Product Description
Three unforgettable Brautigan masterpieces reissued in a one-volume omnibus edition.

REVENGE OF THE LAWN: 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 ABORTION: 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 AWAY: 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

The Vincent Van Gogh of 1960's American Fiction
If you think Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins and Douglas Adams are great authors you should give Mr. Brautigan a shot.Sadly, he left us too early.
This volume is my favorite.A friend of mine loaned me The Abortion and So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away and I was hooked.

Revenge of the Lawn is a collection of very funny short stories.

The Abortion is a novel about a couple who travel to Tiajuana, Mexico so that the girl-friend can obtain an abortion.The story highlights their travels, but also gives a very moving narration of the couple's self-questioning concerning whether or not they are doing the right thing.

So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away is a moving misadventure story of a group of boys who find a gun and decide to go shoot it.

I hope that The Hawkline Monster, Dreaming of Babylon and Willard and His Bowling Trophies is SOON released for the Kindle as they are also some of Richard Brautigan's best writing.

You will NOT be displeased with this series of books.

Revenge of the Lawn, The Abortion, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away
I was happy to receive this book so fast.
Thank you
Lisa Fisher

brautigan tha very best
i think richard brautigan is one of the best writters america ever had.
its a shame he killed himself at the age of 49 ,if he stayed alive he could have write a lot more.
when you read him you have the sensation that youre back at the 70' with the hippie revolution ,bob dylan , woodstock and the big chevrolets the u.s.a used to have.

the service from amazon was also very good.

gaby natan

gan yavne

israel

Making the Ordinary Sacred
When I was an art student at East Carolina University back in the 80's, a friend gave me a copy of REVENGE OF THE LAWN.As I look back now, I realize Brautigan's book was probably the beginning of my slow change from wanting to be an artist to wanting to be a writer.I had never read anything like Brautigan's work before, and for many years I couldn't understand why his stories and poems moved me so.I now understand it is because of Brautigan's ability to make ordinary details sacred.For instance in the story "Coffee" in REVENGE OF THE LAWN, Brautigan says, "Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords."In this tender story about the end of love, Brautigan reveals that the accoutrements needed to make the coffee are laid out at his lover's house "like a funeral service" and that the cup of coffee is "safely inside me like a grave."Herein is the magic of Brautigan's ability:to raise the mundane act of drinking coffee to a ceremony of death.

This is an especially good volume of Brautigan's works.THE ABORTION begins by describing a bizarre library wherein everyone's books are welcomed and handled lovingly by the proprietors.This certainly evokes the hope of every writer--that his or her efforts would be handled lovingly by readers.However, this was not the case with Brautigan's final book, SO THE WIND WON'T BLOW IT ALL AWAY, included in this volume.The critics panned it, often comparing it to the work that first brought him fame and continued to overshadow his subsequent works:TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA.I cannot express strongly enough how wrong I think critics were in their assessment of SO THE WIND WON'T BLOW IT ALL AWAY.Indeed, I believe it is my favorite of all Brautigan's works.It has all the characteristics of his earlier works--idiosyncratic characters, humor, heartbreaking tragedy--but this work seems especially wistful and wise.It is as though Brautigan looked back over his life and captured the whole of it in this one haunting story.

Brautigan's writing has deeply affected many people.Several years ago, I read in the newspaper that a teenaged boy changed his name to "Trout Fishing in America."In the early years of his career, he had many fans.I think his work is timeless and has the power to attract many new admirers.

Brautigan's the best, but this is not his best
I discovered Brautigan recently and have been reading everything I can get my hands on of his. There's three collections of three books. The one with TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA and IN WATERMELON SUGAR is the best one to get if you're only going to get one. But this one is good as well.

REVENGE OF THE LAWN, a collection of short stories, has some great two- and three-pagers that display typical Brautigan wit, humor, and insight. Some, as with any collection, are better than others.

THE ABORTION is one of Brautigan's better plots. And I say this because his style and sense of humor is pretty consistent through all of his work, and you either love it or hate it. If you hate it, you won't like any of his stuff. If you like it, then you'll probably like this one. It seems more original than some of his genre parody stories like THE HAWKLINE MONSTER and DREAMING OF BABYLON. It also seems like it may be a little autobiographical, so the emotion in it feels more real.

SO THE WIND WON'T BLOW IT ALL AWAY eerily forshadows Brautigan's suicide. It speaks to the youth in all of us and carries a great sense of nostalgia. Taken in context with his life and its end shortly after writing this book, it feels like a depressed man looking back at the golden years with complete fondness.

Overall, I'd say this is the second best of the Brautigan collections available. ... Read more

Product Description
A Brautigan omnibus, reissued in paperback in celebration of its twentieth anniversary, this one-volume edition includes three contemporary classics that embody the spirit of the 1960s. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (44)

Great purchase
It was in pretty great condition and was delivered well within the time period. I recommend buying it on here instead of at an expensive bookstore.

Great books, bad Kindle editon
So I finally decided to try out this Kindle thing and this was the first book I purchased because it's an old favorite. The three books are as good as ever, but the Kindle edition has a lot of typos which I suspect are from a lazy OCR transcription.

Hopefully these things get ironed out eventually, otherwise, going from print to Kindle is like transferring all of your good-quality music CDs to poorer-quality digital files (oh, wait I'm doing that too).

My review of the book: five stars

for the Kindle edition: three stars

Brautigan's "Trout fishing in America"

This used to be one of my favorite books. I'd forgotten about it until I heard or saw something on the "tube". Interesting views.

Trout Fishing, Indeed
I noted in a recent review of a film documentary about the literary exploits and influences of the "beat" generation of the 1950s on my generation, the "Generation of `68", that we were a less literary generation. That was one of the things that drew me to the beat literary figures like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, among others. Our generation was driven more by the sound of music and fury. Although I believe that statement holds up over time it is not true that there were no literary figures who tried to express for us what the landscape of mainstream American was like, and why it desperately needed to be changed. Enter one Richard Brautigan and his exploration on that theme, "Trout Fishing In America"

This little book drew my attention first for its cover (see linked "Wikipedia" entry for a view) more than anything literary since I was not then familiar with Brautigan's name or work. However, the photograph of Brautigan and his "muse" showed me all I needed to know to go inside. He (and she) look exactly like the poster children for the San Francisco experience of the 1960s. And like god's own vision of what the American West would have been populated with if the "greed heads" hadn't gone and burned up, mined, polluted, and otherwise destroyed everything they could get their hands on (and more).

