Revenge of the Lawn / The Abortion / So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away

by Richard Brautigan

Three unforgettable masterpieces by Richard Brautigan, literary icon of the counter-culture movement, together in a single volume.

Revenge of the Originally published in 1971, these bizarre flashes of insight and humor cover everything from "A High Building in Singapore" to the "Perfect California Day." This is Brautigan's only collection of stories and includes "The Lost Chapters of Trout Fishing in America ."

The An Historical Romance 1966: A public library in California where none of the books have ever been published is full of romantic possibilities. But when the librarian and his girlfriend must travel to Tijuana, they have a series of strange encounters in Brautigan's 1971 novel.

So the Wind Won't Blow It All It is 1979, and a man is recalling the events of his twelfth summer, when he bought bullets for his gun instead of a hamburger. Written just before his death, and published in 1982, this novel foreshadowed Brautigan's suicide.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Poetry, Novels, Humor, Historical Fiction

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Richard Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short-story writer. Born in Tacoma, Washington, he moved to San Francisco in the 1950s and began publishing poetry in 1957. He started writing novels in 1961 and is probably best known for his early work Trout Fishing in America. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1984.

Reviews

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brautigan is traditionally attributed to the characters of the counterculture of the third quarter of the 20th century, but his fame is much greater. The mainstream of the early 21st century has not forgotten significant figures, so the hero of the first part of Stephen King's "Hearts in Atlantis" takes the name Brautigan in his honor.

He started badly - a childhood in poverty, constant moving from place to place, a succession of his mother's husbands. He ended badly - he committed suicide with a shotgun before he reached fifty, and they found him only a month and a half later. Omitting the details, you can imagine to what extent this person was lonely at the end of his life. But in the middle was the deafening fame of "Fishing in America", which instantly made him a cult writer.

The collection "Luzhaykin's Revenge" includes stories written in the stellar years, in the late sixties, among them two fragments that were not included in the first edition of "Fishing in America", the novel "Abortion" (1966), which the author classifies as historical, but from history there is only the need to go to Mexico in case of a need to terminate a pregnancy, because in the States the operation was legalized only in 1973.

Пыль... в Америке... пыль
Цветоводство при свечах в номерах гостиниц
Если вам до сих пор не приходилось читать Ричарда Бротигана, попробую описать его при помощи сопоставлений (субъективных и поверхностных, но это лучше, чем ничего). Если современная русская литература, то Гришковец. Если живопись - то среднее между Митьками и Пиросмани. Если музыка - "Наутилус Помпилиус", потому что перевел на русский самую знаменитую бротигановскую книгу "Ловля форели в Америке" Илья Кормильцев; потому что его обманчиво простая проза так же многозначна, как тексты Нау; потому что немыслимая слава взлета так же истаяла, спустя десятилетие, но для целого поколения творчество остается культовым.

Это не фигура речи, Бротигана традиционно относят к персонажам контркультуры третьей четверти 20 в., однако слава его много больше. Мейнстрим начала 21 в. не забыл значимых фигур, так герой первой части "Сердец в Атлантиде" Стивена Кинга берет в его честь имя Бротиган.

Плохо начинал - детство в нищете, постоянные переезды с места на место, череда маминых мужей и сожителей. Плохо кончил - покончил с собой выстрелом из ружья, не дожив до пятидесяти, а нашли его только спустя полтора месяца. Опуская подробности, можете представить, до какой степени этот человек был одинок в конце жизни. Но в середине была оглушительная слава "Рыбалки в Америке", мгновенно сделавшая его культовым писателем.

В сборник "Лужайкина месть" вошли рассказы, написанные в звездные годы, в конце шестидесятых, среди них два фрагмента не вошедших в первое издание "Рыбалки в Америке", роман "Аборт" (1966), который автор классифицирует историческим, но от истории там только необходимость ехать в Мексику в случае потребности прервать беременность, потому что а Штатах операция была легализована только в 1973.

В этот сборник, один из трех, выпущенных Эксмо романов-бротиганов (есть еще "Уиллард и его кегельбанные призы" и "Чудище Хоклайнов"), оформленных в единой стилистике и переведенных замечательно интересными переводчиками, входит еще один роман, основанный на детских воспоминаниях, который теперь назвали бы литературой травмы, "Чтобы ветер не унес все это прочь" (1982).

