Richard Brautigan

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Ca. Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935) – ca.

(September 16, 1984) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer.

His work incorporates black comedy, parody, and satire in a variety of ways, with emotionally lucid prose describing pastoral American life as closely linked to technological progress.

Trout Fishing in America (1967) and In Watermelon Sugar (1968). He is best known for his two books Trout Fishing in America (1967). Brautigan's first collection was published in 1957, beginning his career as a poet.

He made his debut as a novelist with A Confederate General from Big Sur (1964), about a delusional man who claims to be the descendant of a Confederate general.

Brautigan would continue to publish numerous prose and poetry collections until 1982.

In 1984, he committed suicide.

Early life

Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington, the only child of Bernard Frederick "Ben" Brautigan Jr. (July 29, 1908-May 27, 1994), a factory worker and labourer, and Lulu Mary "Mary Lou" Keho (April 7, 1911 – September 24, 2005) a waitress. Bernard and Mary Lou divorced in May 1934, eight months before Richard's birth. Brautigan said he met his biological father only twice, but Bernard was reported to be in ignorance of Richard's death. "They've got the same last name, but why wait 45 to 50 years to tell me they have a son?"

Brautigan and his mother, Arthur Martin Titland, began living with him in 1938. Barbara Ann, the couple's first child, was born in Tacoma on May 1, 1939. Brautigan said he had a frightening encounter when his mother left him and his two-year-old sister unattended in a motel room in Great Falls, Montana, for two days.

Mary Lou married Robert Geoffrey Porterfield, a fry cook, on January 20, 1943. Sandra Jean, who was born on April 1, 1945 at Salem General Hospital in Salem, Oregon, was the couple's daughter. Porterfield was his biological father, according to Mary Lou, and Brautigan started using Richard Gary Porterfield as his name. Mary Lou was born in 1946 and married William David Folston Sr. on June 12, 1950. William David Jr., Jr., was the couple's son, born in Eugene on December 19, 1950. Folston was recalled as a violent alcoholic, with Richard having noticed abusing his mother.

Brautigan was raised in poverty; he told his daughter stories of his mother sifting rat feces out of their flour supply before making flour-and-water pancakes. Brautigan's family found it difficult to find food, and on some days they didn't eat for days. The family survived on welfare and moved around the Pacific Northwest for nine years before settling in Eugene, Oregon, in August 1944. In the poems and stories that he wrote from as early as the age of 12. His book So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away is loosely based on childhood memories, including an event in which Brautigan mistakenly shot the brother of a close friend in the ear, injuring him only slightly.

Brautigan, a 1950 graduate of Woodrow Wilson Junior High School, began attending Eugene High School on September 12, 1950. He contributed to the Eugene High School News, his high school newspaper. He appeared on his school's basketball squad and was 6 foot 4 inches (1.93 m) tall at the time of his graduation. "The Light," Brautigan's first published poem, appeared in the school newspaper on December 19, 1952. On June 9, 1953, Brautigan graduated with honors from Eugene High School. After graduating, he and his best friend, Peter Webster, and Peter's mother Edna Webster became a surrogate mother to Brautigan. Brautigan was with Webster for about a year before heading to San Francisco for the first time in August 1954. He returned to Oregon several times, allegedly due to a lack of funds.

Brautigan was arrested on December 14, 1955, for hurling a brick through a police station window and be sent to jail and fed. He was arrested for disorderly conduct and fined $25. After police found signs of irregular behavior, he was then admitted to the Oregon State Hospital on December 24, 1955.

At the Oregon State Hospital Brautigan, he was diagnosed with neophobia and clinical depression and was treated with electroconvulsive therapy 12 times. He began writing The God of the Martians, a collection of 20 short chapters totaling 600 words, while institutionalized. The manuscript was sent to at least two editors, but both editors declined it, and it remains unpublished. (With the papers of last of those editors, Harry Hooton, a copy of the manuscript was recently discovered.) Brautigan was released from the hospital and briefly lived with his mother, stepfather, and siblings in Eugene on February 19, 1956. He then moved to San Francisco, where he would spend the majority of his life except for brief periods in Tokyo and Montana.

Personal life

Brautigan married Virginia Dionne Alder in Reno, Nevada, on June 8, 1957. Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan, born in San Francisco on March 25, 1960, had only one child together. Brautigan's alcoholism and depression led him to his marriage in 1962, but Alder and Brautigan broke it on December 24, 1962, although the divorce wasn't finalized until July 28, 1970. After the separation, Brautigan stayed in San Francisco, while Alder stayed in Manoa, Hawaii, and became a feminist and an anti-Vietnam War soldier.

Brautigan remarried on December 1, 1977, to Akiko Yoshimura, a Japanese-born boy who was born in Tokyo in July 1976. For two years, the couple lived in Pine Creek, Park County, Montana. In 1980, Brautigan and Yoshimura divorced.