And that last statement can stand, my friends, for Brautigan's motivation in writing this book. In a series of vignettes not, unfortunately, always creating a seamless plot Brautigan gives an alternative look at some funny, weird, crazy American types as he travels throughout the West in the early 1960s alone at times, and with wife and child at others. The title of the book recurs in several variations throughout (as sport, as a name, as a place, etc.). If you like a little off-beat theme, or are just curious about what those "hippies" were up to in the 1960s here is one of our own. Trout fishing, indeed.

I can't think of a title for this review
I'm struck by the strong polarization of reviews for Trout Fishing in America. That tells me right away that there is something worth investigating here.

I have read this book countless times over the past 30 years, and I am still at a loss to explain its charms. Yes, on the surface, it seems like a bunch of disconnected and aimless stories. But they all have a way of burrowing into the psyche, and I find myself carrying little fragments of the book around in my head all of the time. There are images, ideas and phrases in the book that are reminiscent of vivid dream fragments. In some ways, it is like music, because I can remember exactly when and where I was when I read certain passages.

I feel sorry for those who don't "get" it. It is not a linear story with a beginning, middle, and end and clever character development, so I can understand their frustration. But the point of the book isn't what it says, but what it does. It isn't a story, it's an experience. You may read through several chapters at a sitting without feeling one way or another about it, but then find little pieces coming to mind in the following days.

And it is all grounded in some basic truth. The stories all have an uncanny directness about them, and typically involve the basic elements of living... the earth, a house, rain, a road, a stream, fish, the sun, friendship, history, ketchup, kool-aid, mayonnaise. ... Read more

Product Description
Richard Brautigan was the author of ten novels, including a contemporary classic, Trout Fishing in America, nine volumes of poetry, and a collection of stories.Here are three Brautigan novels--A Confederate General from Big Sur, Dreaming of Babylon and The Hawkline Monster--reissues in a one-volume omnibus edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

When Your Lost In The Rain In Big Sur
Recently, in reviewing another more well-known book, "Trout Fishing In America", by the 1960s counterculture writer, Richard Brautigan, I wrote the following paragraph that applies to the book under review here, "A Confederate General From Big Sur", as well:

"I noted in a recent review of a film documentary about the literary exploits and influences of the "beat" generation of the 1950s on my generation, the "Generation of `68", that we were a less literary generation. That was one of the things that drew me to the beat literary figures like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, among others. Our generation was driven more by the sound of music and fury. Although I believe that statement holds up over time it is not true that there were no literary figures who tried to express for us what the landscape of mainstream American was like, and why it desperately needed to be changed. Enter one Richard Brautigan and his exploration on that theme, "Trout Fishing In America"."

As I also pointed out there I was drawn to "Trout Fishing" originally based on the photograph on the cover, of all things. Once inside, however, it was clear that Brautigan had the "gift", the madman's gift for telling some truths about mainstream American society that the "beat" writers also tried to make us "hip" to. And, as is my wont, once I have "discovered" a writer I tend to want read everything else of value that they have written. This brings us to "Confederate General".

The plot here centers on one Lee Mellon who is searching, in this case literally, for a Confederate general form Big Sur who may be a forbear. Along the way he has a series of adventures trying to get to the truth of the matter and also finds that others are interested in seeking the truth surrounding this figure. The hard truth is that no real records exist for this general, although then, as now, that is hardly cause for disqualification. This one is quirkier than "Trout Fishing" and in the end less satisfying. Sometimes a writer "speaks" to me more than once with his work, and sometimes not. The latter applies here.

Richard Brautigan : A Confederate General from Big Sur, Dreaming of Babylon, and the Hawkline Monster (Three Books in the Manne
This made a wonderful birthday present. Thank you for shipping it so fast.
Lisa Fisher

Stories to remember
I love Richard Brautigan's writing.The first book of his I happened across was A Confederate General, and it really caught my attention because I knew someone who just had to be the person on whom he modeled the main character.I recognized him not only because of his general persona, but because of Brautigan's description of his teeth.He always had some missing, but they were never the same ones twice.This is an absolutely accurate description.I later asked Brautigan about it and he confirmed my belief. The book is hilarious and completely accurate.
I went on to read everything he wrote and was seldom disappointed.

I discovered Richard Brautigan by accident...
My brother-in-law was a janitor who cleaned a small, hole-in-the wall book store in Redwood City, California. The store's no longer there, but the memory will live forever.

I was in the store one day, off-hours, while my brother-in-law did his thing. I browsed the shelves and spotted a book: "The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western." For some reason...unknown, un-remembered, and in the final analysis, totally irrelevant...the title struck my fancy. I picked it up, thumbed through it.

The next day, during business hours, I returned to the store and purchased it. Here's why:

Page 10 (of my edition)...

"The voyage from San Francisco to Hawaii had been the most terrifying experience Greer and Cameron had ever gone through, even more terrible than the time they shot a deputy sheriff in Idaho ten times and he wouldn't die and Greer finally had to say to the deputy sheriff. "Please die because we don't want to shoot you again." And the deputy sheriff had said "OK, I'll die, but don't shoot me again."

"We won't shoot you again," Cameron had said.

"OK, I'm dead," and he was.

I read that passage, I bought "Hawkline Monster," and then I bought the other 4 books of poetry, 1 book of short stories, and 9 books of fiction that were in print, and still available, in Richard's lifetime.

The passage I quoted will either resonate with you or it won't. For me, it was the heart of Brautigan, and it motivated me to own his collected works.

His life was achingly tragic, as was his death. You can find many overtones of that in his writing. He was, and is, an essential artist. He will continue to be missed.

"The Hawkline Monster" is my favorite Brautigan book. I invite you to purchase it and experience the joy within its pages.

Richard was one of a kind
Richard Brautigan sure stands out as one of the beat generation's top authors. From what I have read on the man's early life it is clear that he suffered immensely both from abusive parents, step parents and from psychiatric illness. He rose above it all though and created some stunning literature. His style of simplicity and vivid, even psychedelic imagery employing an avant guarde inimitable style of writing, struck me as fresh and breezy.

Dreaming of Babylon was fun to read and had that mike hammer pulp noirish feel to it.

I found a confederate general from big sur almost bordering on some sort of an autobiograhical account of Richard's life. It was highly enjoyable.

On the other hand the hawkline monster was childish drivel and the ending where each of the characters landed up in society made a mockery out of the whole piece.

