Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar
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.Product Details
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Richard Brautigan's comic genius and countercultural vision of American life made him a literary idol of the 1960s and early 1970s. He wrote ten novels, nine volumes of poetry, and a collection of short stories entitled REVENGE OF THE LAWN. His books became required reading for the beat generation, and TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA sold more than two million copies throughout the world. Brautigan committed suicide in 1984 at the age of fourty-nine.
Customer Reviews
I love this book!
I had such a hard time believing the negative reviews I just read of this book here. Still, I can see that certain people just "don't get" Brautigan and probably don't get surrealism. That is the point. You aren't supposed to "get" what you read, you are just supposed to experience the feelings that are evoked. It is a trick to release your linear mind and explore things in a different way. I love Trout Fishing in America which, to me, seems to be a series of unrelated stories that somehow all relate a unique (American) feeling of freedom which he calls "Trout Fishing in America". Maybe it is because I grew up in rural Northern California, but his voice always feels so familiar to me--it is a great comfort and fills me with nostalgia. In Watermelon Sugar gives me such a lovely feeling to read. I love that story. Don't take it literally--these stories take place beneath the surface.
I was always a fan of Surrealist art, poetry and literature from the earlier part of the century. This is the 60/70's American counterpart. Richard Brautigan had a wonderful creative imagination with a special gift for analogies and metaphor. I love the way he imbues inanimate objects with life. I just read So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away which was a really sweet tale about childhood in the forties in the Pacific Northwest. Brautigan saw the disappearance of an old free, creative way of life here being replaced by mass media. Here is some text that struck me from that story:
"It looked like a fairy tale functioning happily in the post WWII gothic of America before television crippled the imagination of America and turned the people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity.
In those days people made their own imagination like homecooking. Now our dreams are just any street in America lined with franchise restaurants. I sometimes think even our digestion is a soundtrack recorded in Hollywood by the television networks."
Amen to that, I'm getting out of the house and away from this computer!
Hallucinatory, and Great
Of the three books in this volume, two are classics: Trout Fishing and The Pill.
The third, In Watermelon Sugar, is surreal (OK, MORE surreal) and interesting as an experiment, but not as interesting as the first two.
Trout Fishing comes in a straight line from Whitman and Ginsberg, as modified by Hemingway and Hammett: spontaneity and absolute lack of inhibition, tempered by gemlike use of language.
Funny and eye-opening by turns, the two books redefine fiction and make poetry approachable, simple, Zenlike, and humorous.
Both are pies-in-the-face of pretension and academia. One of the best poems in The Pill Versus is the one about being Poet-in-Residence at Cal Tech: I'm bored, and there's nothing to do.
Do not expect character development or linear plots (or any plots).
Instead, expect to see and be new things.
Brautigan's Style is 5 star for me.
I have read just about all of Brautigan's books, and never with disappointment. They are all so good that it is hard to pick a favorite. .-- Sam Yulish, author of WHERE HAVE ALL THE HIPPIES GONE and THE HESITANT PSYCHIC AND OTHER STRANGE STORIES.
Related Links : Product by Amazon or shopping-lifestyle-20 Store
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น