Trout Fishing in America / The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar

by Richard Brautigan

Collected in one volume, three counterculture classics that embody the spirit of the 1960s.   Included here are three great works by the incomparable Richard  Trout Fishing in America is by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through the country’s rural waterways—a book “that has very little to do with trout fishing and a lot to do with the lamenting of a passing pastoral America . . .  An instant cult classic” (Financial Times).  The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster is a collection of nearly one hundred poems, first published in 1968.   And In Watermelon Sugar expresses the mood of a new generation, revealing death as a place where people travel the length of their dreams, rejecting violence and hate. During his lifetime, Look magazine observed, “Brautigan is joining Hesse, Golding, Salinger, and Vonnegut as a literary magus to the literate young.” A uniquely imaginative writer of the Beat movement who became an icon of the hippie era, he is still a favorite of readers today.  

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

390 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1967

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

[Mykle · Rating 4 out of 5]

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:

If you intend to invite me over to your house
at eleven PM
for an important meeting,

but then to not arrive there yourself
until one AM,

then it is a good idea
to leave a copy of this book
out on the kitchen counter

so that later

instead of calling you "flaky teenage punk poet jerk"

in an online public forum,

I will just thank you.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard Brautigan is an iconic counter-cultural poet and author who is probably best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America. His novels deploy a unique blend of magical realism, satire and black comedy. I recently read an omnibus that included two novels Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar and a collection of poetry The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster.

I think it is important to understand the life of an author when critically reading their novels. Normally Wikipedia is my starting place and often I find myself going down a rabbit hole of the internet. Richard Brautigan had an interesting life, with interesting ideals. Later in life he was diagnosed with both paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression, even receiving electroconvulsive therapy as many as twelve times in an effort to treat his condition. Later in his life, he lived life as a recluse and eventually died to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. It is unsure when he died, because his body was found much later.

The reason I think author context is important is evident in Brautigan’s book In Watermelon Sugar. The novel tells the story of iDEATH, a futuristic utopian commune that has found a way to live off the land; specifically watermelon sugar. This is told in a first person perspective and Brautigan could be considered the protagonist. However knowing the context of his life, I think Richard Brautigan saw himself more as the antagonist that is ruining this perfect society. Either way, it makes for an interesting read and In Watermelon Sugar was the highlight of this omnibus.

Trout Fishing in America was just a weird book, I had gotten use to the style of Richard Brautigan and I knew what to expect. However, Trout Fishing still leaves me perplexed. I know this is a social critique, but I never was able to fully grasp what Brautigan was trying to say. The term Trout Fishing in America became a character’s name, a hotel, a place, and becomes a modifier for just about anything. It was a weird novel and I probably need to do a lot more research to fully understand it.

The poetry of Richard Brautigan is just as unique as his novel writing. Most of his poems are short but pack a huge punch. There is so much depth within the poems and sometimes they have the ability to shock. For example, the title poem from this collection The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, compares birth control to a mining disaster that killed 75 people. He believes that the pill and the disaster both leave life buried forever. Not all his poems pack a punch like this but I thought this poem was a good example of what to expect.

I do not think I would have read Richard Brautigan, without the encouragement of Jake from the YouTube channel Tales from iDEATH. This may not be entirely true, since Brautigan is on the 1001 Books list, and still need to read Willard and His Bowling Trophies. I appreciate the push to read Richard Brautigan, he is a weird author, but I enjoyed the experience. His style might irritate many people but I liked the surrealist nature of the three books I read in this omnibus.

The review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-rev...

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review of Trout Fishing in America is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[TheBookWarren · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a treat Richard Brautigan is, let alone the uncanny excellence of the treat magnified when you get 3 novella’s in one.

The charm of RB is in what he doesn’t say, what he chooses to leave out.. this forces one to focus on the afterthought, for the prose is so simply efficient it allows your mind to wonder at the wonder!

You don’t read a Brautigan as much as you experience it, live it. Feel it. The book ends up in a newspaper-eque spiral as though it had spent a full day being used at the track for the racing form, so much do we often slick through back and forth from one poem or story to the next then back again then rinse and repeat over and over! I wonder what Richard Brautigan would think of today? I’d more or less believe he’d be if the Rutger persuasion and feel that humankind is misrepresented en-masse & we all too often are quick to point out the horrific simply due to it being more accessible, more sensationalist .. after all, a report saying ‘no kids kidnapped or wars braking out here’ isn’t exactly one we can ever expect to see in nightly news, our Achilles Heel in modern day, a poison on all of society.