It was a shame that Richard took his own life. One of his editors(publishers?) said that his writing never matured. He probably never wanted to grow up but his audience moved on and he was left alone. Sad really.

Go out and read his stuff. You'd be missing out on his greatness if you didn't.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

hey babe...
I made the mistake of not stealing this book from my High School library years ago when I had the opportunity.I know that sounds bad, but this book is that good and I miss reading these brilliant gems.

Really Observing
The picture on the cover of my copy shows that Richard Brautigan let his hair grow long.The title ought to make it obvious that this book is by someone who has seen the total collapse of concepts like integrity.Thepoems included in this book were written from 1971 to1976, a bit afterRichard Brautigan's popular triumphs.Page 41 is not quite the middle ofthis book, but it is where he confronts "The Necessity of Appearing inYour Own Face."The obvious thing about it is "you have to bethere."

An absolute gem
"Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork" is the most insightful and interesting book of poetry that I have ever read. Having not been familiar with Brautigan, I was shocked when I picked this book of the school libraryshelf to find the poems not rhyming or even melodious in their length. WhatI found was a mix of short insightful, witty, intellegent, and sometimesbizarre sketches from a truly gifted writter. This is a book that can beenjoyed in any form by anyone.

simple insightful sometimes surreal poetry
my used copy of 'loading mercury with a pitchfork' has disappeared.i guess it has a short shelf life.i am therefore looking for another copy.the reasons being, brautigan's poetry is simple, insightful, and sometimessurreal.this is the kind of book you read when you're a little blue, andwant to know you're not alone (that would be 'dive bombing the loweremotions', or when you're looking for a metaphysical challenge ('and youwill go where crows go and you will know what crows know'), or when youdon't have much time but you want to refresh your mind.brautigan, bestknown for 'trout fishing in america' is a 60's kind of hippie guy with adifferent perspective. ... Read more

Product Description
Concerns a writer trying to cope with the break-up of a relationship. Trying to escape his misery, he begins a story about a sombrero that falls out of the sky and lands in a small town. Unable to concentrate he throws the pages in the bin, and that's when it starts to take on a life of its own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

unde the sun with a milk shake of brandy
richard where were you my friend to long life witha new stuff write from you!

joons can't keep me away from these tastey words
i wake up, grab richard, and sit on my stoop until there is no more richard to be had.

Worth reading, though not one of my favorites
I had never read this particular Brautigan title, but I owned a copy, and when a young woman on her honeymoon came into the independent used bookstore where I work desperately seeking to replace her lent-out-never-returned copy, I told her to come back the next day.Meanwhile I read the book (in two sittings, which worked out fine).

Three stories alternate chapters:
· A man with no sense of humor, who is also an American writer of popular humorous novels, spends two hours one night grieving the end of his latest relationship;
· the young Japanese woman who left him now sleeps;
· and an anarchistic, cancerous story continues on its own from a page written by the writer, torn into pieces, and thrown into the wastebasket.

The third story, of the eponymous sombrero, is of a town that goes berserk after the icy white sombrero falls from a clear sky.It is purposely a bad story, as it has lost the attention of the writer, just as the writer has lost the attention of the Japanese woman and is now similarly falling apart.The violent, over-the-top wastebasket story became tedious to me, but the other two stories were lovely and illuminating, in a self-obsessed way.Perhaps this novel's best time for my life has passed, so happy honeymoon, Rachel!

Cracked kettles and dancing bears
There's this guy. You don't know what he's called (but, at a push, it might be Richard). He's a writer. No. Scratch that. He describes himself as "an American humourist". You get the impression he is known and respected and all of the things any writer wants. He has just split with his long-term Japanese girlfriend Yukiko. Or rather, she has just split with him, after two years. The parting is not amicable. She is fed up with him. She has decided no more writers. She will never date a writer again. Writers are too high-maintenance. It may be, in time, she will look back on the times they have shared with something like fondness, but not yet, not now, not at the moment. At the moment, she wants to put those two wasted years behind her. The American humourist is understandably devastated. He is awake while Yukiko is sleeping and dreaming with her cat across town. He tries to write.

He starts a story about a sombrero that falls from the sky. We don't know why. The sombrero just fell from the sky.We don't know how it got there. Just that it fell from the sky. The mayor, the mayor's aspiring cousin and an unemployed man converge on the hat.

At which point the American humourist tires of the sombrero, takes the paper from his typewriter and tears it into a million pieces before depositing said pieces in his wastepaper basket. The American humourist spends the rest of the novel trying to fill the gap left by Yukiko. Filling the gap involves thinking about food, searching for lost Japanese hair and thinking about what might have been.

While that is going on, the sombrero story (the story torn up and abandoned by the American humourist) develops a life of its own down there in the wastepaper basket. The mayor, the mayor's cousin and the unemployed man fall out about the sombrero. There is a riot. The national guard is called out. There are running gun battles, civilian casualties, chaos, the threat of civil war. The president makes a speech that comes to rival the Gettysburg Address. All that from a sombrero that falls from the sky.

None of which is really the point.

Gustave Flaubert said that language was like a cracked kettle on which we play tunes for bears to dance to hoping to move the stars to pity. I always think of this whenever I read anything by Brautigan. It's true of "Sombrero Fallout". It's true of "Revenge of the Lawn". It's true of "A Confederate General from Big Sur". It's true of pretty much anything. I can picture him there, in a forest clearing with the remains of last night's fire burned out in front of him, the old cracked copper kettle upturned between his legs and all those bears dancing - bears dancing as far as the eye can see - and maybe rain, maybe a light rain because those stars are pitying, those stars are moved, those stars haven't seen the like and won't see the like again.

I'm loathe to try and pick a single example of exactly what I mean but I've just been playing Virgilian lots (I think that's what it's called, when you open a book at random anywhere and see what you can see) and I've found this. Here's Brautigan. He's talking about Yukiko's "beautiful laugh (which) was like rain water pouring over daffodils made from silver". Could be that does nothing to you. Tell you something though. It makes me shiver. A lot of writers, reading comes to resemble panhandling for gold. You're there, holding the book in the water, trying to decide if that was gold or grit, unable to tell for sure. With Brautigan, it's all there. Each book is a bag of gold. You don't gotta do anything, just sit back and take it all in. Each book is a bag of gold and each grain shines.