Удивительно своевременный сегодня: остросоциальный, обнаженно откровенный, многозначный - он сильно обогнал свое время в начале оптимистичных восьмидесятых, оказался не принят критикой и читателями. Тогда его принялись ругать с тем дурным усердием, с каким публика топчет вчерашних кумиров, и разгром сыграл не последнюю очередь в трагическом конце Бротигана.

Интересный сборник. Рассказы хороши, некоторые уморительно смешны, хотя историю про гусей и бабулино сусло я видела в "Чужой белой и Рябом" Сергея Бодрова (там были куры). Но жемчужина сборника все-таки "Аборт",

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all-time favorite book is Brautigan's The Abortion: An Historical Romance about a librarian who not only runs a library in San Francisco all by himself but lives there as well. A library that is really unique in that patrons bring books they wrote and created to the library to put on the book shelves without ever having to deal with having the book ever get checked out. The librarian meets a beautiful
woman, gets her pregnant and the two head to Mexico to get her an abortion. This was the first Brautigan book I read on the say so from a student a few years older than I was in college. And like most things it remained not only my favorite Brautigan work, but my favorite book ever. Brautigan himself even breaks the 4th wall putting himself in the book as a writer who submits his book "Moose" to the library. Just a wonderful book.
Revenge of the Lawn is Brautigan's only book of short stories. One is so short I can include it here:

LINT

I am haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words.
I've been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.

Brautigan's way with words, meanings, and personification is spot on and major trait in his writings. Just brilliant.

The last book, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, is about a man thinking back on his younger years at age 12 and how he skipped buying a hamburger for a box of bullets for a .22 rifle he owned and what happens due to this fateful decision. Brautigan also introduces a couple who fishes at a pond who both wear bib overalls and tennis shoes dressing alike along with an old man who lives on the other side of the pond. The book, Brautigan's last, came out in 1982 two years before he took his own life in 1984.

[Sheyda · Rating 3 out of 5]

عاشق براتیگن لعنتیم! چه دنیای صادقانه و دوستداشتنی داشت
پیرمردی پرسید ساعت چند است؟
نمی دانستم اما چون حس انسانیتم گل کرده بود گفتم یک ربع به سه
حتی نمیشه گفت که نوشنه هاش داستان کوتاهن اما مستقیما از دلش سرازیر شدن رو صفحه
باید "مشکلات پیچیده بانکی" شو خوند و همینطور "مشکلات چمن"! باقیه دل نوشته هاش هم بدجوری به دل میشینن

یکی نیست بهش اطلاع بده که جاش توی تراژدی همچنان ادامه دار این دنیای سگی خیلی خالیه

[Kobeest · Rating 5 out of 5]

i first read this in college and was blown away by the intimacy of the writing. so the wind won't blow it all away makes me cry every time i read it. i once thought that everyone should do acid at least once in their lives...maybe now i would substitute reading brautigan. another favorite is willard and the bowling trophies.

[Rick Slane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend reading Brautigan when you're taking a break from your usual reading fare.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story I listen to in this book 1st while following along with the e-book was The Abortion. Maybe one day I will get to the other two but who knows?

I am on a bit of a Brautigan bender at the moment. Right again of course begins and ends with trout fishing in America for most of us. But starting around 2016 and 2017 they started recording the books in the audible format to bring them to the present generation. I recently asked a couple of 18-year-olds if they had ever heard of Richard Brautigan or trout fishing in America. I’m sure you can guess what they said. One of the girls was my daughter so I have no one to blame but myself.

This is quite a different book than some of them by Richard Brautigan. But then again I don’t have that much experience with many of his books. Even some of the ones that I found on my bookshelf in paperback And sold at absurdly low prices on eBay before I realized they were worth hundreds of dollars!

This is actually a book and although it has the standard very short chapters, it also actually has a story that pretty much tracks throughout the book. Sometimes Brautigan book reviews simply focus on the fact that they were written about 60 years ago in a different lifetime. Some people like to go back and re-capture that era and some people mark the books down a star or two for not keeping up with reality and the changing world.

If anyone reading this book has ever had a direct or indirect experience with an abortion, they will not be able to cruise through this book lightly or without thought. That’s probably enough said about that. A good chunk of this book is about that experience. It is also secondarily about a woman who has to deal with having a gorgeous body and what has happened and eventually happens with her as a result. I would have to say that in spite of two pretty ominous subjects, this book has a surprisingly happy ending. And maybe I’ll just leave it at that for the moment.