I can’t say it better than the Lovely Eggs did..

“Have you ever read Richard Brautigan? Ever ever read Brautigan? Well if you’ve never read Richard Brautigan - then I’m fairly sure you’ll burn in hell”..

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like “In Watermelon Sugar” the best, but I just don’t find Brautigan consistently interesting - and tbh the poetry is just not good.

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't finish this...I only read a small part of it, "sectionally" (different sections in other words). After all, I only have so many hours left in in my life and I choose not to waste too many of them.

Maybe I'm one of those people who doesn't have a regular name, maybe it depends on you? Right. Can you string a group of contradictory words together (I heard through my eyes the feel of orange), can you line up non sequiturs in sentence and paragraph form? Then you to can write poetry as Brautigan can.

How about putting together a somewhat pretentious pseudo-spiritual novella, possibly based on your experiences in a couple of failed communes? Yeah right.

I've read raves about In Watermelon Sugar with claims of spiritual breakthroughs and discovery of transcendental peace. Right. The book puts me in mind of a minor character in The Fountainhead. A writer who writes a book that everyone reads (though the sales figures don't seem to reflect that) and everyone thinks "they understand while no one else does". It gives them a "spiritual feeling" for "some reason". Later even the author gives a wink and a nod over it.

If you think you've found the mystery of life through "In Watermelon Sugar" let me suggest you read One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz.

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Watermelon Sugar reminded me, in a certain way, of the Unthank parts of Alasdair Gray's Lanark in that you're never quite sure if the world it inhabits is our world, an alternate dimension, our world in a post-apocalyptic state, or perhaps the afterlife. And I mention "post-apocalyptic" not because it seems like a hostile wasteland (the world it describes is actually quite magical and beautiful), but because there are hints at mysterious "forgotten things," suggesting that perhaps this is a world inhabited by our descendants--but that is only a possibility, and by no means the point. Like Unthank, this world is a dreamlike one that seems to have its own laws of nature and physics, although in watermelon sugar is a pastoral, agrarian existence rather than an urban, industrial one. I very much enjoyed In Watermelon Sugar, but my favorite section of this omnibus was the first and most famous one, Trout Fishing in America. What really knocked me out was that even when it seems outlandish, it is believable, giving the impression that this was something that actually happened to the author or someone he knows, but then was filtered through a twisted lens of poetic vision.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love, love love Richard Brautigan's poetry.
One of my favorites:

Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4

1. Get enough food to eat.
and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of youself,
and listen to it.

4.




-end-

And the story In Watermelon Sugar was one of the wierdest things I've ever read. And coming from me, that says a lot. I dig it.

The first story, Trout Fishing in America, can in my opinion, be skipped though.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

You don't have to be a beatnik to enjoy these books, but it probably would help.

The back cover contains one single word: Mayonnaise.

Trout Fishing in America - Some parts actually make sense. This may have been accidental. 3 stars.
The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster - Short and mostly meaningless "poems". 2 stars.
In Watermelon Sugar - Finally stops trying to make sense. 3 stars (barely).

[Edgar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q: If you were a Brautigan metaphor, which one would you be?

A: "I wander around the house like a sewing machine that's just finished sewing a turd to a garbage can lid."

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am mad. Mad that I haven't read any Brautigan until this year. Now that I have this book along with the last he wrote (An Unfortunate Woman) under my reading 'belt' I feel a little happier. This edition, i believe, combines three separate Brautigan works each of which has their merits and their serious entertainment value. There is a wide range of beauty, silliness and emotion in his poetry and the two stories (novels? novellas?) are equally wonderful. Due to his style and layout almost every page of Brautigan's prose seems like it could stand alone without the rest of the story. Luckily for us the rest of the pages exist.

Here is the title poem from his book of poetry:

The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

When you take your pill
it's like the mine disaster.
I think if all the people
lost inside of you.

[Hakan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beat kuşağının uzantısı sayılabilecek, yerleşik düzeni ve değerleri umursamayan, 1960'ların sonunda zirveye çıkan karşı kültür akımının önde gelen yazarlarından biri olarak bilinen Richard Brautigan'ın bu kitabını üç yıl önce bir seyahatte almıştım. Kitap Brautigan'ın 1967-1968 yıllarında yayınlanan üç eserinin toplu ve tıpkı basımı.

