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Richard Brautigan

by Kevin Ring

With two new Richard Brautigan titles for fans to savour and his only child in the country on a brief promotional tour we felt it was an opportune time to talk with Ianthe Brautigan and add our comments on the new books, one by Ianthe herself.

He committed a tragic suicide in the 1980s at a real low point in his life, the heady days of the 1960s were but a distant memory and the books of Richard Brautigan seemed to fade like the flowers of the times. Only a diehard cult following seems to have kept his name alive in the intervening years.

Not many will have been aware that Richard Brautigan had a daughter, Ianthe, and this daughter has now reached a point where she feels she can begin to take care of her father's books and the possibilities of releasing previously unpublished writing. There appears to be revival underfoot and Ianthe Brautigan has been in Europe recently spreading the word and talking to fans around Britain.

Now here are the books. An Unfortunate Woman, apparently published only in France just prior to Brautigan's death in 1984, curious. A slim book but in possession of all the characteristics that won Brautigan a legion of admirers way back when. The whimsical charm, the off the wall capacity of humour, the drifting but perceptive observations of the man, his funny little digressions, after all a woman hangs herself, there are ghosts, it is a book of whistling through the graveyard with the dry leaves of Autumn skittering about in a weird atmosphere. Brautigan can be a profound man, intent on seeing what was behind the clouds, the woodshed or the possibilities that we all miss as we hurry along to the end. There's always an overpowering sense of melancholia whenever you pick up a Brautigan books and An Unfortunate Woman is not different, he talks of "canyons of nostalgia," and he playfully tells us as he sits in a diner, "the man was gone and so was his doughnut ...". He describes the man as a "... pastry provacateur ...". Wonderfully funny and surreal. Consider these couple of lines,

Since I first came out a few moments ago there has not been another peep out of the sky except of course for the birds. They own the sky with their voices.

He makes oblique references to ecological concerns, citing the words of a well known song by Joni Mitchell?, he can't remember her name but he does recall paradise and parking lots.

But even when being whimsical he is a profoundly saddened man, his life seems to disappoint him. In 1982 he is despondent about his daughter, I don't know why he was -— she seemed like a loving daughter who put up with a lot of traveling back and forth between her divorced parents and never seemed to be in the same school for more than six months -— He says, "One of the letters I got today was from my daughter. It was a Father's Day card. She is twenty-one and lives in the East. She got married last year and I disapproved of the marriage and things have been strained ever since between us. I know it has been hard on her but it has also been very hard on me because I love her very much. We'll just have to let enough time pass to solve this one. She and I were very close until she got married. Now our communication is minimal and strained. Perhaps I should bend a little."

Clues to Brautigan's relationship abound in You Can't Catch Death, written by daughter Ianthe. She's around 40 now and started putting together this book in 1995. The death of her father in 1984 has obviously left a big scar and even now with the completion and publication of the book that scar is not fully healed. Throughout there is talk of haunted houses, ghosts, spirits, atmospheres, Brautigan returning to Ianthe in her dreams. In the daytime he is dead, but at night he is alive -— but mostly he is a comforting presence in her recurring dreams. Ianthe, only naturally, wants him to rest but you can sense her feelings of guilt -— remember her father committed suicide and she constantly ponders if she could have stopped him from doing this -— it is doubtful she could have done anything. The man she describes in this book is a headstrong, physically imposing bear of a man who was an alcoholic or near alcoholic, he loved her deeply, there are many photos of them together and this despite his travelling around and his life with people like Tom McGuane? and Jim Harrison and others, wild times often.

She writes like her father, passages are succinct, cryptic even, it is a book as much about herself as it is about this cult American writer who happens to be her father, she confesses to concealing who her father was to avoid the inevitable questions -— questions that will stir up the unease she feels about her past. She hadn't really come to terms with the tragedy of her father, their lives had been so connected and then a division of sorts when she married and coming just before his death. It is that division that appears to gnaw at her, so much so that she goes with her longtime friend Candence on a journey into her father's past up into the rainy American northwest to seek out her grandmother, Richard Brautigan's mother -— a woman she had only spoken with briefly on the phone. Brautigan had hardly spoken of his early life in the area before he moved to San Francisco in the late 1950s -— he alluded to poverty -— a sort of white trash scenario. This was not what Ianthe found, she discovered Brautigan's mother to be tiny, evidently a good mother who tangled with a number of men in her youth, all of them no good and generally abusive -— one of them being Richard's father. Only with her final relationship did Brautigan's mother meet someone of a caring disposition and he gave young Richard a good home, instilled in him a love of fishing and the outdoors life and generally provided some long overdue stability.

