richard brautigan (1 Viewer)

I'm scratchin' my head trying to remember Watermelon Sugar. I read it many, many years ago and liked it then. But, there's a lot of stuff I liked as a kid which I can't connect with anymore.
 
he wrote one about giving his cat cantaloupe and the cat loves it.
at the end he asks, to paraphrase, 'why dont we feed cats cantaloupe more often?'
i think its in revenge of the lawn, ill have to check.
 
i am reading a confederate general from big sur, dreaming of babylon, and the hawkline monster right now. his prose is beautiful, funny as hell too. Lee Mellon, I salute thee!
 
Just searched on this on the off chance he'd been discussed here in the past. All his stuff was put by the (now defunct) Rebel Inc press. It's strange because In Watermelon Sugar and Trout Fishing in America are probably his two most celebrated works (in the UK at least) and neither are his best and the latter is particularly weak. I'd recommend the previously mentioned A Confederate General From Big Sur and So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away in particular. The latter being a very poignant look at childhood in his native Pacific Northwest. Good writer I think, now getting some recognition at last.
 
I have to admit I'm not 100% sold on his work, but I do really connect with it in flashes, pieces, hunks. I think it's an interesting way to approach a narrative--from many angles at once, stopping & starting, picking up abandoned threads the abandoning them again. I really like Springhill Mine v. the Pill (which reprints The Galilee Hitch-Hiker). He's wildly inventive, so it's good to see people still finding his work.
 
anyone read any of his stuff? almost the antithesis of bukowski.
I would argue, having read In Watermelon Sugar, A Confederate General From Big Sur, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, The Hawkline Monster, Dreaming of Babylon, the majority of The Abortion: An Historical Romance, and several Bukowski books (Women, Factotum, Ham On Rye and Post Office), that Bukowski and Brautigan are very similar. Bukowski always preached about short descriptions where each line was filled with 'juice.' I don't know if anyone else agrees, but hardly anything would better describe Brautigan's prose than short lines filled with juice. They are opposites—in a sense—when it comes to the content in which they write. Brautigan's books are very disconnected from reality while Bukowski's are strictly about reality.
 
I can see some similarities in approach to writing as you point out. Where they seem to differ greatly is in how they position themselves -- or at least the persona of the author -- relative to the rest of the world. Brautigan seems more open to other people than Bukowski, more accepting of human failings and limitations.
 

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