İlk kitap "Trout Fishing in America" (Türkçe'ye Amerika'da Alabalık Avlamak diye çevrilmiş), roman diye geçse de muğlak bir tür. Birbirinden bağımsız denilebilecek küçük bölümlere gerçeküstü bir hava hakim. Toplumsal hiciv niteliği de var ama anlaşılması, eğer bir anlamı varsa tabii, zor. Pek sevemedim doğrusu.

"The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster" ise bir şiir kitabı. Hiciv dozu ağır, özellikle de şiirsellikten arındırılmış şiirler bunlar. Kitaba adını veren kısa şiir epey çarpıcı. Ama şiirleri genel olarak bana hitap etmedi.

Derlemenin en ilgiyle okuduğum kısmı ise "In Watermelon Sugar" (Türkçe'ye Karpuz Şekerinde diye çevrilmiş) oldu. Bu kısa ve çarpıcı roman, günlük hayatta kullandıkları birçok şeyi karpuz şekeri ve alabalık yağından (yine alaballık!) üreten ütopik bir komünün şaşırtıcı hikayesi. Komünün adı da dikkate değer; iDeath. Brautigan, iPhone, İpad, iMac gibi aletlerin hayatımızda oynayacağı rolü 50 yıl önce görmüş anlaşılan:) Bu işin şakası tabii. Unutulmuş Eserler adı verilen devasa bir hurdalıkta yaşayan ayyaş, karanlık tiplerden oluşan "rakip komün" ile iDeath'tekiler arasındaki gerilimin seyri de kitabın güçlü bir yönü. Bu gerilim epey sarsıcı bir sahneyle sonuçlanıyor. Hüzünlü bir aşk üçgeni de içeren roman, sebze heykelleri, konuşan kaplanları, nehir altı mezarlarıyla insanı masalsı ve etkileyici bir atmosfere sokuyor.

Bu üç eserine bakarak, Brautigan'dan bir şey okuyacaksanız Karpuz Şekerinde'yi okuyun derim. Çok farklı bir deneyim yaşayacaksınız.

[Tyler Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had some great talks with Nathan on why this is a cool read. Love the Oregon references, and always fun to come across a new way of writing. Cool to dive into some poetry too.

[David Crumm · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Homage to Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America

Every now and then, I like to re-read something from Richard Brautigan, who along with Charles Dickens and Albert Camus and Robert Frost, were the pied pipers leading me to choose writing as a vocation. After Dickens, Camus and Frost, I was astonished at the way Brautigan took the English language we all had inherited, jumbled it like Scrabble tiles spilling across a tiled floor, and then picked up letters, words and phrases in a whole new way. After years immersed in Dickens, Camus and Frost, whose anxieties about the world propelled their work, I was stunned to find someone who actually loved every little thing about the world, even the teeny tiny parts that the rest of us were likely to miss.

Compared to other serious novelists I had read as a teenager, this guy was Freedom writ large! Writing was an adventure we all could share.

I had been pretty much forced to read John Updike in high school, mainly because my father admired him so much, but there was something I resisted from the start and eventually came to resent about Updike. I mention that, in this review, because Brautigan for me was the antidote to Updike’s poisoned pen.

Is that heresy? Maybe. Today literary critics tend to dismiss Brautigan as a One Trick Pony of a particular era that has passed along with all the rest of the burdensome ‘60s paraphernalia. For some reason, Updike remains a literary god. But, honestly, who would you rather meet for an afternoon stroll around a big city? I’d take Brautigan hands down.

For one thing: He loved life. He absolutely loved life, even though that is a sentence Brautigan would never have written because he had no time to fool around with adverbs.

Updike mainly loved himself. Pull some of Updike’s novels off the shelf, dust them off and you’ll find that by and large, Updike thought most people were too stupid to worry about and that the world, in general, is a rigged game designed to play cruel tricks on us. When he wrote, the real creativity was all in his adjectives and adverbs, rarely in his nouns. That’s because Updike had long ago decided that he knew everything about what stuff really was, and now it was his vocation as a novelist to tell the rest of us how to think about that stuff in a proper Updikian way.

