Richard Brautigan

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The cover of Trout Fishing in America, Brautigan's first novel, 1974 paperback edition. His photo appears on several of his book covers, as it does here.
The cover of Trout Fishing in America, Brautigan's first novel, 1974 paperback edition. His photo appears on several of his book covers, as it does here.

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."

Contents

[edit] Life

Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington, and grew up in Eugene, Oregon, where he lived with his mother, siblings, and several stepfathers. Many of his childhood experiences were included in the poems and "novels" Brautigan wrote while in high school. 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 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. [1]. 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.)[2] 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.

During the 1970s Brautigan experimented with different literary genres as he published several novels and two collections 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, and in Japan and Brautigan visited there several times.[3]

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."[4]

Listening to Richard Brautigan
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.[5]

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 impermanance 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 a 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.[6]

Brautigan once wrote, "All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."

[edit] Legacy

Brautigan's daughter, Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan, describes her memories of her father in her book You Can't Catch Death (2000).

In April 1994, a Santa Barbara teenager named Peter Eastman Jr. legally changed his name to "Trout Fishing in America". 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.[7] The Machines originally called themselves Machines of Loving Grace, from one of Brautigan's best-known poems.

The library for unpublished works envisioned by Brautigan in his novel The Abortion now exists as The Brautigan Library in Burlington, Vermont.[8]

There is a store, "In Watermelon Sugar", in Baltimore, Maryland named after Brautigan's novel.

[edit] Books

[edit] Fiction

[edit] Poetry

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.brautigan.net/chronology1980.html
  2. ^ http://www.brautigan.net/memoirs.html#wright
  3. ^ http://www.brautigan.net/chronology1970.html
  4. ^ http://www.brautigan.net/text/manso.html
  5. ^ http://www.brautigan.net/recordings.html#listening
  6. ^ http://www.brautigan.net/chronology1980.html
  7. ^ http://www.troutmusic.com/
  8. ^ O'Kelly, Kevin. "Unusual library may get new chapter", The Boston Globe, September 27, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-03-19.

[edit] External links

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