Home > Richard Brautigan

He was born in Tacoma, Washington and is best known for the works he produced while living in San Francisco in 1960s, where he became Poet-in-Residence at California Institute of Technology in 1967. Richard Brautigan committed suicide in Bolinas, California at the age of forty-nine.

Brautigan's prose and poetry often delt with the tenuous and often impossible relationships a person tries to form with the world. Whether it is by history (A Confederate General from Big Sur), geography and time (The Tokyo-Montana Express), or memory (Sombrero Fallout), Brautigan's gentle protagonist/narrators often find their plans thwarted by the sometimes inexplicable viccitudes of existence. Sometimes solace can be found in either a new love (The Abortion) or just a casual participation in the world (In Watermelon Sugar) which can offer a kind of stability to living.

Brautigan's writings are also characterized a remarkable and often humorous imagination. The permiation of very inventive metaphoric approximations lend even his prose works the feeling of poetry. Brautigan's work became identified with the counterculture youth movement of the late 1960's. Brautigan's eccentirc appearance and manner did not help to dissuade this conception of him and his work but the designation, "hippie author" doesn't seem to fit a writer whose work is so full of melancholy and a preocupation with death and change. The critical backlash of the late 1970s and early 1980s did much to hasten his suicide. Brautigan once wrote, "All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."

Books:

Fiction:

• Trout Fishing in America, ( 1967 BooksEnthsiast.com) Omibus edition

The back cover has the single word: MAYONNAISE in white letters on a solid red background. It is traditional to flirt with women in coffeeshops by showing them the back cover for an instant and then refusing to explain.

• A Confederate General From Big Sur, ( 1964 BooksEnthsiast.com)
• In Watermelon Sugar, ( 1968 ASIN 0440340268)
• Revenge of the Lawn, ( 1970 BooksEnthsiast.com)
• The Abortion: An Historical Romance, ( 19711971 is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). Events January January 1 British divorce Reform Act comes into force January 2 66 die in stairway crush at Rangers v Celtic football match, Glasgow, Scotland. See Ibrox disaster. Janua BooksEnthsiast.com)
• The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, ( 19741974 is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). Events January-February January 5 Dungeons & Dragons officially released. February 4 Patricia Hearst, the 19 year old granddaughter of publisher William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped BooksEnthsiast.com)
• Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery, ( 1975Events January January 1 Watergate scandal: John N. Mitchell, H. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman are found guilty of the Watergate cover-up and are sentenced to 30 months to 8 years in jail on February 21 January 5 The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, i BooksEnthsiast.com)
• Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel, ( 19761976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). Events January January 12 UN Security Council votes 11-1 to admit the Palestinian Liberation Organization January 15 Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is s BooksEnthsiast.com)
• Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942, ( 1977For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). Events January 1 First woman Episcopal priest ordained January 6 EMI sacks the Sex Pistols January 18 Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious " legionnaire's disease" Januar BooksEnthsiast.com)
• The Tokyo-Montana Express, ( 19801980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. Events January-February January 1- April 1 National steel strike in United Kingdom January 1 Changes to the Swedish Act of Succession creates Victoria of Sweden, Crown Princess over her younger brother January 5 He BooksEnthsiast.com)
• So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, ( 1982Events January January 6 William Bonin is convicted of being the "freeway killer". January 8 AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara du BooksEnthsiast.com)
• An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey, ( 1982Events January January 6 William Bonin is convicted of being the "freeway killer". January 8 AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara du BooksEnthsiast.com) not published until 2000

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

Description 8 seed packets ; 14 x 8 cm. in folder, 18 cm.

Title from folder.

"Printed by Graham Mackintosh"--P. [4] of folder.

A poem is printed on one side of each packet.

• The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, 1968
• Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt, 1970
• Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork, ( 1971 BooksEnthsiast.com. 0671222716 pbk)
• June 30th, June 30th, ( 1978 BooksEnthsiast.com)
• The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings, ( 1999 BooksEnthsiast.com)

Contents

Why unknown poets stay unknown, part 1

The conscripted storyteller

Would you like to saddle up a couple of goldfish and swim to Alaska?

The egg hunter

James Dean in Eugene, Oregon

A love letter from state insane asylum

I watched the world glide effortlessly bye

Somebody from Hemingway Land

There's always somebody who is enchanted

The flower burner

Three experimental dramas

Why unknown poets stay unknown, part 2