That was the opposite of Brautigan’s constant exploration of the world. The key to Brautigan’s writing lies in his use of nouns, especially Proper Nouns, like Trout Fishing in America, which you might think was the title of some PBS nature documentaries or perhaps a department at Cabela’s. In fact, those four words are a character, a living breathing character. No kidding.

What is even more astonishing about the literary leap of Brautigan’s life is that he was old. Definitely not a Baby Boomer. Sure, he was younger than Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, but he carried around with him all the old stuff that was my father’s generation of baggage. You could spot the vintage “tells” sprinkled throughout his writing. Brautigan liked to call wealthy folks “swells” like Cole Porter. He thought about gangsters like Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger and movies like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. What self-respecting hot young writer today even knows those references?

I am pointing out those old references in Trout Fishing in America because they were all part of the scattered Scrabble tiles that Brautigan found on his floor when he began struggling as a writer in the 1950s with the traumas and demons of his early life growing up in poverty and later struggling with mental illness. The fact that he could burst forth in the ‘60s with something resembling a celebration of life is miraculous.

Brautigan wasn’t trying to tell us what to think about the stuff in our world. It was the stuff itself that fascinated him. Each day was a revelation. He didn’t preach at us like a latter-day Updike. He was too busy lifting up every bit of stuff around him, turning it this way and that, and discovering that stuff wasn’t really what we thought it was in the first place.

And therein lies how my love of Brautigan as a teenager led to my vocation of writing and editing as a journalist. Brautigan never let his curiosity stop him. In many ways, Brautigan with an ethnographer without a scholarly degree, a journalist without a newspaper, and ultimately a pied piper for so many of us, thank God. He was a visionary who showed us that even the most absurd ideas might reveal wisdom if we only examined them carefully enough.

Like, why did he write Trout Fishing in America?

Answer: Because he always wanted to write a book that ended with the word mayonnaise.

I am not kidding.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read these books back in my hippie days and I fell in love with Brautigans prose. It was beautiful, simplistic and minimalist. He sketched pictures that had surprising detail in few words.

BUT...

I've matured. These books will endure as classics in the minds of young liberals with loads of idealism and a longing to be modern-day hobo's, keeping their minds filled with mush and ignoring the complexity of reality.

Still, though, like reading Kerouac's journals, it offers a interesting insight into the thinking of the flower children of the 60's as well as the tragic figure of a man that ultimately couldn't cope. (Brautigan committed suicide right around his 50th birthday).

[Forrest · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know that stoner from high school, the one with a golden heart and hateful eyes, the one that failed all his classes but had the intelligence to be a Nobel Prize winner, the one that wanted to establish world peace through sarcasm? That's who wrote this book, and it's scary good. Mix equal parts '60s rebelliousness (without overt politics), folksy americana, and surrealism, and you've got it. Snarky anarchy with the best metaphors I've ever read.

[Rich Flanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing is as expected, once you enter the world of Richard Brautigan. Sure, there is a semblance of a story, but soon you discover that you don’t mind missing the expected frameworks; you are happily gliding along in a fantastical boat toward ports unknown. It doesn’t matter if some of the imagery doesn’t quite make sense to our literal minds; the poetry triggers the imagination, rustling up dusty corners of our psyches.

I grew to love these books, for reasons I cannot fully understand, nor really care to. All I know is I never ceased looking forward to the next page, always drawn irresistibly into an astonishing, wildly imaginative, surrealistic world.

It make sense that Brautigan's writings were so celebrated in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when American culture was a colorful scramble of fresh, free-thinking, free-wheeling kids, re-inventing everything, including literature. Today, such incandescent creativity could help ignite out-of-the-box solutions for the crises we face.

I somehow missed reading these at the time, but I am grateful to have discovered the books now. They are as fresh and alive as a new album from the Beatles.

5 blazing stars.

richflandersmusic.com

[Ziegel · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of the worst poetry i have ever read in my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but really such a blast. 5 stars for pure love, 2 stars for serious.

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love surreal/experimental writing so this was quite a pleasure for me. It was also a little eye-opening for me to read 'older' surrealism & if I had to sum it up I guess I'd say it's "surreal Americana". I can definitely see that some of the modern surreal/experimental writers I have read have probably taken inspiration from Brautigan.