[madie · Rating 3 out of 5]

يك سوال عجيبي كه برام پيش اومده اينه كه اين كتاب به اسمه" تراژدي سگي" به فارسي مثلن ترجمه شده كه در صفحه ي اول كتاب ترجمه، اون قسمت مشخصات، اسم اصلي اثر همين كتاب عنوان شده. درحاليكه كتاب ترجمه ١٤٠-١٥٠ صفحه بود و اين كتاب نزديك به ٤٠٠-٥٠٠ صفحه است.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not my favorite trilogy (give me trout/springhill/watermelon sugar) but I love Brautigan and these are all delights in their own right.

[Merciful · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, I miss Brautigan. No one ever triggered such rich mental imagery with so few well-chosen words. "Blackberry Motorist" should be taught in every creative writing class...

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh man. oh, brautigan. the snarky smarmy schtick that i love about your poetry does not translate well to short stories. i didn't know he was schizophrenic! you learn something every day.

[Chista Rasouli · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتاب را با ترجمه‌ی امیرحسین نعناکار نخوانید که هیچ لطفی ندارد؛ حتا اگر براتیگان‌پسند باشید.

[cassady · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved these - The Abortion is certainly a favorite novel (novella?) of mine.

It's the story of a librarian who doesn't keep an ordinary library, but one where the public are invited to bring their self-authored books for eternal storage in the archives. When the shelves fill up with books- stories of pets written by children, personal manifestos, life-works, scraps of paper glued together (or coated in bacon-fat)- a guy comes and takes some away to the caves, where he watches over them. The library is open 24/7, and the librarian is always present and on-call, as it is his duty to receive books. It reads like magic realism though no physical magic is involved.

One night a girl comes with her book, he offers his services of acceptance and comfort. Brautigan's writing is intimate and personable. This collection overall shows the more charming and approachable side of his work.

The final short book, So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away, was also really nice. Childhood tales, growing up during WWII, the very intelligent but still innocent reflections of a 13 year old who is so deeply curious about the people around him.

[Larry Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott Bradfield, the master bather, did a short YouTube review this week on The Abortion by Richard Brautigan. It kind of woke me up to the fact that I last read him a year, or two ago, and really liked his writing. — A Confederate General from Big Sur -particularly good, but also good, its companions -Dreaming of Babylon, and Hawkline Monster. I peeked in my kindle library, sure enough nestled after Bradfield, Scott and Brassett, Pete, and before Brown, Carter & Fredrik, there was Brautigan, Richard -including Abortion, fronted by Revenge of the Lawn, short stories, and followed by So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away. It seemed like fate, having just finished Nabakooky’s Laughter In The Dark— no time like the present. I removed it from the library, placed it front and center on my kindle home page, and set aside Charles Ardai’s Death Comes Too Late for another time.

REVENGE of the LAWN - short stories and some short comments too… The first starts off, the writer recalling a childhood experience, quite common…[we all probably encountered a perceived witch or two growing up up…mine was called Lizzie…the summer I tried being a paper boy, I saw her early one morning riding her bike] …

The Encounter. “We had been sitting there for almost an hour: child’s time. “I dare you to go up to the witch’s house and wave at me out the window,” my friend said, finally to get things going. — looked up at the witch’s house across the street. There was one window in her attic facing down upon us like a still photograph from a horror movie. —“You’ve got guts,” my friend said. I can’t remember his name now. The decades have filed it off my memory —The door was tall, silent and human like a middle-aged woman. I felt as if I were touching her hand when I opened the door delicately like the inside of a watch. —walked over to the window and stood there staring down at my friend who was sitting in the gutter looking up at the window. He couldn’t believe that I was standing there in the witch’s window and I waved very slowly at him and he waved very slowly at me. —Now the dare had been completed and I turned around in that house which was like a shallow garden and all my fears collapsed upon me like a landslide of flowers and I ran screaming at the top of my lungs outside and down the stairs. —We ran screaming through the streets of Tacoma, pursued by our own voices like a 1692 Cotton Mather newsreel. This was a month or two before the German Army marched into Poland.”