Deeply Moving: You'll Laugh! You'll Cry!
This has always been my favorite Brautigan book and it really is a shame that it's out of print. I don't normally re-read books, but I have now read this one three times.I read it once in college when a girlfriend lent it to me.When we broke up, I hoped she'd forget that I had it but she didn't(!)The next time I read it was when I borrowed it from the local library.After re-reading it I thought about keeping it and paying the library for it, but that definitely didn't seem very 'Brautiganish' so I returned it and went on a quest to find my own copy.A recent trip to San Francisco uncovered a new version that was published in London. I quickly snapped it up.I just re-read it a third time and again, I am floored at how Brautigan can be WILDLY funny on one page and TRAGICALLY blue on another.If you're luckly enough to get your hands on this excellent book, I recommend that you read it all in one sitting for maximum impact. ... Read more

Product Description
Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. In DOWNSTREAM FROM TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA: A MEMOIR OF RICHARD BRAUTIGAN, Keith Abbott paints a portrait of Richard Brautigan as a lovable and whimsical friend. Abbott explains the writer's dedication to the art of fiction and his quest to break beyond the pop culture, hippie label that haunted him until his suicide in1984. Brautigan's tight prose inspired authors such as Haruki Murakami, and his experimentation with the line won him accolades from authors like Ishmael Reed, Raymond Carver, and Michael McClure. His work is highly influential and Abbott draws a clear connection between Brautigan's life and his writing. This book is essential for anyone who is interested in the work of Richard Brautigan. Raymond Carver writes, "Truly the best thing I've ever seen written of the man." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Valuable Memoir of Neo-Beat Author Richard Brautigan
Keith Abbott was a friend and, as much as anyone could be, a confidant of the late neo-beat author, Richard Brautigan.This is one of surprisingly few biographical and/or critical works on this unique American writer.Lately there seems to be a mini-renaissance of interest in Brautigan's work.Internet sites, notably Jen Leibhart's, " The Brautigan Pages" will provide the interested surfer with contacts of other aficionados.This writer has received e-mail from Finland and Germany where Brautigan's work is becoming known (again?). I know of only two other works dedicated exclusively tothis author, Terence Malley's "Richard Brautigan", a 1972 publication in Warner's "Writers for the Seventies" series and Marc Chenetier's 1983 more inclusive "Richard Brautigan". The Abbott book is far more personal and, for thiswriter, more interesting.It is the only work that makes a serious effort at a biographical approach to this enigmatic writer. It may be some time before Brautigan's significance as a man of letters can be agreed upon but the recent resurgence of interest suggests that he will not fall into obscurity. By the way you can e-mail Jen Leibhart at jen@cnct.com. So until some enterprising writer attempts a true literary biography Keith Abbott's book will fill this unjust gap in American letters. ... Read more

Product Description
Through the eyes, ears and voice of Brautigan's youthful protagonist, we are lead gently into a small-town tale where the narrator accidentally shoots dead his best friend with a gun. The novel deals with the repercussions of this tragedy and the theme of "What if...". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Elegy to a lost America
From a survey of reviews of Brautigan's work here at Amazon, it seems he is lost to Gen X or whatever they're calling "youth" these days. They don't "get" him, but maybe they should avoid "Trout Fishing in America" which is supposed to be his all-time classic. The three that truly deserve a place in the canon are "The Hawkline Monster," "Willard and his Bowling Trophies" (both written while Brautigan was in the ascendant) and this one, "So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away," his semi-autobiographical elegy to a lost America; not sentimental or maudlin, but mournful and challenging. I have never forgotten the scene of Brautigan and another soaking-wet ragamuffin shooting apples with .22s in an abandoned orchard, while the rain poured. "We were Pacific Northwest kids!" he shouts with defiant joy. The terminal scene, with the couple who take their couch with them fishing, teaches that living one's dreams necessarily entails exhibiting one's "eccenctricity" (actually authenticity). Brautigan did away with himself in his 40s due to a wife who fled, along with a career on the skids and alcohol (allegedly), but readers of this book know there was more to it than those merely contributing factors. Brautigan didn't want to pick up the pieces of his self after it had been homogenized and processed as we are now, in an age where we spend so much time staring at TV sets and video screens, and being stared at in return by "security" cameras. Suicide is a terrible wrong, but this little volume shows that Brautigan did not wish to endure the torments of a 21st century-style modernity, for fear of how he would be diminished by it. I liked him for many disparate and "crazy" reasons, including the fact that he was a true Oregonian westerner, Montana transplant and disparager of everything for which Woody Allen stands. Bruatigan and Keoruac could only have been Americans...The wind has blown a lot of it away, but maybe not all.

One of my favorite books
I agree with those below who consider this Brautigran's best work. I'll add that SO THE WIND is among my favorite books of all time, fiction or nonfiction. It does take you to an absolutely singular emotional/geographic landscape. Each sentence feels like it's reeling you further and further into the truth. I first read the book when I was 23, on the advice of a friend. It blew me away. :) Still does.

THE WIND CANT ERASE
he takes you in into his heart in this one. the lost that he feels innocense blown away the ache in its place. Its a very ERRIE placeBrautigan walks us through a vanishing america wistfuly he must recover a past thats alreay extinct.HE THINKS THRU BACKWARDS PLACE METAPHORS AND SYMBOLS OF REGRET.places like tombstones on his path to escape an unfortunate act.AS always theres the random wonder in .

THE WIND CANT ERASE
he takes you in into his heart in this one. the lost that he feels innocense blown away the ache in its place. Its a very ERRIE placeBrautigan walks us through a vanishing america wistfuly he must recover a past thats alreay extinct.HE THINKS THRU BACKWARDS PLACE METAPHORS AND SYMBOLS OF REGRET.places like tombstones on his path to escape an unfortunate act.AS always theres the random wonder in .

The most achingly beautiful novel Brautigan ever wrote.
Richard Brautigan's story of a young boy whose life is forever changed by the decision not to eat a hamburger is simultaneously sweetly amusing and heartbreakingly tragic.That this novel is out of print, especially inlight of his death in 1984, is equally tragic. If you read no otherBrautigan work, read this novel. ... Read more

Product Description
On the eve of his departure from Eugene, Oregon, to San Francisco and worldly success, a twenty-one-year-old unpublished writer named Richard Brautigan gave these funny, buoyant stories and poems as a gift to Edna Webster, the beloved mother of both his best friend and his first "real" girlfriend. "When I am rich and famous, Edna," he told her, "this will be your social security.' The stories and poems show Brautigan as hopelessly lovestruck, cheerily goofy, and at his most disarmingly innocent. We see not only a young man and young artist about to bloom, but also the whole literary sensibility of the 1960s counterculture about to spread its wings and fly. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

my favorite collection of poems ive ever read
a couple of these poems almost had me in tears and a couple of these had me yelling yes yes.brautigan makes you orgasm in this book.

short and sweet
obviously his earliest writings aren't going to be his best, but his character shines through in this collection.the poem about grace, "did you ever want to be a rose?" made me cry.it's a little collection in which brautigan looks for a way to express his feelings, and it made me love him that much more.

