I’ve always liked Richard Brautigan. Not because of his hat, though I do like his hat a lot. Or maybe you think it’s because of his mustache, which, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind having myself. Or perhaps you think it’s because of his tumultuous life and death. But it’s none of these. I love Brautigan because of his writings. Whenever I read his works, I always felt like he was mocking me or making fun of me. After all, why would someone write something like this in their book:
A little ways up from the shack was an outhouse with its door flung violently open. The inside of the outhouse was exposed like a human face and the outhouse seemed to say, “The old guy who built me crapped in here 9,745 times and he’s dead now and I don’t want anyone else to touch me. He was a good guy. He built me with loving care. Leave me alone. I’m a monument now to a good ass gone under. There’s no mystery here. That’s why the door’s open. If you have to crap, go in the bushes like the deer.” “Fuck you,” I said to the outhouse. “All I want is a ride down the river.”
That was from the book “Trout Fishing in America”. Or for example this one which is from the book “Dreaming of Babylon”:
First, the good news: I found out that I was 4F and wasn’t going off to World War II to be a soldier boy. I didn’t feel unpatriotic at all because I had fought my World War II five years before in Spain and had a couple of bullet holes in my ass to prove it. I’ll never figure out why I got shot in the ass. Anyway, it made a lousy war story. People don’t look up to you as a hero when you tell them you were shot in the ass. They don’t take you seriously but that wasn’t my problem any more at all. The war that was starting for the rest of America was over for me.
Now you might have a sense of what I mean. I love the humor in his writings. It seems like nothing was important to this man. I don’t know, maybe it was. But I don’t think it was, because if it were, he wouldn’t have ended his life at 49 with a .44 caliber hunting rifle while looking out at the ocean. I love Brautigan because he was a lovable madman.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Brautigan was also a very good poet. For now, here’s one of his poems, and if I get the chance, I’ll post more of his poems for you later.
Thinking hard about you
I got on the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for two transfers
before discovering
that I was
About cover image:
SAN FRANCISCO - 1970: Writer Richard Brautigan poses for a portrait sitting on the bathtub in his Geary Street apartment in San Francisco, California to promote his EMI/Harvest Records album “Listening To Richard Brautigan” which was released in 1970. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)