Trout Fishing in America:
I saw this described somewhere as poetic prose & I agree. The work is almost like a series of short (under one page up to two pages) essays, all loosely related to trout, fishing, camping, & nature. And all have some kind of surreal bent or observation to them. Trout Fishing in America is often referred to as a character/person, but not always & not in all of the sections. And there's mayonnaise.

The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster:
I'm not a huge fan of poetry, though I liked this collection overall. His poetry is easy to read & most of his poems are very short. Some were amusing, some sad, some touching, some magical, or surreal, or odd.

In Watermelon Sugar:
This is the most story-like piece of the collection & seems like it might be a dystopian, futuristic, or folk/fantasy world -- it's just not quite clear. There are some really beautiful descriptions/ideas in here, including that the town buries people "all in glass coffins at the bottoms of rivers and put foxfire in the tombs, so they glow at night and we can appreciate what comes next." Despite the beauty, this is a melancholy tale set in an offbeat world.

[ES · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Dear Trout Fishing in America,"

The silliest thing I've read in awhile, Brautigan uses metaphors that don't really make any sense but feel so original you might tend to take them at face value. Just 'cause it's easier to do so?

"...The other graveyard was for the poor and it had no trees and the grass turned a flat-tire brown in the summer and stayed that way until the rain, like a mechanic, began in the late autumn."

"The FBI agents watched the path, the trees, the black stump, the pool and the trout as if they were all holes punched in a card that had just come out of a computer. The afternoon sun kept changing everything as it moved across the sky, and the FBI agents kept changing with the sun. It appears to be part of their training."

Maybe I'm not making my point about the metaphor's? There's this beauty:

"The petals of the vagina unfold
like Christopher Columbus
taking off his shoes.

Is there anything more beautiful
than the bow of a ship
touching a new world?"

Yeah, Brautigan makes me laugh, it's like he's perfected the non-perfection of high-school underground literature. Ironically, he's probably been kicked out of a lot high schools without ever making a physical attempt.

I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do with this book, thanks a lot asshole.

"Yours Truly,

Trout Fishing in America"

[Larry Bassett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sold my paperback copy of trout fishing in America for $4.20 last month on eBay. I probably could’ve easily gotten a few more bucks for it but you can’t win them all! Richard Brautigan probably believed that as he put the shot gun to his head and pulled the trigger. What a shame!

As I was listening to this book in the audible format I was sure that I must’ve read it Wayback when but none of it seemed at all familiar to me. Until I got almost to the end and there was the store with the used trout streams for sale. That definitely rang all sorts of bells!

This is such a classic. But I just asked to 18-year-olds if they ever heard of this book. And of course they had not. One even made the essential comment about not liking books about fishing.

I don’t know how many chapters this book has but the number is pretty high. Most of them are pretty short which is some thing that I often enjoy in a book. This book is weird and witty and wonderful especially for those of us at a certain age who like to pretend that those days back then were the best ever. Which of course they were not. But I’m glad that they made this into an audible book just recently and I’m glad I got a chance to listen to it. And I’m even glad that I passed on my original paperback copy to another person who might treasure it.

[ArEzO.... Es · Rating 5 out of 5]

تا زمان چاپ رمان "صید قزل آلا در آمریکا" که برایش شهرت جهانی به ارمغان آورد، در فقر و تنگدستی به سر میبرد. شعرهایش را در کنار خیابان به رهگذران می فروخت تا غذایی برای خوردن داشته باشد. روز ها را با همسر و بچه هایش چنان به سختی به شب می رساندند که دل دوستان به حال آن ها می سوخت و غذایی با هزار جور حیله به آن ها می رساندند تا به غرور براتیگان بر نخورد و غذاها را پس نفرستد. سال 1964 با همسرش برای زندگی به کنار رودخانه می سی سی پی می رود و نوشتن رمان "صید قزل آلا در آمریکا" را آغاز می کند. این رمان نه تنها در زندگی ی او که در ادبیات مدرن جهان انقلابی بر پا می کند و او را به عنوان نویسنده ای غیر متعارف و پست مدرن تثبیت می کند
براتیگان در سال 1984 با شلیک گلوله ای از یک تپانچه به زندگی ی خود خاتمه داد. پدر او که در سال ها ی بچه گی ی ریچارد خانه را ترک کرده بود تنها پس از خودکشی ی او پی به هویتش برد و فهمید که پسرش از نویسنده گان به نام آمریکا است.
براتیگان را نه می توان با معیار های روز شاعر نامید و نه داستان نویس و رمان نویس. او سبک خود را دارد و به شیوه ی خود عمل می کند. در صید قزل آلا در آمریکا نه به قصه گویی اهمیتی می دهد و نه به جذابیت. و در عین حال هر دو را به دست می آورد. قله های شهرت و ثروت را به سرعت طی می کند و سبکش پدیده ی جدیدی در ادبیات به حساب می آید

