to be successful and control both his life and writing. Displacement means the deliberate use of particular language, style, genre, events and situations set and made to work in inappropriate contexts. Incompleteness is related to events, actions and situations, both literal and symbolic, which begin or tend to begin, but which are interrupted and mostly never finished/completed. Thus for example, concerning displacement, Brautigan uses the form of a journal with exact dating reminiscent of a traveller's diary, in which however most of the described events and observations do not take place at the time they were recorded (see the dates), nor does the narrator's journal give the expected description of places he has visited. In the tourist paradise of Hawaii the narrator does not typically describe the wonderful scenery and the beaches, but he makes critical comments on the negative effects of commercialization (cars, pollution) and observes a cemetery instead. Thus the cemetery creates a displaced image of Hawaii in the context of traditional images and visions of this country. The narrator argues that
^"Most people when they come to Hawaii do not come for the cemeteries. They are interested in the sun and the beaches: two things that I've never really cared for, so I'm kind of displaced here in Hawaii, but I make do with what I have, and what I have right now is this Japanese cemetery to explore" (Brautigan 2000: 28).^
Alaska, like Hawaii, is not typically presented as a snowy country with polar animals, but is rather associated with consumer commodities (hot dogs, junk food), or with unsuccessful politicians. Displacement is also evoked by the parodic lovers among the soup cans in the supermarket, the movie theatres in big-city Chinatowns, and the narrator himself during his visit to his friends' place in Canada, when tragic events in the family make the narrator's visit undesirable.
Both Alaska and Hawaii lose their expected image in both Brautigan's and the narrator's understanding suffer from growing technological progress and commercialization:
^"So much of America, even what were once unspoilable beautiful towns, look as if 'Los Angeles' had overflowed on them like a toilet bowl whose defecated contents all have something to do with the lifestyle of the automobile. I think the worst case of 'Los Angeles' automobile cultural damage I've ever seen is in Honolulu" (13).^
Brautigan's fragmentary composition -— part of which is his strategy of "incompleteness" —- manifests itself not only in the unfinished, interrupted and fragmentary sentences, dialogues and conversations, but also in his depiction of incomplete events, situations and relationships, for example the relationship of the narrator to his lovers, friends, relatives and sexual partners (his love relations are mostly temporary or prematurely terminated; the sexual act with his partner cannot be completed because of his illness; his telephone conversation with his daughter neither improves nor re-establishes a good father-daughter relationship; his neighbors do not come; his travels never finish, and his journal remains incomplete). The narrator characterizes the book he is writing as "... an unfinished labyrinth of half-asked questions fastened to partial answers: (107), which are apparently left unfinished on purpose:
^"There are ten writing lines left on this page and I have decided not to use the last line. I'll leave it to somebody's else's life" (110).
All these techniques symbolically express the narrator's inability to cope with both reality and successful writing, an inability to control them and to produce a meaningful existence. Thus it is not only death, symbolically and yet paradoxically expressing stability, stillness and solitude, which is the central metaphor of Brautigan's book; it is also chaos, disorientation and misunderstanding leading to "failure." Brautigan's narrator becomes only a passive observer and recorder of events and life, both as a human being and a writer, since these events cannot be either controlled or predicted. As he himself argues:
Thus, for Brautigan, life represents an unpredictable and uncontrollable flowing chaos, in contrast to death which represents stillness and loneliness, but quite paradoxically also an almost harmonious stability evoking the effects of a lyrical, though cold Poe-ish melancholy:
Being in the shrine, they were out of sight and out of mind. I had a feeling that the relatives who'd had then dug up and then put in the shrine did not visit their memories very often" (36).
For Brautigan, on the other hand, the natural world is poetic, idealistic and romantic and represents the desired harmony in communication between people that Brautigan's narrator so misses. Brautigan's narrator's desire for communication, for establishing contact between his secluded self and the rest of the world is expressed, for example, through the juxtaposition of romantic imagery with natural communication images:
Oh, yes, we're on the same back porch with no electrical storm in sight and the sun and the birds shining away in the sky and a few white clouds billowing about, seeming almost to be reflections coming off the snow in the mountains to the west, which go steplike miles to the Pacific Ocean far away and where I talked to a friend last night" (86-87).
or as it manifests itself in a different place in the book:
In Brautigan's understanding, the human world, in contrast to nature, is rather spoilt, negative and excluded from natural harmony. Nature and the human world are very often marked by the negative effects of industrialization, not only in this but also in his other novels. Using fragmentary composition, the above methods of incompleteness and displacement along with frequent changing of the subject, often accompanied by lyrical imagery, undermine the narrative conventions of the genres whose narrative framework Brautigan uses (diary, autobiography, travel book) and created a parodic effect. This parody involves a critique of traditional literary forms and genres, as well as pointing out the negative effects of commercialization and a crisis in human relationships in the contemporary technologically advanced societies. At the same time, Brautigan's novel offers a playful, but also nostalgic contemplation on life, death and the passage of time, which means that he starts to develop a personal theme which later becomes general and universal. This strategy also undermines the traditional narrative strategies of autobiographies, diaries and travel books.
Although Brautigan's nostalgic and "serious" treatment of "life" and "death" is balanced by his use of humor together with playful but also ironic treatment of several issues such as love, women, human relationships and commercial culture, it is hardly enough for the production of a quality literary work. In his book Brautigan repeats some of his narrative and compositional strategies, as well as the eclectic motifs from his previous novels — love of (Japanese) women (Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel; The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966), nature, pastoral nostalgia, solitude, the contrast between physical phenomena and poetic imagination, and imaginary situations. This book does not represent the best of Brautigan's artistic achievements and however playful with words and poetic imagery, it reveals Brautigan's artistic creative crisis, which is also one of the subjects of the book. Brautigan's real creative crisis manifests itself, for example, in his frequent and pointless descriptions of the subjects he is writing or wants to write about, but which are suddenly interrupted without motivation. This can be seen, for example, in the scene with a spider on the narrator's arm, in which the subject is suddenly changed without any meaningful connection with the rest of the text:
^"He sure is small. He's about four times bigger than a period. Goddammit, he is spinning a web! ... I wish him all the luck in the world, and then blow him off my arm into the grass of the backyard, ultimately a better place than to live on my arm. I think the first time I took a shower with him at home on my arm with perhaps a few insects about the size of two periods in his web, it would be an irrevocable experience for him.
Where was I before I noticed the spider setting up house-keeping on me? Oh, yes, I didn't go directly to the car after pouring myself a glass of wine. I walked over to my neighbors' house to see if they had gotten back from a month-long trip back East" (104).^
This is nevertheless the most melancholic of Brautigan's books, in which the central symbol of death represents not only the lack of artistic motivation and people's inability to develop meaningful lives, but also portrays, as a result of this perhaps, the author's feelings shortly before his premature death.
American Fiction: Modernism-Postmodernism, Popular Culture, and Metafiction. ibidem-Verlag, 2007: 142-150.
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.
![[toggle]](javascript:icntoggle('mod-Brautigan_Resourcesl2','module.png'); "[toggle]"){kind=small}