All more puzzling then that Brautigan committed a petty crime to be arrested and then sequestered in a mental institution for three months where he was subjected to brutal electric shock therapy. Years later Ianthe describes his aversion to light switches and things of that nature, his houses were often dark places.

It's not a biography by any stretch of the imagination and the intention was never to write one, the book has the feel of therapy for the author while giving us this impressionistic study of a very complex man. We learn little of his wives, his girlfriends are shadows, individual friends are like passing ships -— at the heart of this book is father and daughter and a desperate longing.

But any third party reflection on either book are bound to be flawed so Beat Scene spoke with Ianthe Brautigan and the short interview follows.

Kevin Ring: Can I ask first of all how did your trip to Europe go and in particular England? Did you find there is still some interest in your father's writing? It is a long time since he was in the public gaze.

Ianthe Brautigan: My trip to the UK was brilliant. Rebel Inc. Canongate did a fab job getting the word out. Everywhere I read it was packed. The audience was a great deal younger than it was in the States -— mid twenties. They all complained about how hard it was to get my dad's books because most are out of print in the UK. I really enjoyed meeting a whole new generation of my father's fans. I love Scotland and England. What I noticed was that both in the States and the UK his younger fans really like his later work and ask interesting questions.

Kevin Ring: Can I ask is An Unfortunate Woman the book that was originally published in France some years ago? What was the timescale of it being published recently?

Ianthe Brautigan: Yes, An Unfortunate Woman was published in the French language a couple of years back. After I sold You Can't Catch Death to St. Martins I reread An Unfortunate Woman and realized that I loved the book, and I finally felt ready to publish it in the English language. Part of it was that the critics had been so harsh concerning my father that I wasn't willing to put it out in the world (the French love my dad's work so I knew it would be received well there) but also there is a part in An Unfortunate Woman that was deeply personal and mirrored what had happened with my father and myself. I am so glad that I decided to publish An Unfortunate Woman. People love it, and I feel like in an odd sense my father has been set free.

Kevin Ring: I heard there is a film of one of your father's books? I'd imagine they would be complex books to film?

Ianthe Brautigan: Yes, there is a short film based on So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away. My husband directed the film and it's beautiful. Wind will be showing as a work-in-progress at a film festival this Saturday, so if you know anyone in LA that wants to come let me know. Paul got around some of the aspects that are problematic in adapting my father's work to the screen by concentrating on one theme in the book and simply staying true to my father's words. I love the film. The music for Wind was composed by a woman who lives in the UK. However, you are right his writing is complex and difficult to adapt to film. This is the reason that I have been cautious about optioning my father's books. In fact I turn down a lot of requests. Right now, there are several film companies interested in adapting my father's writing to the screen, and what I'm hearing from the producers is exciting. They love and understand the books. So it's an exciting time, but it also means that I have to make difficult decisions. I don't know if I'm going to say yes. I feel an extraordinary amount of responsibility to make sure that my father would have been happy with the project.

Kevin Ring: Is there more Richard Brautigan to be published? I heard someone in Australia of all places has a Brautigan manuscript that is so far unpublished?

Ianthe Brautigan: Yes, there is more unpublished writing, which will be published eventually. The next Brautigan book will be a book of short stories. And yes, there is a guy in Australia who turned up with a Brautigan manuscript. I'm deciding now if it should be published. If I do decide to publish it, you will be the first the know.

Kevin Ring: Did you enjoy your recent trip to the UK?

Ianthe Brautigan: I loved the UK. Everyone was so nice to me. What made me the most happy was that the folks who loved my dad's writing wanted to talk about his later stuff. In America people are stuck on Trout Fishing (which I love), but right now I'm really digging on his later work -— Willard, Dreaming, and Sombrero. So it was wonderful to have people stand up and talk about how much they loved Sombrero Fallout! This may sound a little dramatic, but my book tour of the UK really changed my life. I felt as if I had to go to the UK to remember what my father was about. He did so many interesting things with literature and events and readings back in the sixties, and you all are up to the same thing almost thirty years later. Everywhere I went in England and Scotland the Lit scene felt so alive and wonderful.

I was so inspired by the trip and an event the Rebel Inc. produced in Scotland, that when I got back my husband and I produced a multimedia event entitled Love, Sex, and Suicide. We had writers reading with images projected while they read. The event sold out, and we had a blast.


Beat Scene 37



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.