[Kerstin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trout Fishing in America: 1 ⭐
I feel like you need to be American to enjoy this story. Preferably an old American.

The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster: 3.5 ⭐
Beautiful poetry. really enjoyed it!

In Watermelon Sugar: 4.5 ⭐
Wonderful story! HIGHLY recommend!

[Chantal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brautigan's poems are sad and silly and beautiful. His voice is like that of precocious child. Always painfully honest, his work is charming, if not a little kooky.

[Benjamin Bender · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed Trout Fishing in America and the Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster a bit more than In Watermelon Sugar. In the first two novels in this volume, Brautigan uses beautiful analogies to describe everything. On the surface, they often seem nonsensical, but somehow they are easy to understand if you just go along with it. In Watermelon Sugar I just found myself less able to just go along with it. The storyline was just a bit too linear for me. Still a solid read.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps one of my favourite reads ever. Will revisit these stories and poems again and again and again and again forever.

If someone asked me regarding this collection, “doesn’t that beat everything?”

I would say, “it’s got a head start”.

[mar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird, hallucinatory, honestly a bit over my head. In Watermelon Sugar was my favorite- bizarre but kinda beautiful?

[Brian Bess · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lost Beat in his lonely world

Trout Fishing in America
I just read three of Richard Brautigan’s works in an omnibus volume for the first time in forty years. Brautigan is a writer that was unique in that I felt that if you compared him to other notable writers of the 1960’s, he would usually come up short. However, taken for himself and what he was attempting to do, I think he generally succeeded. His work was a blend of metafiction, magical realism, expanded consciousness, and flower power philosophy that had no equivalent in the works of his contemporaries. He was easy to dismiss and make fun of but he wrote unapologetically in his niche. He was also gentle and idealistic, with no trace that I could detect of the irony or cynicism that is so prevalent in the work of the 21st century.

‘Trout Fishing in America’ is the book that he’s probably best known for writing. It was his first “novel”, although nothing about it is novelistic in the way of plot or character evolution. The book is perhaps more of a collection of absurdist, surreal mini-essays on themes that generally tie in to this idea of Trout Fishing in America, which he has gone so far as to personify. Trout Fishing in America is a mythic entity in Brautigan’s world.

It is also, like many of his other fictional works, a first-person narrative. The “I” character can easily be interpreted to be some version of Brautigan himself. This is reinforced by the cover photograph, which shows Brautigan with his lady friend posed in front of a well-known statue of Ben Franklin in San Francisco. The cover photo is referred to multiple times throughout the book so he wants us to consider the cover as just as essential to the book to the contents within.

One tactic that Brautigan takes to a greater extent than any other writer I’ve read is that he will take a metaphor and allow the metaphor to overtake the reality. For example, in the chapter titled “The Hunchback Trout.” He begins with the statement, “The creek was like 12,845 telephone booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings and all the doors taken off and all the backs of the booths blocked out.” This prompts the next sentence: Sometimes when I went fishing in there, I felt just like a telephone repairman, even though I did not look like one. I was only a kid covered with fishing tackle, but in some strange way by going in there and catching a few trout, I kept the telephones in service.” From then on in the chapter he refers to the creek as telephone booths and himself as a telephone repairman. He allows that image to dominate how he approaches the simple activity of catching a hunchback trout.

