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by Donna Seaman?
Richard Brautigan, the author of 11 works of fiction, including Trout Fishing in America, and nine books of poetry, achieved "rock-star-like-fame," to use his daughter's phrase, in the 1970s, but his later works were lambasted by critics; his demons got the better of him, and he took his own life in 1984. A collection of never-before-published early works appeared in 1999, and now comes his final novel, accompanied by his daughter's poetically episodic memoir.
Born in 1960, Ianthe Brautigan possesses vivid recollections of her affectionate but elusive father. She describes his expressive hands, the nails bitten to the quick; his writing rooms; their walks in San Francisco (Brautigan didn't drive); and their sometimes idyllic, sometimes harrowing life on a Montana ranch. Brautigan was a binge drinker, and his daughter writes with empathy and restraint about the troubling consequences, including the nights he burned all the phones and shot the hours out of a kitchen wall clock. Brautigan told her that drinking was that only way he could get rid of the "steel spiderwebs" in his mind. Clearly, Ianthe has worked her way through a great vale of sorrow to be able to convey the essence of her father's life, and the complex nature of their loving but tragic relationship, with such deftness and resonance.
Brautigan's last novel, written in the form of a journal, embodies the melancholy his daughter's memoir unveils and incorporates many autobiographical details. His signature leaps into wild metaphor and fantasy feel forced and weary, and death is everywhere present. His narrator has just turned 47 and is mourning the suicide of one friend, worrying about the serious depression of another, and grieving for a third, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He recounts a hectic travel itinerary, explains that he is having trouble keeping "the past and the present functioning simultaneously," and admits that he feels helpless in the face of his (true-to-life) estrangement from his daughter over her marriage. "A terrible sadness is coming over me," Brautigan writes, thus turning his novel into a long suicide note from a man whose gifts for language and story were once so buoyant he seemed to walk on water.
The Booklist
June 1, 2000: 1835
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