A must-read for any Brautigan fan
This book offers amazing insight into the life and perspective of an amazing author. Many of his unpublished works in this book rival his published, 'refined' work. This book is essential reading if you value and appreciate the work of Brautigan.

A Good Insight Into the Man's Writing, Not All Good Writing
When Brautigan was 21, before he moved to San Francisco to find fame, he gave a stack of poems and stories to Edna Webster, the mother of his girlfriend. This is it. They're not Brautigan's best. They were just his first. Many of them are actually quite bad. That said, there are a few gems in here. You're more likely to find a brilliant line here or there than an entirely brilliant poem. But as a Brautigan fan, it's interesting to see him finding his voice even at such a young age. If you're looking for consistently good poetry, or good Brautigan poetry, you should look elsewhere. If, however, you're like me and have read every Brautigan you can find and are as interested in the man as his writing, this is an interesting read.

As to the paging controversy, I have to say that undiscovered or not, these poems would read better if they were each given their own page. If nothing else, so I can feel like the poem's over and I can think about it before the next one's there, ready to be read. This layout just seems sloppy to me. But to each his own.

well I liked the layout, and laughed out loud too
With all due respect to other reviewers' gripes about having poems start and stop willy nilly regardless of page placement, I like these that way.The layout is not a distraction; it just fits the feel of having to work marginally harder at discovering treasure, even while sifting through some kid stuff that RB himself mightn't have cared to frame.It goes along with the unpolished beauty of this book.Anyway, it's a rare poet who can make you laugh out loud. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

and me too ...
rommel drives down in egypt and me too .
to far from home .
to good to dislike

Richard Brautigan Makes Love to Words
I found this book on my father's shelf when I was about thirteen and just beginning to be interested in poetry.Opening it at random, the first three poems I flipped to still sum up today the way I feel about Brautigan: the imagery of "Late Starting Dawn" made me fall in love with poetry, the ideology of "Shellfish" made me fall in love with creation, and the verbiage of "It Was Your Idea to Go to Bed with Her" made me fall in love with the English language.Though his poetry is simply constructed, that simplicity is the perfect format for his beautiful understanding of and attraction to words.Richard Brautigan puts human life, from the intellectual pursuits to sexual endeavors, into such physical proximity with the reader that one is left with the feeling of looking someone in the eyes and understanding them for the first time.His passion for the aesthetics of words and life is astoundingly apparent.These poems will make you want to live your life beautifully, and help you see that you already do.

Fantastic!
I love Brautigan. This poetry collection is the best I've read of his. There's something about his poetry that distills everything down to a simple unique thought and gives it the attention it deserves. While his prose is beautiful (and poetic) as well, I like his poetry better for it's amazing simplicity and depth. If you've never read a Brautigan, start here, then go to TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA.

My Favorite Brautigan Book of Prose!
Richard Brautigan was crafty. I read once that he wanted to write the perfect poem and that poem would be about the shortest period of time one could imagine. That poem would be one word. Nobody has ever heard the word yet. It hasn't been created. Everyone knows what it means. We've always known. If you are buying your first Brautigan book I highly reccomend starting here and finishing when you own everything he's written.

I'd give it five hundred stars if that was an option
I first discovered this book on my parent's bookshelf when i was six or seven years old.Bored with sesame street picture books, i read it. I felt rather violated by it at first because many of the poems were impossible for me to comprehend and seemed rather nonsensical to me at the time.Yet I was intrigued.This untraditional book challenged me in a way no robert frost or ogden nash book ever did.Convinced that there was some deeper meaning that I wasn't picking up on, I read the book many times over . The more I read these poems the more i understood them and they began to take on definite shape and character.They began to make A LOT of sense.This book may be a difficult read for a seven year old, but i grew to love it then and i havent stopped loving it since. Now ten years later, at seventeen, let me tell you this is a phenomonal book. I've read a lot of books over the past decade but none of them compare to this one.These poems are so beautiful, so unique, so powerful that they will haunt you for an entire lifetime...Richard brautigan was a genius. ... Read more

Product Description
A novel which is both playful and serious, hilarious and melancholy. It takes a journey which starts at the foot of the Benjamin Franklin statue in Washington Square, San Francisco, and wanders through the wonders of America's rural waterways. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Trout Fishing in America
Although the book is the exact book I wished, it seems like it was in a box or storage for quite a long time as the pages are quite yellowed. The book seems to have been published in 1969.Also, the edges of the pages are stained.

I will thoroughly enjoy reading this book again but I wish it was in better condition.

Don't miss a chance to read this book!
I first read this book in 1971 long before I ever saw San Francisco or California, and I still re-read it from time to time. It is the sweetest book I've ever read. It's actually poetry, and it's about living on the edge and compassion and nature. If you read it, you will have to make a trip to see the statute of Ben Franklin in Washington Square and it's greeting, "Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome," inscribed at its base at the request of Mr. Cogswell who gave it to the citizens of San Francisco. There are many subtle threads in this book, and conservation of the wild is at its heart (although some readers may disagree). You can still venture over to the Cleveland Wrecking Yard
(see page 102) to browse for a section of trout stream ... but most of the good parts have been purchased and carted off in BMWs by rich folks heading for Montana. God bless you Richard!PS:Don't miss the Mayonnaise Chapter.

A Book of Randomness That Has a Central Theme
I love Richard Brautigan's adventurous "Trout Fishing in America."Never before have I seen so many unique and interesting lines in short a short span of pages.Never before, have I been able to pick up a book and go to any old random page in the book and be entertained without a care of order or what the previous chapters talk about. It is prose that takes you into the randomness of the United States, and occasionally Mexico.It is truly a book of poetry disguised as a novel.

His angle on San Francisco, New York city in the Summer, and small and often obscure areas of the US is fun, intriguing, and playful to read.

