Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30 1935 - September 1984) was an American writer, best known for the novel Trout Fishing in America.

Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington and is best known for the works he produced while living in San Francisco in the 1960s. In the spring of 1967, Brautigan was Poet-in-Residence at the California Institute of Technology. At age 49, Richard Brautigan died of a self-inflicted .44 gunshot wound to the head in Bolinas, California. The exact date of his suicide is unknown, but it is speculated that Brautigan ended his life on September 14, 1984 after talking to Marcia Clay on the telephone. Robert Yench found Brautigan's body in Brautigan's house on the living room floor on October 25, 1984. [1]

Brautigan's prose and poetry often dealt with the tenuous and often impossible relationships a person tries to form with the world. Whether it is by history (A Confederate General from Big Sur), geography and time (The Tokyo-Montana Express), or memory (Sombrero Fallout), Brautigan's gentle protagonist/narrators often find their plans thwarted by the sometimes inexplicable vicissitudes of existence. Sometimes solace can be found in either a new love (The Abortion) or just a casual participation in the world (In Watermelon Sugar).

Brautigan's writings are also characterized by a remarkable and humorous imagination. The permeation of inventive metaphors lend even his prose works the feeling of poetry. Brautigan's work became identified with the counterculture youth movement of the late 1960s even though it is noted that Brautigan was contemptuous of hippies (see Lawrence Wright article in Rolling Stone Apr. 11, 1985 [2]). Brautigan's eccentric appearance and manner did not help to dissuade this conception of him and his work. During the 1960's several of Brautigan's short stories appeared in Rolling Stone and were later collected in Brautigan's The Revenge of the Lawn. The critical backlash of the late 1970s and early 1980s did much to hasten his suicide despite Brautigan's literary fame in Japan in the late 1970's. Brautigan once wrote, "All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."

Books

Fiction

• A Confederate General From Big Sur, (1964 ISBN 224619233)
• Trout Fishing in America, (1967 ISBN 0395500761) Omibus edition
• In Watermelon Sugar, (1968 ASIN 0440340268)
• Revenge of the Lawn, (1970 ISBN 0671209604)
• The Abortion: An Historical Romance, (1971 ISBN 0671208721)
• The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, (1974 ISBN 0671218093)
• Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery, (1975 ISBN 0671220659)
• Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel, (1976 ISBN 0671223313)
• Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942, (1977 ISBN 0440021464)
• The Tokyo-Montana Express, (1980 ISBN 0440087708)
• So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, (1982 ISBN 0395706742)
• An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey, (1982, but first published in 2000 ISBN 0312277105)

Poetry

• The Galilee Hitch-Hiker, 1958
• Lay the Marble Tea, 1959
• The Octopus Frontier, 1960
• All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, 1963
• Please Plant This Book, 1968
• The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, 1968
• Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt, 1970
• Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork, (1971 ISBN 0671222635. 0671222716 pbk)
• June 30th, June 30th, (1978 ISBN 044004295X)
• The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings, (1999 ISBN 0395974690)

External links

• The most comprehensive website available focusing on the life and work of Richard Brautigan.
• A biographic website dedicated to Richard Brautigan.