The image of trout fishing evokes Ernest Hemingway’s various stories about hunting and fishing and the fact isn’t lost on Brautigan. He recalls finding out about Hemingway’s suicide by shotgun (eerily prophetic as that is the method Brautigan himself used to end his life over 20 years later). Brautigan doesn’t just refer to the idea of trout fishing or write about fishing experiences, he personifies it. Trout Fishing in America is an entity that lives in the forms of a sixth grade “terrorist” group that writes on the backs of the jackets of first graders the phrase, “Trout Fishing in America”. Trout Fishing in America encounters FBI agents searching for a ‘ten-most wanted” criminal who claims to love trout fishing. Finally, the narrator has a conversation with Trout Fishing in America when he is fishing in the Big Wood River, a few miles from Ketcham, Idaho, where Hemingway killed himself. They discuss memorable fishing sites and various memorable fish that were never caught.

In an ultimate surrealistic anecdote that also comments on the popularity of outdoor sports, the narrator tells about a place called the Cleveland Wrecking Yard that sells used trout streams:
‘”Can I help you?”
“Yes, I said. “I’m curious about the trout streams you have for sale. Can you tell me something about it? How are you selling it?”
“We’re selling it by the foot length. You can buy as little as you want or you can buy all we’ve got left. A man came in here this morning and bought 563 feet. He’s going to give it to his niece for a birthday present,” the salesman said.
“We’re selling the waterfalls separately of course, and the trees and birds, flowers, grass and ferns we’re also selling extra. The insects we’re giving away free with a minimum purchase of ten feet of stream.”
“How much are you selling the stream for?” I asked.
“Six dollars and fifty-cents a foot,” he said. “That’s for the first hundred feet. After that it’s five dollars a foot.”

The exchange continues along these lines and finally the narrator asks where the stream came from. “Colorado”, the salesman replies. “We moved it with loving care. We’ve never damaged a trout stream yet. We treat them as if they were china.”

The narrator explores the store and indeed finds trout streams, waterfalls, various animals, insects, birds, and even wanders into the used plumbing department where he finds stacks of toilets piled on top of one another.

The book ends generally where it begins and one leaves the book realizing that it could begin and end anywhere, meandering its own way, much like a trout stream.


The Pill versus the Springhill Mining Disaster
This collection of poems is defined by the same guiding principle that led to the writing of ‘Trout Fishing in America’. Few of the poems are longer than a page. Many take up less than half of a page. Some are short as haikus. In fact, some could be considered haikus themselves. It’s easier to understand the effect of these poems by sampling a few of them.

Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4
1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it
2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.
3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
Until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.
4.

Love Poem
It’s so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody you love them
when you don’t love them
any more.

And the title poem:

When you take your pill
it’s like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.

Multiply one of these poems by about 100, and you have a good indication of the experience of reading ‘The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster’.


In Watermelon Sugar
This novella actually has a coherent narrative structure. The opening circular sentence sets the tone for what follows: “In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.”

The narrator (Brautigan? He’s on the cover again) lives in this unusual settlement at an indeterminate time in a settlement which has an Edenic serenity to it. He lives in a shack on the outskirts and there is something resembling a downtown area but the center of the settlement, the communal gathering place where people eat and socialize, is a place called iDEATH. That name immediately evokes the death of the i, being the ego, where the occupants live in peace and harmony. They process watermelons, cook them down to their essence—‘watermelon sugar’—and somehow incorporate said sugar into building planks so in essence, their houses and buildings are made from watermelon sugar. The narrator remembers being a child in the area with his parents, when tigers came and ate them. These were talking tigers. They didn’t hurt him, just asked what he was doing. He said he was working on arithmetic homework so they helped him. He wrote one of the first books written in the area for the last forty years. It was about weather. He’s hard at work on a new book, not about weather, but won’t tell any of his fellow citizens exactly what it’s about yet.

The tigers eventually lost the power of speech and moved on. The sun changes color each day and is somehow connected to the watermelons. Monday is red, with red watermelons, Tuesday is golden, sun and watermelons, Wednesday, gray, Thursday, black, soundless watermelons (there is no sound, including human speech on these days), Friday, white, Saturday, blue, and Sunday, brown with brown watermelons. Each day then has its own color.