What I hate is how I really cannot explain why it's such a remarkable work of art.I just love how Brautigan writes from his fun, adventurous spirit, wit and the very realms of his spontaneous genious.

does no one see this is about the environment?
This is an environmental treatise if I ever saw one. Does no one see this? That aside, it is one of my favorite books. That and Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn....and, well I find him refreshingly funny and on the point. I have read his books over and over. Mayonnaise.

trophy trout
the title describes the style.brautigan would cast his line in and pull out an interesting specimen;each time holding it in the sunlight for us to see it's glistening body.each short chapter in this cunningly crafted book is like that.brautigan's use of the english language was imaginative and pure.his observations are refreshing,sometimes madcap,sometimes surprisingly poignant but always originating in left field. there is nobody quite like brautigan;an original in every way.don't be fooled by those who would consign him to a specific era;for his work, especially this book,is timeless. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Hilarious, unpredictable, weird....thumbs up!
They may not be exactly curve balls, but the stuff Brautigan throws at his readers during this comic/tragic slice of life is unlike anything read before.Bowling trophies are stolen and thus become a murderous obsession for three bumbling brothers.An unfortunate case of STD leads to a strained S&M relationship that drives a couple apart.The title character is a paper maiche bird, and that's about his role.Each chapter is a short burst of hilarity, moments in sad characters lives that are funny to the outsider but quite painful to the characters themselves.Yet still the laughs come easily, guiltily, due to Brautigan's light yet commanding touch of the English language.
Amidst all the humor and pure irreverence, the character's gain a humanity in that all their foibles are so human, if not taken to the extreme.Thus, when the disparate threads crash in a violent climax, the result maintains a tragic edge while still being appropriate to the tone and craziness of the story.
Think Dali in Print: everything is warped, twisted, and out of proportion to reality, but it somehow packs an emotional wallop.

BEAUTIFUL.
If I could describe Richard Brautigan's word-art greatness, I'd be writing books, not reviews. Do yourself a BIG favor and buy ALL of Richard's incredible books.

tragic i think not
i found this book to be hilarious.it will never leave my top 10.its set up to look like a tragedy but really to me it just points out the hilariousness of our lives.a great relationship turned into uncomfortable sadistic love making due to stds.hilarious, it just pokes and pokes fun at are responses to things we find hard to deal with.three brothers become completely depressed and obsessed about finding their trophies instead of just winning more, its quite a magnificent look into the human behavior.

two thumbs up and and two pointer fingers to make two guns to shoot off for this wonderful, fabulous book.

Oh, Willard, Willard, Willard.
This novel is about fate and tragedy and people whose lives are connected by circumstance. It has all the Brautigan touches: poetry as prose, simple writing, great turns of phrase, and a story that is at once outlandish, hilarious, tragic and wholly original.

The story involves two couples and three brothers. One couple has a very healthy, happy relationship. In their apartment is Willard, a bird sculpture, and some bowling trophies they purchased at a sale years ago. These are second-hand bowling trophies. The other couple's relationship isn't as happy. The husband is depressed, and the wife, in an attempt to make him happy, participates in his S&M fantasies though she doesn't enjoy them. The brothers, as the story goes, were once good, upstanding citizens from a good upstanding family. That is, until several years ago when their bowling trophies were stolen, destroying their faith in humanity. They made a pact to recover the bowling trophies, whatever the cost, and began down a road of violence and murder.

You either love or hate Brautigan's work. I'm in the former camp. I don't know any writer so unique. Part of the beauty in his work is in the depth behind the simplicity. But like a simple painting, one person might look and say, "My seven-year-old could have done that," while another, like myself, finds that pretty much all of Brautigan's work speaks to them in some way.

Along with SO THE WIND WON'T BLOW IT ALL AWAY and AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN, WILARD is one of Brautigan's tragic novels. In fact, in one of my favorite parts of the novel, the husband reads from a book of bits and pieces of Greek tragedies because only bits and pieces have survived through the years. But he's fascinated by them because he can feel the tragedy of the whole in just a few words. In the same way, in Willard we are given a thin slice of the life of these characters, but we feel the tragedy of the whole.

Mind boggling
This is the first Brautigan book I read and it was great.I feel that anyone who wants to get introduced to the writting of Brautigan get this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Richard Brautigan still at his best
Some of his later works have been slammed by the media in the past, but for me, I loved this book!There is no one who can write like Mr.Brautigan.He can take the most simple things, and turn them into such witty, and touching tales.His imagination knows no bounds.I keep this book at hand for whenever I want a quick pick-me-up, and or, insight.
I couldn't recommend it more.

Essential For Survival
If I ever were, in fact, stranded on a desert Island, I could be content if I had in my possesion the following four, ok, maybe five items:
1. A copy of Dr. Seuss's, "Green Eggs and Ham."
2 & 3. Tom Waits, "Nighthawks at the Diner" Nighthawks at the Diner (my LP copy, along with my wind up Victrola).
4. Coffee/Ciggarettes (counts as one item).
5. A copy of Richard Brautigan's collection of very short stories, "The Tokyo-Montana Express".
Anyone, who can pen a five sentance short story about a drowned Japanese boy that leaves you so completely shattered at the end, must have been genius. This is truly essential reading.
Whether you like the book or not, it's a wonderful study in the transference of weight through the sparest of prose. If you love the book, it's one you can visit again and again; a revelation every time.

Sushi and pancakes do mix
Back when I was a teenager, I journeyed across the Pacific Ocean to Japan in the "Hikawa Maru".That passenger ship was the only one of the fleet to survive World War II.It was wall-to-wall rivets, a kind of Milky Way of rivets.The morning when the ship arrived in Yokohama harbor, I saw Mt. Fuji towering up into the sky.Everything smelled new. Just like Columbus, I'd sailed across the ocean and discovered America, only my America was Japan.Some years later, after I'd learned Japanese and become a kabuki fan, I married a woman from India.With another Indian lady, who studied Physics, we once drove right across Montana, from west to east.It was a long drive.I didn't like the metal crosses standing beside the roads.They showed me that people in Montana drove a little too wildly.Besides, being Jewish, I didn't want to end up as a cross on a lonesome road in Montana.But once, as we sped along at 70 mph or so on a deserted stretch, a carful of Indian teenagers suddenly careened across the highway right in front of us and curved into the other lane.I missed them by inches.In the split-second it took, I looked into the eyes of the kid at the wheel.He was scared ****less, out of control.There could have been a disaster of Indians there; a close encounter of the worst kind.Jews, Hindus, and Native Americans, all on one big cross with many little branches, like a kind of ghastly menorah.We all survived to have our lives. That's my Tokyo-Montana express story.