1/3, 1/3, 1/3. “IT was all to be done in thirds. I was to get 1/3 for doing the typing, and she was to get 1/3 for doing the editing, and he was to get 1/3 for doing the writing. —I was about seventeen and made lonely and strange by that Pacific Northwest of so many years ago, that dark, rainy land of 1952. I’m thirty-one now and I still can’t figure out what I meant by living the way I did in those days. — The novelist was in his late forties, tall, reddish, and looked as if life had given him an endless stream of two-timing girlfriends, five-day drunks and cars with bad transmissions. —The place was small and muddy and smelled like stale rain and had a large unmade bed that looked as if it had been a partner to some of the saddest love-making this side of The Cross. There were some dirty dishes in the little sink. The dishes looked as if they had always been dirty: born dirty to last forever. — notebook lying on the table, next to an ashtray that probably had 600 cigarette butts in it. The notebook had a color photograph of Hopalong Cassidy on the cover. Hopalong looked tired as if he had spent the previous night chasing starlets all over Hollywood and barely had enough strength to get back in the saddle. —the story about a young logger falling in love with a waitress. The novel began in 1935 in a cafe in North Bend, Oregon. —You sur lik veel cutlets dont you Maybell said she was holding her pensil up her mowth that was preti and red like an apl! Onli wen you tak my oder Carl said he was a kind of bassful loger but big and strong lik his dead who ownd the starmill! Ill mak sur you get plenti of gravi! —in cam Rins Adams he was hansom and meen, everi bodi in thos parts was afrad of him but not Carl and his dad —Maybell shifard wen she saw him standing ther — smild at her and Carl felt his blod run hot lik scallding cofee and fiting mad! Howdi ther Rins said Maybell blushed like a flouar while we were all sitting there ir that rainy trailet” [Enough]

“ It’s strange that California likes to get her people from every place else and leave what we knew behind and here to California we are gathered as if energy itself, the shadow of that metal-eating flower, had summoned us away from other lives and now to do the California until the very end like the Taj Mahal in the shape of a parking meter. —THE largest ocean in the world starts or ends at Monterey, California. —my friend’s wife had just left him. She walked right out the door and didn’t even say good-bye. We went and got two fifths of port —We were listening to rock and roll on his transistor radio and somberly drinking port. We were both in despair. I didn’t know what he was going to do with the rest of his life either. I took another sip of port. The Beach Boys were singing a song about California girls on the radio. They liked them. —It’s just the sound of another human voice that makes the only difference. There’s nothing you’re ever going to say that’s going to make anybody happy when they’re feeling shitty about losing somebody that they love. —Finally he set fire to the radio. — As the radio gently burned away, the flames began to affect the songs that we were listening to. A record that was #1 on the Top-40 suddenly dropped to #13 inside of itself. A song that was #9 became #27 in the middle of a chorus about loving somebody. They tumbled” — 📻 you get the idea.

“The Lost Chapters of Trout Fishing in America: “Rembrandt Creek” and “Carthage Sink” THESE two chapters were lost in the late winter, early spring of 1961. I looked all over for them but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I haven’t the slightest idea why I didn’t rewrite them” [I have highlights visible if you’re interested. But in summation] — “ there you have the lost chapters of Trout Fishing in America. Their style is probably a little different because I’m a little different now, I’m thirty-four, interesting that I didn’t rewrite them back there in 1961 but waited until December 4, 1969, almost a decade later, to return and try to bring them back with me.”

—Well that’s enough I think of that, again there’s my highlights visible, actually a bunch of highlights-if you wish to see more… I’m waiting for Richard to appear, and tell me to get off his lawn…


