Richard Brautigan

Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, Richard Brautigan was one of the go-to authors of the generation. First, his work was all about the new sensibilities the youth of the sixties was exploring; second, he really looked the part; and finally, his works tended to be shorter and faster to read than, say, William Gaddis or John Barth.

This photo montage from the New York Times drags me back to those days of yesteryear:

Do you recognize everyone?

Brautigan was publishing successfully about the time I was getting my college education. They made us read Dickens and Shakespeare and Flaubert but we often could be found sunning ourselves on the Quad and reading the likes of Trout Fishing In America. I just finished a Brautigan novel from the early 1970s, The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, and was reminded of how good a story-teller Brautigan was. Checking my reading inventory, however, I see that I read a few Brautigan works early on but then lost sight of the author until now, over forty years later. I think I’d like to go back and read more by Richard Brautigan.

The bibliography at Wikipedia is a good place to start. Brautigan, unfortunately, declined into alcoholism and took his own life much like Ernest Hemingway, but most of his prose works are still in print. Ironically, I will probably read them as digital copies on my iPad: somehow I don’t think Brautigan would have appreciated that.

Novels and novellas