There are countless little gems in this volume of Brautigan's work.There's a 50 word story called "Cold Kingdom Enterprise" about a knight who had 50 words to live in.There are stories from Japan, Montana, California, Arizona, Texas, and even Beirut.I figure "Another Texas Ghost Story" has to be one of the great American short stories.Brautigan buys humidifiers, returns burned out light bulbs that didn't make his barn look like Times Square, scorns high-falutin' popcorn labels, catches fish, and admires Japanese women.Tales of looking for a $3 tire chain in the snow, tales of a dead Canadian airman's former girlfriend.He wonders why his friend is always home to answer the phone.He can write a story on "werewolf raspberries"---something few authors have attempted.Every time his sad humor gets to you, his wit and his remarkable imagination touch you like almost no other writer I know.What can I say ?Though in this volume he was already growing tired and a few stories may not be up to the usual standard, you can still enjoy vintage Brautigan in THE TOKYO-MONTANA EXPRESS.If you're a fan, you can't afford to miss this one.If you never read him---nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more.

a must have brautigan book
one of my most treasured books. If you are a Brautigan fan you must have this book.It is funny and insightful short stories and one pagers.It is timeless the way Brautigans eyes saw his world around him and how uniquehis visions were. ... Read more

Product Description
Death is a place where the sun shines a different colour every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. Brautigan expresses the mood of a new generation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (41)

Lost in rivers of watermelon sugar
I came home late from work and found the book on my counter (it had been brought in with the mail) and I opened it and immediately read it all the way through. It has been 2 days and I still feel enthralled in that world. Brautigan's unique style is a mix of reactionary childlike curiosity, psychedelic hipster lingo, and pure creative deviance. His knack of planting visuals in the reader's mind is astounding. The narrative caused me to feel jealous of the complete ease that the characters had in being true human beings. I am in love with this book.

never received the book?
purchased ''in watermelon sugar'' by richard brautigan about a month ago. The expected delivery date was august 6th. It's now the 19th. The book was ordered to be given at a specific time to a very special person. Whereabouts is this book living? I'd appreciate to get a response to this...

Charming, brilliant, and sadly overlooked masterpiece
This is a post-apocalyptic tale for lovers of the poetic and surreal. The unnamed narrator lives in iDeath, a commune of sorts, still recovering from the time of the tigers. (In which the narrator was orphaned.)

It's filled with lovely lyrical passages, snatches of humor, and a sadness that is guaranteed to, if not haunt you, at least stick with you for a while.

The Incredible Vanishing Clothes Pin

Back in the 1970s, I always liked reading Richard Brautigan's novels and stories.I would hang out my thoughts in the Atlantic winds with a clothes pin.They would wave and whip about, slowing drying into crystals.Sometimes seagulls would carry them away.They would drop the crystals on the beach to be carried home by tourists."How interesting !" I would always think, "Brautigan comes up with stuff that nobody else bothers with.It's too simple for them.They want sex, violence, and twisted plots.But he sees the sheer poetry of life and captures all the haiku moments so well."
I liked ZAP Comix too.It was the era of Mr. Natural.To quote Heinlein "I grokked it in all its fullness."Over the course of my life since then, I lost that clothes pin.It vanished.Maybe it just melted into ear wax or was stolen by the same raccoon who steals stuff out of my garbage every week.Now I like Brautigan's simple humor and clear, plain writing.But IN WATERMELON SUGAR is not very funny.In fact, it is weird, depicting, as in a dream, a kind of (maybe) post-apocalyptic world where nothing is as it seems, even metaphors that vanish into thin air.A strange allegory for sad, complicated times.The Forgotten Works and the useless, formless stuff in there is our crazy, materialist life, but a lot of the tale is not really understandable.You have to approach it from what is already within you.It is the least accessible of all Brautigan's books, I think.You have to hang out your thoughts just as you find them---love, revenge, death, and sacrifice in a very modest world where all the tigers are dead and people live in a commune called iDEATH.Maybe you've got a topnotch clothes pin.If you do, you're going to love this book.Otherwise you might wind up scratching your head.We can't really write dreams, but if anyone could, it would have been Brautigan.

Beautiful and Poetic
This is a beautiful book. I really enjoyed every word of it.
But it's a little hard to call it a book. It's a Brautigan.
It's beautiful poetic verse filled with magical dream-like images and events. Suns that change colors for each day of the week.
Lanterns shaped like trout. Statues of vegetables!.
People buried in tombs that are filled with light and float under the water with curious trout. bridges lit up with
lanterns shaped like shadows and trout. I'm not even sure if I read
these things correctly but I loved it just the same because this book
triggers your imagination and really was a wonderful read.

And the part about black sun days being silent was haunting at the end of the book when Margaret died. Her funeral was silent. very very sad and hit me hard. you could feel the silence. his phrases are so powerful. And again when Margaret's room full of forgotten things was closed up forever and no noise was made.

I just liked this book very much. Trout Fishing in America was a 10 and in Watermelon Sugar is a 10 also. I can't wait to read more Brautigan's.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to read something different and fun and entertaining.

... Read more

Product Description
Richard Brautigan's last novel, published in the U.S. for the first time

Richard Brautigan was an original--brilliant and wickedly funny, his books resonated with the sixties, making him an overnight counterculture hero. Taken in its entirety, his body of work reveals an artistry that outreaches the literary fads that so quickly swept him up.

Dark, funny, and exquisitely haunting, his final book-length fiction explores the fragile, mysterious shadowland surrounding death.Told with classic Brautigan wit, poetic style, and mordant irony, An Unfortunate Woman assumes the form of a peripatetic journal chronicling the protagonist's travels and oblique ruminations on the suicide of one woman, and a close friend's death from cancer.

After Richard Brautigan committed suicide, his only child, Ianthe Brautigan, found among his possessions the manuscript of An Unfortunate Woman. It had been completed over a year earlier, but was still unpublished at the time of his death. Finding it was too painful to face her father's presence page after page, she put the manuscript aside.

