Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-*Writer's Corner- From The 1960's Counterculture- Richard Brautigan's "Trout-Fishing In America"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the 1960's countercultural writer, Richard Brautigan.

Book Review

Trout Fishing In America, Richard Brautigan, Four Seasons Foundation, 1967

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.