Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935 –
September 14 (?),[1]
1984) was an American writer, best known for the novel Trout Fishing in
America.
The poet Michael McClure said of Brautigan's work, "There's nothing resembling it in
American writing. It's as West Coast as a Douglas fir, but more broadly it's peculiarly
American and Rube Goldbergian. This writing goes beyond eccentricity and into vision at
times, and at others it is personal symptomology. It's not just a string of books ranging from witty and sensual to decadent and
misbegotten, it's a rippling, flashing river for the critic and reader trout-fishers and gold-panners of the present and future
to explore." [2]
Life
Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington, and grew up in Eugene, Oregon, where he lived with his mother. He had an older and younger sister and his parents were
divorced when he was five years old and his mother remarried about seven times. Brautigan suffered physical abuse at the hands of
his stepfathers and witnessed his mother being violently abused also. Many of his childhood
experiences were included in the poems and "novels" Brautigan wrote while in high school.
In high school, he and his friends wandered the streets of the town of Eugene late at night and would hang out at bars and
pool halls. In 1953 shortly after graduation, Brautigan left home and lived as a nomad. In 1955 he was arrested for throwing a
rock through a police-station window, supposedly in order to be sent to prison and fed. Instead he was sent to Oregon State Hospital where he was declared a schizophrenic
and treated there with electroconvulsive therapy.
In 1956 Brautigan left Eugene for San Francisco, California, where he lived
for the rest of his life, save for periods of time spent in Tokyo, Japan, and Montana.[3] There he married Virginia Adler. Their daughter, Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan, was born in 1960. The marriage broke up soon afterwards.
In San Francisco, Brautigan sought to establish himself as a writer and was known for handing out his poetry on the streets.
His first published "book" was The Return of the Rivers (1957), a single poem, followed by two collections of poetry:
The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958), and Lay the Marble Tea (1959).
During the 1960s Brautigan became involved in the burgeoning San Francisco counterculture scene, often appearing as a performance-poet at concerts and participating in
the various activities of The Diggers. His first novel, A Confederate General from
Big Sur (1964), met with no success when first published. But when his novel Trout Fishing in America was published in
1967, Brautigan was catapulted to international fame and labeled by literary critics as the writer best representative of the
emerging counterculture. Brautigan's work became identified with the counterculture
youth-movement of the late 1960s, even though he was said to be contemptuous of hippies (as noted
in Lawrence Wright's article in the April 11, 1985 issue of
Rolling Stone.)[4] Brautigan published four collections of poetry as well as another novel, In Watermelon Sugar
(1968) during the decade of the 1960s. Also, in the spring of 1967, Brautigan was Poet-in-Residence at the California Institute of Technology. One Brautigan novel The God of The
Martians remains unpublished. The 600 word, 20 chapter manuscript was sent to at least two editors but was rejected by both.
A copy of the manuscript was discovered with the papers of the last of these editors, Harry Hooton.[5]
During the 1970s Brautigan experimented with different literary genres as he published several
novels and a collection of short stories. "When the 1960s ended, he was the baby thrown out with the bath water," said his friend
and fellow writer, Tom McGuane. "He was a gentle, troubled, deeply odd guy." Generally
dismissed by literary critics and increasingly abandoned by his readers, Brautigan's popularity waned throughout the late 1970s
and into the 1980s. His work remained popular in Europe, however, as well as in Japan, and Brautigan visited there several
times.[6]
To his critics, Brautigan was willfully naive. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said of
him, "As an editor I was always waiting for Richard to grow up as a writer. It seems to me he was essentially a naïf, and I don't
think he cultivated that childishness, I think it came naturally. It was like he was much more in tune with the trout in America
than with people."[7]
Listening to Richard Brautigan
From late 1968 to February 1969, Brautigan recorded a spoken-word album for The Beatles' short-lived record-label, Zapple. The label was shut
down by Allen Klein before the recording could be released, but it was eventually released
in 1970 on Harvest Records as Listening to Richard Brautigan.[8]
Brautigan's writings are characterized by a remarkable and humorous imagination. The permeation of inventive metaphors lent
even his prose-works the feeling of poetry. Evident also are themes of Zen Buddhism like the duality
of the past and the future and the impermanence of the present. Zen Buddhism and elements of the Japanese culture can be found in
his novels like The Tokyo-Montana Express and Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel.
In 1984, at age 49, Richard Brautigan died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot-wound in Bolinas, California. The exact date of his death is unknown, but it is speculated that Brautigan
ended his life on September 14, 1984 after talking to Marcia
Clay, a former girlfriend of his, on the telephone. Robert Yench, a private investigator, found Richard Brautigan's body on the
living-room floor of his house on October 25, 1984.[9]
Brautigan once wrote, "All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."
Legacy
Brautigan's daughter, Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan, describes her memories
of her father in her book You Can't Catch Death (2000).
In March 1994, a Carpinteria, California teenager named Peter Eastman Jr.
legally changed his name to "Trout Fishing in America", and now teaches English in Japan. [10] At around the same time, National Public
Radio reported on a young couple who had named their baby "Trout Fishing in America".
There is a folk rock band called Trout Fishing in America.[11], and another called Watermelon Sugar[12], which quotes the opening paragraph of that book on their home page.
The Machines originally called themselves Machines of Loving Grace, from one of
Brautigan's best-known poems.
Twin Rocks, Oregon, a song appearing on singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins' 1998 platinum record Soul's Core, seems to tell the
story of a fictitious meeting with Brautigan on bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Another lyrical interpretation might be that the encounter was with Brautigan's ghost.
In the UK The Library of Unwritten Books is a project in which ideas for novels are collected and stored. The venture is
inspired by Brautigan's novel 'The Abortion.'
The library for unpublished works envisioned by Brautigan in his novel The Abortion now exists as The Brautigan Library
in Burlington, Vermont.[13]
There are two stores named "In Watermelon Sugar" after Brautigan's novella, one in Baltimore, Maryland and one in Traverse City,
Michigan.
Books
Fiction
- A Confederate General From Big Sur, (1964 ISBN
0-224-61923-3)
- Trout Fishing in America, (1967 ISBN
0-395-50076-1) Omnibus edition
- In Watermelon Sugar, (1968 ISBN
0-440-34026-8)
- Revenge of the Lawn, (1970 ISBN
0-671-20960-4)
- The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966,
(1971 ISBN 0-671-20872-1)
- The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, (1974 ISBN 0-671-21809-3)
- Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery, (1975 ISBN 0-671-22065-9)
- Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel, (1976 ISBN 0-671-22331-3)
- Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942, (1977 ISBN 0-440-02146-4)
- The Tokyo-Montana Express, (1980 ISBN 0-440-08770-8)
- So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away, (1982 ISBN 0-395-70674-2)
- An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey, (1982, but first published in 2000 ISBN 0-312-27710-5)
Poetry
- The Galilee Hitch-Hiker, 1958
- Lay the Marble Tea, 1959
- The Octopus Frontier, 1960
- All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, 1963
- Please Plant This Book, 1968
- The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, 1968
- Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt, 1970
- Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork, (1971 ISBN 0-671-22263-5. ISBN 0-671-22271-6 pbk)
- June 30th, June 30th, (1978 ISBN 0-440-04295-X)
- The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings, (1999 ISBN 0-395-97469-0)
References
External links
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