THE ABORTION

“THE NEED FOR LEGALIZED ABORTION by Doctor O. The author was doctory and very nervous in his late 30s. The book had no title on the cover. The contents were very neatly typed, about 300 pages long. —“Do you want to put it on a shelf yourself?” I said. “No,” he said. “You take care of that yourself. There’s nothing else that I can do. It’s all a God-damn shame.” — It has just started to rain now outside the library. I can hear it splash against the windows and echo among the books. They seem to know it’s raining —This library rests upon a sloping lot that runs all the way through the block down from Clay to Sacramento Street. We use just a small portion of the lot and the rest of it is overgrown with tall grass and bushes and flowers and wine bottles and lovers’ trysts. —There are so many books being written that end up here, either by design or destiny. We have accepted 114 books on the Model T Ford, fifty-eight books on the history of the banjo and nineteen books on buffalo- skinning since the beginning of this library. —WHEN I first met Vida she had been born inside the wrong body and was barely able to look at people, wanting to crawl off and hide from the thing that she was contained within. This was late last year in San Francisco —there was a young girl at the door — Besides having an incredibly delicate face, beautiful, with long black hair that hung about her shoulders like bat lightning, there was something very unusual about her, but I could not quite tell what that thing was because her face was like a perfect labyrinth that led me momentarily away from a very disturbing thing. —“What do you have there? A book?” I said, wanting to sound like a pleasant librarian and make her feel at ease. —She wasn’t looking at herself either. I do not know what she was looking at, but she was looking at something very intently. I believe the thing that she was looking at was inside of herself. It had a shape that only she could see. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. I know it’s late,” She was disturbing me, but not in the way she thought. There was a dynamically incongruous thing about her, but I still couldn’t find it. “No, not at all,” I said. “This is my job and I love doing it.” “It’s good you’re happy,” she said. She said the word happy as if she were looking at it from a great distance through a telescope. The word sounded celestial upon her mouth, stark and Galilean Her body was very sensual, inciting one to think of lust, while her face was Botticellian and set your mind to voyaging upon the ethereal. Suddenly she sensed my recognition of her body. She blushed bitterly and reached into the paper bag and took out her book. “This is my book,” she said. -I could feel somebody inside of her looking out as if her body were a castle and a princess lived inside. —The book had a plain brown wrapper on it and there was no title. “What’s it about?” “It’s about this,” she said and suddenly, almost hysterically, she unbuttoned her coat and flung it open as if it were a door to some horrible dungeon filled with torture instruments, pain and dynamic confession. —She was developed to the most extreme of Western man’s desire in this century for women to look —“This book is about my body,” she said. “I hate it. It’s too big for me. It’s somebody else’s body. It’s not mine.” —“Everything’s going to be all right,” I said. I gave her a Milky Way -went and got some sherry for us. I figured that we would both need it. When I came back she was eating the candy bar. “Now isn’t that good,” I said, smiling. The ludicrousness of me giving her a candy bar made her smile, ever so slightly, and almost look directly at me. —“What’s your name?” I said. “Vida. Vida Kramar.” “Do you like to be called V-(ee)-da or V-(eye)-da?” That made her smile. “V-(eye)-da.” “Did you just finish your book?” I said. “Yes, I finished it yesterday. I wanted to tell how it is to be like me. I figured it was the only thing left for me to do. When I was eleven years old, I had a thirty-six-inch bust. I was in the sixth grade. “My book is about my body, about how horrible it is to have people creeping, crawling, sucking at something I am not. “You’ll never know how it is to be like I am. I can’t go anywhere without promoting whistles, grunts, howls, minor and major obscenities and every man I meet wants to go to bed instantly with me. I have the wrong body.” — “I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I’m just a librarian. I can’t pretend that you are not beautiful. That would be like pretending that you are some other kind of matter, a plant or a tire or some frozen peas or a bus transfer. “Anyway, that’s my problem. Where do we go from here? What’s next? Got any more candy bars?” I pretended to get one from my pocket and she laughed out loud. It was a pleasing thing. — “Why are you here in this funny library?” she said. “This place where losers bring their books. I’m curious about you now. What’s your story, Mr Librarian?”

Well read the story and find out, or my zillion highlights. And hint, you know the title…

SO THE WIND WONT BLOW IT ALL AWAY

Lots of highlights … take a look —

I believe that was Richard’s final work. Then two years later, in 1984, sadly -Richard blew himself away with his shotgun (he should have had a hamburger -see the highlights you’ll figure it out.)

[St. Bartholomew Noir II]

I read this at a bus depot in Albuquerque New Mexico during the middle of the night. The guy sitting next to me just did a year hard time and all he had was hygiene products so I gave him some money for cigarettes and a hamburger. He asked me if I liked snakes and gave me a gnostic ring. Traveling west a few hours later the guy sitting in front of me keeled over in his seat. We parked in the desert with his body lain out in front of the bus and waited for the medics to haul it away. When the sun rose we stopped for breakfast. I don't remember anything about this book.

[sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, Brautigan is a genius. Not only is "The Abortion" insightful and comedic, but his poetry continues to astound me. I only wish I had been alive to meet him...seems like a perfect guy to get a cup of coffee with. I also love how he looks a miniscule things in life and expands on them in interesting ways. Definitely the kind of author who makes you reconsider how you look at the world.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brautigan always makes me happy. Always, even when it's a sad happy. These three books are no exception to that rule.

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like a bridge between the Beats and the Hippies built with a bit of magical realism.

[Jason Dodson · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Revenge of the Lawn” - ****
“The Abortion” - **1/2
“So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away” - *****

I guess it evens all out, one way or another.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Revenge of the Lawn” were very short stories that could have been written by A/P student with senioritis. The grammar was there and it was clearly written by someone who can write but their heart isn’t in it. Their minds is partly somewhere else. I’m honestly not sure I can remember any of the stories now.

