Downstream from Trout Fishing In America
A Memoir of Richard Brautigan
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Publisher 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. As Raymond Carver wrote of this biography: "Truly the best thing I've ever seen written of the man."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brautigan ``looked like a cross between Mark Twain and a heron,'' in Abbott's strikingly apt phrase, yet this empathic memoir is for the birds. The poet-novelist, best remembered for his semi-surreal fictional whimsies ( Trout Fishing in America ; In Watermelon Sugar , etc.) was found dead in his house in Bolinas, Calif. in 1984. Abbott, who knew him for 18 years, traces Brautigan's slow descent into alcoholism and paranoia. There are revelations about his two failed marriages, sordid antics like watching porno flicks at Christmas and blasting his kitchen wall with gunshot, his childhood of poverty and neglect (his mother abandoned him several times, stepfathers abused him). Abbott is insightful and sympathetic, but the problem is that it's hard to make a perpetual adolescent hold one's interest for 180 pages. He portrays his one-time buddy as a tragic figure trapped inside an ``ahistorical imagination.'' Photos.