Brautigan lived with Marcia Clay of San Francisco from 1981 to 1982. He also started a brief friendship with Janice Meissner, a woman from San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. Marcia Pacaud, who appears on the front page of The Pill Versus the Mine Disaster; Valerie Estes, who appears on the front page of Listening to Richard Brautigan; and Sherry Vetter, who appears on the front page of Revenge of the Law.

Brautigan was an alcoholic throughout his adult life; according to his mother, he often discussed suicide over a period of more than a decade before ending his life.

Richard Brautigan had been to Bolinas, California, where he was living alone in a huge, old home that he had purchased with his income years earlier. He died from a self-inflicted.44 Magnum gunshot wound to the head. Robert Yench, a colleague and private investigator, discovered his decomposed body on October 25, 1984. The body was discovered on the living room floor, in front of a large window that, though shrouded by trees, looked out across the Pacific Ocean. Brautigan's life was suspected because of his body's decomposition; it was reported that he died on September 16, 1984, days after visiting friend Marcia Clay on the telephone (neighbors heard a booming noise while watching an NFL game). Brautigan was aided by his parents, both ex-wives, and his daughter Ianthe.

The tale that Brautigan left a suicide note that simply read: "Messy, isn't it?" Michael Caines, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, was told. This is apocryphal. Ianthe Brautigan has reported that her father did not leave such a note. "All of us have a place in history," Brautigan wrote once. It is cloudy, and it is in our shadow."

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Career

Brautigan set out to be a writer in San Francisco. He was known for taking his poetry on the streets and appearing at poetry clubs. Brautigan typed a three-page manuscript in early 1956 and sent it to The Macmillan Company for publication. The book featured 14 poems on two pages as well as a page dedicated to Linda. Only "stars" and "hey" were titled in the poems, and "hey" was the only one titled. Macmillan denied the manuscript in a letter dated May 10, 1956, saying, "There is no place where it will fit in." Desire in a Bowl of Potatoes was published in 2005 by the X-Ray Book Company as a chapbook.

The Return of the Rivers (1957), Brautigan's first poetry book collection, was followed by two collections of poetry: The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958) and Lay the Marble Tea (1959). Brautigan became involved in San Francisco's burgeoning counterculture scene, often appearing as a performance poet and participating in various aspects of The Diggers' activities. He created several short pieces that were to be used as broadsides by the Communication Company. Brautigan was also a writer for Change, Ron Loewinsohn's underground newspaper.

Brautigan wrote A Confederate General from Big Sur and Trout Fishing in America in 1961, while camping in southern Idaho with his wife and daughter. Big Sur's Confederate General was his first published book and met with no critical or commercial success. Brautigan was catapulted to international prominence when Trout Fishing in America was first published in 1967. Despite the fact that he was reportedly dismissive of hippies, literary commentators characterized him as the most representative of the burgeoning countercultural youth movement of the late 1960s. Trout Fishing in America has sold over 4 million copies around the world.

Brautigan published four collections of poetry as well as another book, In Watermelon Sugar (1968). He was Poet-in-Residence at the California Institute of Technology in 1967. He published All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, a chapbook published by The Communication Company during this year. It was published in a 1,500-copy edition that was free and was distributed worldwide. In Rolling Stone magazine, Brautigan had 23 short pieces from 1968 to 1970. Brautigan released a spoken-word album for The Beatles' short-lived record-label, Zapple, from late 1968 to February 1969. Allen Klein's label was shut down before the album could be released, but it was later released on Harvest Records as Listening to Richard Brautigan.

Brautigan experimented with literary genres in the 1970s. He wrote five books (the first of which, The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966, was published in the mid-1960s) as well as a collection of short stories, Revenge of the Law (1971). Seven of his broadside poems were included in the book Seven Watermelon Suns in 1974. Ellen Meske's limited edition of ten copies contained embossed color etchings. "He was the baby thrown out with the bath water when the 1960s came," his companion and fellow writer Thomas McGuane said. "He was a gentle, troubled, and strange fellow." Brautigan's fame waned through the 1980s and 1990s, despite being generally dismissed by literary critics and now abandoned by his followers. His career remained strong in Europe, as well as in Japan, where Brautigan visited several times. Brautigan was willfully naive, according to his detractors. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said of him, "I was always waiting for Richard to grow as a writer." He seemed to be essentially a naf, and I don't think he cultivated the childishness; rather, it came naturally. It was like he was more in tune with the trout in America than with the average citizen.

Brautigan's writings are characterized by a profound and amusing imagination. And his prose works were lent the feeling of poetry by the permeation of inventive metaphors. Evidently, Zen Buddhism's other important aspects include the duality of the past and the future, as well as the present's impermanence. So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, Brautigan's last book before his death in 1984, was published in 1982.

In 1999, Edna Webster's Undiscovered Writings Collection was published. Richard Brautigan, a twenty-one year old man, was gifted this collection of writings by Edna Webster in 1955, when he left Oregon for San Francisco.

Brautigan's collected poems was rejected by his estate in 2002. Le Castor Astral, a French publisher, released Tout ce que j'ai à déclarer: unethical édition.

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