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by Sean Reynolds
"Brautigan Death." AP News. Dateline: Bolinas, CA, 27 Oct. 1984. Richard Brautigan, the author laureate of the hippie generation whose apparent suicide was discovered last week, had been preparing for death for some time and was want to "get drunk and shoot things," friends said.
Richard Brautigan has been referred to as a counterculture poet flanking other talented American authors such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg?, J.D. Salinger and Ken Kesey. At his best he was a modern-day Mark Twain? to an audience of readers grateful for his dark, jagged style of American landscape humor.
In 1967, during the summer of love, Brautigan's celebrated novel, Trout Fishing in America, jumped into the ragged civilization of love-ins, peace marches and Purple Haze. The eclectic, rambling summation of trout and society that would gain him national attention was preceded by other books including another cult favorite, A Confederate General From Big Sur and a collection of sublimely humorous poetry titled Lay the Marble Tea?. An earlier poem, Moonlight on a Cemetery, printed in 1953 within a local Oregonian magazine, held a brief allusion of the minimalist sophistication that lay ahead.
Moonlight drifts from over
a hundred thousand miles
to fall upon a cemetery.
It reads a hundred epitaphs
and then smiles at a nest of
baby owls.
a hundred thousand miles
to fall upon a cemetery.
It reads a hundred epitaphs
and then smiles at a nest of
baby owls.
In the early fifties, Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye vividly communicated young America's detachment from the adult world of commitments and concessions during a post-war, emerging Beat culture. Jack Kerouac expanded the notion of nomadic recklessness in his 1957 novel On the Road. In this great post-modern tradition of wind-blown Steinbeck, Brautigan cast his words. He is a phantom icon that prowls the halls and libraries of college campuses, sleeps beside the beds of aspiring writers and infiltrates the thoughts of restless American dreamers. His originality and honesty lingers on each page filled with regret and dark laughter feeling like a fresh creation for each new reader.
Although some are obscure or out of print and others hard to track down, following the trail of Brautigan's anthology is rewarding. The journey may begin anywhere within his published works. There are no reoccurring characters or idiosyncratic destinations continued from one selection to the next. Just simple language, simple themes and simple radiance carried out from page to page. Perhaps a good place to start would be his third novel, published in 1970, The Abortion: A Historical Romance, written in his familiar minimalist style with unusual humor and severe introspection. Not unlike his other works, the book has a fantastic premise wrapped in Brautigan's slanted idea of reality. The "Kid" is the caretaker of a library in San Francisco that operates in the reverse. Instead of checking out books to read, ordinary people give their personal manuscripts to the library. All entries are accepted and the author may choose on which shelf to place his or her book.
This is a beautiful library, timed perfectly, lush and American. The hour is midnight and the library is deep and carried like a dreaming child into the darkness of these pages.
The Kid's girlfriend, Vida, (who lives in the library with him) is awkwardly beautiful beyond description, however; she is personally appalled by her condition. They meet when she visits to make her contribution.
"What's it about?" I said.
"It's about this," she said and suddenly, almost hysterically, she unbuttoned her coat and flung it open as if it were a door to some horrible dungeon filled with torture instruments, pain and dynamic confession. She was so beautiful that the advertising people would have made her into a national park if they would have gotten their hands on her.
"It's about this," she said and suddenly, almost hysterically, she unbuttoned her coat and flung it open as if it were a door to some horrible dungeon filled with torture instruments, pain and dynamic confession. She was so beautiful that the advertising people would have made her into a national park if they would have gotten their hands on her.
The library accepts offerings all hours of the day and night. Titles include, It's the Queen of Darkness, Pal, by a sewer worker wearing rubber boots, Your Clothes are Dead, by a Jewish tailor, Bacon Death, "a fantastically greasy book," and, like Alfred Hitchcock making a guest appearance, Moose, by Richard Brautigan.
The author was tall and blond and had a long yellow mustache that gave him an anachronistic appearance. He looked as if he would be more at home in another era.
The climax of the story centers on Vida's abortion taking place in Tijuana three years before the decision of Roe vs. Wade.
It was hard for a minute and then we both smiled across the darkness at what we were doing. Though we could not see our smiles, we knew they were there and it comforted us as dark-night smiles have been doing for thousands of years for the problemed people of the earth.
His style dislodges the reader from the ordinary and usurps conservative dedication to detail. Many of the titles of his poems and novels are lyrical and poetic, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Clad in Garments Like a Silver Disease, Death is a Beautiful Car Parked Only and So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, are a few examples. Many times his poems are quick and compact.
The Pill Verses the Springhill Mine Disaster
When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside you.
When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside you.
Others share a surreptitious gift of language that demands reflection.
Have You Ever Had a Witch Bloom Like a Highway
Have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?
Have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?
Brautigan was born January 30th 1935 in Tacoma, Washington. He seldom spoke of his childhood and little is known of his youth. His father, Bernard Brautigan, was described in the Detroit Free Press as "one surprised man," after hearing of the death of a son he literally did not know existed saying, "He's got the same last name, but why would they wait 45 to 50 years to tell me I've got a son?"
Richard Brautigan's work has dripped into the pool of American folk literature gradually gaining momentum, or at least remaining as a steady stream during the years following his death. Books have been published posthumously and others placed back in print. Perhaps some of his most engaging work is found in his anthologies of short, often single page, stories collections such as Revenge of the Lawn and The Tokyo-Montana Express. He strikes quick, linking his visions of raw, often rural landscape with ethereal ideas of freedom key to the American psyche. There are stories of snowflakes resembling Laurel and Hardy, others of werewolf raspberries and some so short they are poems in disguise.
All the People That I Didn't Meet and the Places That I Didn't Go
"I have a short lifeline," she says. "Damn it." We're lying together under the sheets. It's morning. She's looking at her hand. She's twenty-three: dark hair. She's very carefully looking at her hand.
"Damn it!"
"I have a short lifeline," she says. "Damn it." We're lying together under the sheets. It's morning. She's looking at her hand. She's twenty-three: dark hair. She's very carefully looking at her hand.
"Damn it!"
Discovering or re-discovering an author is like a favorite song long forgotten floating up unexpectedly from the car radio surprising you with lost emotions and memories of bygone times. Brautigan is like that. He wrote a lot about graveyards, ordinary people, quixotic romances, innocence, San Francisco, America and trout. If you are preparing to begin the expedition, you might start with Trout Fishing In America and enjoy angling with the great American humorist.
I fished Graveyard Creek in the dusk when the hatch was on and worked some good trout out there. Only the poverty of the dead bothered me.
Once, while cleaning the trout before I went home in the almost night, I had a vision of going over to the poor graveyard and gathering up grass and fruit jars and tin cans and markers and wilted flowers and bugs and weeds and clods and going home and putting a hook in the vise and tying a fly with all that stuff and then going outside and casting it up into the sky, watching it float over clouds and then into the evening star.
Once, while cleaning the trout before I went home in the almost night, I had a vision of going over to the poor graveyard and gathering up grass and fruit jars and tin cans and markers and wilted flowers and bugs and weeds and clods and going home and putting a hook in the vise and tying a fly with all that stuff and then going outside and casting it up into the sky, watching it float over clouds and then into the evening star.
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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.
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