The narrator is “going steady” with Pauline, who does most of the cooking at iDEATH. Pauline was best friends with Margaret, the narrator’s former girlfriend. For unspecified reasons, he and Pauline fell in love and Margaret was heartbroken. She stills comes to his shack but he ignores her knock. Beyond the boundaries of the town lie the Forgotten Works. This is a decrepit wilderness, essentially a giant junkyard of discarded, useless items. The main occupants there are “inBOIL and that gang of his.” inBOIL is the brother of one of the town elders who grew more dissipated and sodden by alcohol. He and his gang are unwashed, crude, and rude. inBOIL looks threatening although he mainly comes around to say things like “You don’t know what iDEATH is. I’ll show you what iDEATH really is.” The threat is realized one day when they come to the town, demonstrating iDEATH by mutilating themselves, cutting off thumbs, noses, other body parts, and bleeding to death. Margaret, already depressed, has become fascinated with inBOIL and that gang of his and has explored the Forgotten Works. After their “iDEATH”, she hangs herself.

The entire story is told in this serene, deadpan tone. Brautigan still can’t get away from trouts, though. He beings in “the Grand Old Trout’, an old trout raised in the trout hatchery at iDEATH. He has grown big and old and comes downstream out of curiosity. He and the narrator just stare at each other. They recognize each other from a time when they were both much younger.

In this story, Brautigan has actually harnessed his metaphors to a coherent, though strange, narrative. Is iDEATH really a new Eden? Is inBOIL a new Cain, who directs his rage inwardly rather than killing his brother? I think there’s sufficient room for such an interpretation given the choice of words. For me, it is a memorable psychedelic fantasy that I first read in my early twenties that has left an impression and stayed with me to this day. I doubt if Brautigan will ever come back in fashion to the extent that he ever was in the 1960’s. However, I think he’s worth checking out, not just as a relic from an earlier time but as someone who, for better and worse, let his imagination run wild and free, something we could all benefit from today.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collection opens with Trout Fishing in America, which is a series really short stories or prose poems (depending who you ask, and most would agree that either definition fits) that hang together cohesively but loosely. The method of metaphor and transformation of America from one era into another is as masterful as it is entertaining. The matters of words and history also play a strong role, as various literary critics have observed. Even if most of the symbolism doesn't stick for you, the pervasive feeling of something marvelous changing into something we don't yet know would be hard to miss; there is America that was, is, and will be, reflected in the stories' narrator's life as it transitions similarly.

The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster is often interpreted oddly, I think. Many people encountering this kind of Beat/post-Beat poetry for the first time tend to not fair well with it; Brautigan is not the most approachable of styles to start out with. While there are some gems, and I've come to enjoy this collection more each time I read it, overall it doesn't rank among my favorites from the era.

In Watermelon Sugar is a very emotional bit of writing. It has many instances of over-the-top symbolism and operates on that premise without always being so obvious with what it's trying to say: that is a tricky balance. Where Trout Fishing in America relies on a more complex writing style, the narrative voice of In Watermelon Sugar is straightforward to the point of often seeming childish in its guilelessness. It opens the doors for interpretative analysis even more than Trout Fishing in America does, but as a result it seems to have less significance. It feels a bit displaced. That being said, I really enjoy it and find it fun to talk about. It manages to draw on pretty compelling moods and emotions, having disguised its depth in its direct and simple narrative style.

All in all, Trout Fishing in America outshines the other two works tremendously, but In Watermelon Sugar is still definitely worth the read, and The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster goes by quickly, you'll probably find something to like about it for its strange diversity, and when you reread it more connections will arise making it more enjoyable than the first time. People who don't like this work either don't like that "getting it" can be a somewhat hazy and unrewarding accomplishment; whereas reading and enjoying the creative style, as well as some of the implications it provides to be drawn upon, is really what I think the experience of these works of Brautigan are about.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's rare that you find a book as experimental yet playful as "Trout Fishing in America." Normally I don't have the patience for novels that emphasize clever structure over compelling storyline. But the short stories in "Trout Fishing" are breezy reads that keep you reading because of Brautigan's lyrical, poetic writing. The characters themselves aren't as memorable as the portraits he paints of escapes into nature and the strange ways he twists the words "trout fishing in America" into different roles in his stories.

My favorite part of the book, though, is the poetry collected in "The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster." The in-love/out-of-love poems are especially tender (my favorite is "I Feel Horrible. She Doesn't.") Again, his playfulness with words pulls you into a happy hippie headspace that's fun to revel in.

"In Watermelon Sugar" had a lot of cool imagery involving watermelons, but it was the least interesting of the three-part book. It moves quickly through a strange tale of a divided community and a man divided between lovers, and while it's original in the formatting, it's the least poetic of the works collected here. At least I now know where the band inBOIL got its name. Ha.