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by Paul Liberatore?
Author Richard Brautigan, whose 1967 novel "Trout Fishing in America" made him a literary celebrity of the hippie era, was found dead yesterday at his home in Bolinas.
Publisher Seymour Lawrence? of Delacorte Press in New York said the 49-year-old Brautigan's body was discovered by two friends who were worried because they had not seen or heard from the writer in several weeks.
The Marin County coroner's office said the body was decomposed and the cause of death was not immediately known.
Novelist Tom McGuane?, a long-time friend, said Brautigan apparently had been dead for several days.
Lawrence and McGuane said the last years of Brautigan's life had been extremely troubled and the writer had been drinking heavily at the end.
"When the 1960s ended, he was the baby thrown out with the bathwater," McGuane said.
San Francisco writer Curt Gentry, a friend for 25 years, said, "Richard was always a heavy boozer. Obviously, he wasn't happy, but he'd always managed to pull himself out of despair before. Whatever agonies he was suffering this time, I don't know."
Another friend, novelist Don Carpenter? of Mill Valley, last saw Brautigan two months ago.
"He was full of good cheer and optimistic about doing good work," Carpenter said. "He was in good spirits."
Brautigan was an unknown Haight-Ashbury poet until he published "Trout Fishing," which sold 2 million copies, and "Confederate General from Big Sur."
His offbeat style, a compost of outrageous imagination, strange and detailed observations, whimsy, humor and satire, made him an underground favorite who managed to climb into the mainstream, although he never was really accepted by the East Coast literary establishment.
Carpenter once wrote that "Brautigan writes about simple things. Love. Death. Hunger. Empty lives. Bees. Men and women, and all the trouble they can get into with each other."
Among his other novels were "In Watermelon Sugar," "Revenge of the Lawn," and "The Abortion: An Historical Romance."
Tall and gangly, he was the stereotypical hippie writer with his long hair, wire-rimmed glasses and droopy moustache.
"He was a gentle, troubled, deeply odd guy," McGuane said. "He once told me that because of a childhood illness he had to grow up in darkness. I guess his mind became his only toy during that time."
Lawrence said that in the last years of Brautigan's life, he had been out of favor with American critics, who criticized him for failing to live up to his early promise and dismissed him as unimportant and trivial.
A Chronicle reviewer described his 1982 novel, "So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away," as "a thin piece of labored eccentricity."
"He felt at the end of his life, he wasn't appreciated. But he was still revered by the Japanese and the French. His books still sold very well there," Lawrence said.
Literary reference books reveal few details about the personal life of Brautigan, who rarely gave interviews to journalists.
He was born in Spokane, Wash., and suffered complications from appendicitis that nearly killed him when he was 8 years old.
"At the hospital they talked of my autopsy," he once told an interviewer. "I went to a place ... It was dark without being scary."
Asked if he was afraid of death, Brautigan, then 45, told the interviewer:
"I don't give a s--- about death, man. I have no fear of it at all. I'm interested in life. People wouldn't take life seriously if they didn't know it would turn dark on them."
Lawrence, his publisher, said "I think he is yet another artist who died of what I would call American Loneliness. He was quite alone at the end."
Brautigan spent a good deal of his time in the Bay Area and in Japan, but also had a ranch in Livingstone, Mont., where his neighbors and friends were McGuane, actor Peter Fonda? and artist Russell Chatham?.
"He was an American original," Carpenter said. "I've been crying and laughing all day. We're just not going to have fun with Richard again."
Brautigan is survived by a daughter, Ianthe, from his marriage to Virginia Dionne, which ended in divorce in 1970.
San Francisco Chronicle?
October 26, 1984: 1, 18
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