“The Abortion” is part interesting concept and part meandering story telling. It really didn’t feel like Brautigan knew where to take it but he enjoyed writing about this very attractive woman. It was like he, as an author, was creeping on one of his characters. It was odd how he would not shut up about how attractive she was.

“So the wind won’t blow it away” was an interesting read. And could have been even better if some of the pond people were fleshed out more and some of the repetition was edited out.

After reading all three books, there’s a level of silliness to his writing because, I believe, he just doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go. An example:

“First, one would die and then the other would die, and that would be the end of them, except for whatever I write down here, trying to tell a very difficult story that is probably getting more difficult because I am still searching for some meaning in it and perhaps even a partial answer to my own life, which as I grow closer and closer to death, the answer gets further and further away.”

But I was never bored and it’s not a hard book to read. There is a sentence, “I searched for hamburger references in the bible.”
That’s funny.

[Allan MacDonell · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a young poseur attempting to snag the interest of fair damsels following the local creative-writing contingent, I might have carried this very Richard Brautigan compendium about the junior college campus, and other Brautigan titles as well. I may even have read from between some Brautigan covers while seated conspicuously in the library. As I grew into adulthood, I was not open about this toadying in the shadow of a slovenly hippie. Now, older, creakier, I accepted a copy of the three novels, Revenge of the Lawn, The Abortion and So the Wind Won’t Blow It Away. I read the book with attention and delight, as if it was by a writer of Raymond Carver's ilk, and I’m happy to tell anyone.

[Garrett Guard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brautigan may be my new favorite author. The first short story and the last novella are masterpieces. He does objectify women a lot, but I laughed enough that it made up for it. What a legend

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Abortion: Three stars for this one. It's not a "wow, you gotta read this!" book, but I'm glad I read it. It made me think a lot. It starts out as a story about a weird library for books that have never been published. The library never closes, so the librarian guy who works there can never leave. Not even for groceries! Then the story morphs and becomes about a trip to Tijuana so the library guy's girlfriend can get an abortion. I'm sure this had a lot more immediate relevance at the time the story was written. Abortions were illegal. Hooray for Roe v. Wade, may it never be overturned!!
This is the first Brautigan I've ever read, so I have no comparison. It's as if he decided to see if he could tell a good story using the most spare language possible. His use of language is quirky, and I like quirky.

So the Wind Won't Blow...: Only two stars for this one. This was written close to the time the author committed suicide. It's very clear that he had deteriorated by the time he wrote it. Some of the writing is good, but he seems to have forgotten the point of the story he was trying to tell. It's said that this story foreshadowed the author's suicide, although I'm not sure exactly how.

Revenge of the Lawn: Just a whole lot of very short pieces. I've only read about 30 pages of this so far. Quality varies greatly, but there's enough amusing stuff here to warrant working my way through it just to find the good bits. It's as if they published all of his scribblings and musings that couldn't be used anywhere else. Some only a few sentences long.

[monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Lord. I can't reread or review this objectively. Never mind the precision with which he captures and presents his characters in Revenge of the Lawn, or the well-imagined always open or maybe never closed library of unpublished work in The Abortion or just the absorbing slowness of So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, I am brimming with love for this book, for Brautigan and his work, even his poetry, because it's one of few at fault for the best/worst decision of my life.

The story goes: I was going to be a chemist-philosopher so I met loads of other prospective students for the college I had my heart set on for my perfect future of idyllic intellectualism. Swapped book recommendations with fellow prospies. Wait-listed. Rejected. I ended up at an art school's writing program. Blame this collection for that last sentence.

[Randi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something different, very quirky, even a bit bizarre.

I checked this book out online @ Internet Archive (there was a waitlist) after listening to The Room of Requirement on This American Life (NPR) where one of the stories was about a library that never closed--similar to that in Brautigan's The Abortion.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/664/...

I continued to read So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away about a young boy who purchased bullets instead of a hamburger and then read the short stories (some very short) in Revenge of the Lawn.

Idiosyncratic.

[Ryankelley490 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book. Are you a poet?
Think poetry is dull and fluffy?
This book is written for the 20th-21st cynic who is only a cynic because modern society pushed practically everybody that way but really has a heart with romance, idealism and clever thoughts.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

"So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away" is a lovely story about a boy who made the wrong choice and bought bullets instead of a hamburger. It's Brautigan's surrealism at its best.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Richard Brautigan. I only wish he had written more books.

[Emily]

this guy writes sentences that have stuck with me for years.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revenge of the Lawn is pure golden honey. The rest are good too.

[Juliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

(read so the wind won't blow it all away)