Remembering Richard Brautigan

Without rhyme or reason, except he comes to mind every now and then, I want to pay homage to Richard Brautigan, who was in his own right unmatched in his prose, style, wit and sardonic view of life.
And maybe he was a little nuts, but sometimes the truth is found in our insanity and we have to go in there and dig it out like a reluctant badger we want to eat for dinner. Though I don't personally know anyone who would eat a badger, I'm sure Richard might have.

So Richard, this one's for you.

"My life has been a series of cars with bad transmissions, two-timing women and cheap whiskey," Richard Brautigan

Richard Brautigan is probably best known for his satirical and black comedy novel, Trout Fishing In America. As a twenty-year old, he was arrested for throwing a rock through a police station window in Oregon and subsequently sent to Oregon State Hospital instead of jail where he was first diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and treated with among other things, electro shock therapy. After his release he moved to San Francisco and fell in with other beat writers and divided his time between the city, Montana and Toyko Japan. By the time he married and had a daughter in the 1950's he was also battling alcoholism and trying to get his writing published.

His first published book Return of The Rivers was poetry. While on vacation, he wrote both Trout Fishing In America, and A Confederate General From Big Sur, the latter being published first.

Brautigan went on to write a total of ten novels and more than 500 poems and became the darling of the hip set during the counter-culture of the 60's and 70's. I first read him when I was attending Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Unfortunately, his books fell out of favor with the critics with the changing times and political landscape and this was a stinging blow to his ego and probably exacerbated his personal and emotional battles as well.

The exact day that he took his own life, ala Papa Hemingway, is not know but his death is marked as September 14 1984 in Bolinas California. His body was not found for several days. Richard once wrote - "All of us have a place in History, mine is clouds."

I would advocate everyone - especially writers - read at least one of his novels in order to show how one can break all the rules of writing and still entertain and educate our readers about ourselves and the world we around us.

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/