Years later, having completed a memoir about her father's life and death, Ianthe Brautigan reread An Unfortunate Woman, and finally, clear-eyed, she saw that it was her father's work at its best and had to be published.
Amazon.com Review
In this posthumously released novel, Richard Brautigan's voice--quipping, punning, strewn with non sequiturs--comes like a rattling of chains. Brautigan took his own life in 1984; An Unfortunate Woman was written in the years immediately preceding, and the writer's imminent death haunts thebook. It bears the subtitle A Journey, and Brautiganmeans this quite literally. We follow the first-person narrator in hisperegrinations from Montana to San Francisco to New York to Alaska toHonolulu and back to San Francisco, with a detour across the bay toBerkeley--and that's leaving out Canada altogether. Pulling him like a wispy thread throughout is the hanging death of a San Francisco housemate who had cancer. We never learn her story, just that his book's "main theme is an unfortunate woman." She's a constant glancing reference.

Brautigan uses a journal format, with digressions galore, to explore the contingency of his own existence. He tells of loves past, homes past, the kitchens of friends and the beds of strangers. But like the old free-lovin' hippie he is, he never commits to any single story. Of one fellow he meets in Ketchikan: "He is one of those people who in a normal book, unfortunately not this one, would be developed into a memorable character." The author is forever warning you of a digression ahead or a story he'll get back to later. His references to the book in progress read, in this rueful context, not so much as self-indulgent cuteness, but as a kind of sad knowledge of the unkempt ways of his own mind. An Unfortunate Woman will not bring Brautigan many new fans, but devoted readers will find the dark, self-revealing side of a man who felt middle age like a blow to the head. --Claire Dederer ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

DECENT, BUT BUY THE EARLIER BRAUTIGAN BOOKS.
This is a quick read, so it's worth reading. I have enjoyed all his books. If you want to experience Richard at his best, read: TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA, REVENGE OF THE LAWN, DREAMING OF BABYLON.....just to name a few.

Nice read for Brautigan fans
I enjoyed this short book from Brautigan.I believe it was his last work before his unfortunate demise.He has a unique style, wit and humor that sets him apart.

this is the only brautigan book i wouldnt give 5 stars to
granted its still an amazing piece of literature it just didnt have me wrapped around like the rest.

pick this book up, but dont let it be the first or second book of his you read.

Brautigan's Last
I only recently became familiar with Richard Brautigan's work.His prose style is idiosyncratic, perhaps owing to his background as a poet and the intersection of his career with 1960s and 70s California.His novels (as they are called) are written as a series of one to three-page chapters comprised of episodes, thoughts, or memories seemingly based on Brautigan's own life.The line between autobiography and fiction is sometimes hazy, and the short chapters often (or even usually) seem unrelated.Labeling the books fiction gave Brautigan tremendous freedom.The reader can usually discern fact from fiction, but you never know for certain.The books are hard to describe: part humor, part "hippie," part pathos -- all mixed together.

Reading Brautigan's novels now, three or four decades after they were written, creates a strong sense of nostalgia which, to me, adds a great deal to their appeal.There is often a double dose of nostalgia as the author sometimes refers back to his own childhood.

If you are new to Brautigan, I would not recommend "An Unfortunate Woman" as your first book.That is not to say it is a bad book, but it has a different feel than the others.(If you don't already know, Brautigan completed this book only a couple of years before his suicide in 1984; it was published posthumously many years later.)The concept for this book is quite interesting.He purchased a notebook and began writing in it, never flipping back to read what he'd written earlier.When he filled up the notebook, he called it a finished work.He called this book a "calendar map"; it describes the passage of time and the changing of locations during that particular period of his life.There are breaks of weeks and months where he ceased writing, requiring him to fill in the gaps when he resumed.As with all of his novels, some chapters are more effective than others, but you will encounter more than a few nuggets worth later reflection.

Longtime fans will certainly want to read this book, but I recommend newcomers start with "Trout Fishing in America" or "Revenge of the Lawn," or my personal favorite "So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away."

Glad I read it
It took me several months to read this book. Not that its long and not that its difficult to read either. I just had to take it in slowly. I have made it a mission of mine to read every Brautigan book.
I started with Watermellon Sugar and a friend gave me Tokyo Montana Express after picking it up at a garage sale.Read several others too.
My suggestion read the book in small doses.Just like it was written.
And to me, well I am dissappointed that Brautigan commited suicide, but it wasnt right after he finished this book.
It was 2 years later. And kind of ironic, that as in the book where he stayed in the house where the women commits suicide, Well he too stayed in his own house after he committed suicide.
( Ill have to check , but I do believe there was one more book written after this one)
If you like Brautigan, you'll like this.
I especially like the part where he visits the cemetary,the cuckoo clock, and the man eating a donut. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Pick it up
Read this book.

It's cheap, so if you hate it at least you didn't spend too much on it.

But I don't think you'll hate it.

-Michael ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great service
Service was very quick and item was as described.I would use this seller again. ... Read more

Product Description
Following Richard Brautigan concerns a young writer of bad poetry living in Oklahoma City in the late 80s, who is visited by the ghost of the hippie writer Richard Brautigan. Jack, when the visitation occurs, is recovering from an aborted love affair, which coincidentally happened in San Francisco. That city becomes the focal point of the story, the place where magic can happen, a place seemingly out of time and between-worlds. The novel is a whimsical recounting of Jack s feckless life, his friends and lovers, his struggles with writing, and, then out of the blue, his singular haunting. Stylistically, it attempts to borrow some of Brautigan s goofball surrealism while establishing its own integrity. What begins as an off-center love story becomes for a while a road novel, as Jack and his ghost take to the highway and travel back to the scene, not only of Jack s affair but of the last days of Richard s life. Along the way they encounter lovely, loving women and an assemblage of Richard s friends, dead, alive, both. In San Francisco a transformative denouement awaits both of the novel s central figures. A portion of this novel won the Plan B Press Beat Writing Contest and was published by them as a chapbook. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Speaks to all whose lives have been touched by Brautigan's classic works
Following Richard Brautigan is a one-of-a-kind novel that ponders, "What if Richard Brautigan's life had not ended prematurely, and he had continued to create passionate, individual, distinctive novels?" Part extrapolation of the kind of works Brautigan might have made had he been granted more time on Earth, part reflective personal inner journey, Following Richard Brautigan carries the charm of eccentric personality on every page. Passages flow like moments of time; the discrete blocks of text encapsulate the emotion of passing instants and move on. An exceptional read brimming with hidden insight, especially recommended as tribute and celebration of Brautigan's genius. Following Richard Brautigan speaks to all whose lives have been touched by Brautigan's classic works.
... Read more