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by Joseph Skorupa?
"Though the Tokyo-Montana Express moves at a great speed, there are many stops along the way. This book is those brief stations." So begins Richard Brautigan's scrapbook of odd ramblings beset with nearly as many problems as that of Amtrak.
Contrary to its claims this book of unsubstantive prose ditties is less like a speedy express that it is a sluggish old steam locomotive chugging its way up the Matterhorn. No fan of strong narrative, identifiable characters, or developing story-line, the author relies on his writer's instinct for mining the collective unconscious for a seemingly random variety of topics. The problem with this approach is that without structure Brautigan's menagerie of diary-like miniatures is often digressive, self-indulgent and ultimately as tedious as a coach car ride through the Siberian Steppes.
It would be inaccurate to say that Brautigan cannot write. His clean, spare style often sparkles with the imagination, wit and sophistication of a skilled wordsmith. For his 131 anecdotes he has created some of the most provocative titles in literature: "The Irrevocable Sadness of Her Thank You?," "One Arm Burning in Tokyo?," "Skylab at the Graves of Abbott and Costello?," "and Montana School Gone to the Milky Way?."
His greatest problem is subject matter. The more a reader identifies with the subject of his mini-essays the better he or she will enjoy them, but why waste writing talent and reading time on umbrellas, spiders, spaghetti, rubber bands, light bulbs, sunflower seeds, snake dung, and an entire paragraph of "Thank yous"?
The Tokyo-Montana Express is an idiosyncratic hodgepodge that reveals Brautigan to be an uncompelling eccentric personality. It derails the reader's interest right after the first station stop.
Best Sellers?
December 1980: 309
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