A Meditation on Brautigan and His Work

by Eric Petersen
IWW Prose List administrator

I'm a big fan of the late, great Richard Brautigan. He was both a poet and a novelist, and his breakthrough novel, Trout Fishing In America, (which was mistakenly purchased by many 1960s squares who who thought it was a non-fiction book about trout fishing) first published in 1967, was both a counterculture classic and a literary milestone.

Brautigan's style was experimental, but not the least bit pretentious. In his novels, he eschewed traditional plotting, preferring stream-of-consciousness narration. Brautigan had a wacky sense of humor, too, which made his books a real hoot to read. While not exactly a comedy, Trout Fishing In America is one of the funniest novels you'll ever read, with chapter titles such as "The Kool-Aid Wino," "Trout Fishing In America Terrorists," "The Shipping Of Trout Fishing In America Shorty To Nelson Algren," and "The Mayonnaise Chapter."

Brautigan's follow-up to Trout Fishing In America was his 1968 novel, In Watermelon Sugar, another great counterculture novel. The narrator is a member of a commune called iDEATH. In this book, Brautigan continues the themes of existentialism and the search for enlightenment that began in Trout Fishing In America.

As a poet, Brautigan mixed lyricism with pathos and smarmy humor. My favorite of his poetry books is The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster. In 1967, Brautigan served as poet-in-residence at the California Institute of Technology.

In the 1970s, determined to prove that he wasn't just another hippie writer, Brautigan incorporated more straightforward narration into his writing, but his experimental style and wacky humor were still evident. My favorite novels from this period are The Hawkline Monster (1974) - a Western parody - and Dreaming Of Babylon (1977), a parody of the hard-boiled detective novels of the 1940s.

Even though he produced quality novels throughout the decade, as the 1970s came to an end, Richard Brautigan's popularity had waned. He committed suicide in 1984 at the age of 49. It came as no surprise to family and friends, as Brautigan had battled mental illness (schizophrenia and depression) and alcoholism for many years.

Houghton Mifflin published two compilation volumes of Brautigan's novels and poetry in 1989 and 1991, and Brautigan became popular again - with the disenchanted youth of the 1990s. There was even a news story about a young man in his late teens who legally changed his name to Trout Fishing In America - the name of Brautigan's most famous character!

Richard Brautigan was a truly unique writer with his own distinctive style and vision. His writings have inspired me and I know that they will continue to inspire others. As the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle said of his work:

"There is nothing like Richard Brautigan anywhere. Perhaps, when we are very old, people will write 'Brautigans' just as we now write novels. This man has invented a genre, a whole new shot, a thing needed, delightful, and right."