Loading...
 
Arthur Wrobel's review of Edward Halsey Foster's 'Richard Brautigan'
Print
English
Review of "Richard Brautigan" by Edward Halsey Foster

by Arthur Wrobel?
University of Kentucky

As a subject for critical study, Richard Brautigan is enviable. In his ten novels and nine books of poetry. he treats subjects ranging from abortion to Zen; he has even attempted parodies of popular fictional genres: the western, mystery and detective novels. Brautigan's best novels explore, as a reviewer once said, "a mental space... where we can all live in freedom." Brautigan, however, is wary, and intelligently so, of these enticing spaces preferred by various post-romantics long on wishful thinking but woefully short on experience and common sense. Brautigan deserves more than Philip Rahv's arch dismissal of him, as a pop writer. But he also needs a stronger study than Edward H. Foster's Twayne Series book.

In his discussion of the major novels and his overview chapter on Brautigan's poetry and minor novels, Foster fails to synthesize the widely different critical assessments and interpretations. I am left wondering if Lee Mellon, for instance, is inhumanely cruel and vicious, or the grand doyan of a new Eden, or a magician-healer who makes life more bearable for the Big Sur refugees from reality. Foster asserts each of these. Is Trout Fishing in America "a very closely... organized book" or "delightful disorganization"? Too often, Foster's discussions fitfully advance, abruptly turn, inexplicably backtrack, pose an resolved question, and then move off again.

To his credit, Foster does offer an interesting perspective for reading Brautigan, one that places him intellectually in a milieu that has attracted other contemporary Northwestern writers - Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, and Lycien Stryk, namely, Eastern mysticism. The gist of Foster's understanding of Eastern mysticism centers around the concept of the 'void' which, in technique and substance, Foster asserts, translates in an "aesthetic concern for the spontaneous and immediate," an absence of intellectual reflection, and the cultivation of an attitude of acceptance and passivity. Such a definition, unless handled judiciously, creates problems. Most obviously, distinctions must be made between a wise passiveness and rank vacuousness, between philosophic calm and monstrous indifference, between refreshing innocence and gross naiveté, between meditative quietude and narcissistic self-absorption. Foster's assertion to the contrary, I find affirming the narrator of In Watermelon Sugar or Jesse's condition at the end of Confederate General difficult. Skeptical of all ideologies anyhow, Brautigan may also be scrutinizing this au courant mysticism business, I suspect, no less critically than he did an earlier generation's hippie enthusiasms. His message is always the same: reality cannot be so neatly contained within any circle of thought no matter how lightly or mystically vague its disciples draw its perimeters.

Considering the degree to which Foster committed himself to this thesis, one would expect him to offer some final judgement about the influence, for better or worse, mysticism has had on Brautigan's work: how it enriches and deepens or vitiates and distorts. But this is never given and Foster's own attitude is difficult to discern.

Foster's study of Brautigan can provide readers with suggestions and clues for pursing his characters and thematic concerns, but I would urge then to read for themselves some of the vast scholarship that has recently been done in this area and even some of the practice books before they accept Foster's thinking about the dynamics of this thought.


Journal of American Culture?
Summer 1985: 75



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.