There’s a new book out March 31st by Corey Mesler that’s inspired by Richard.

Following Richard Brautigan is a coming of age story and a road trip and a tale of love and so much more.  You can pre-order it at Amazon (link below. )

There’s also a visual trip (video) of Corey reading the first chapter(s).   I think he sounds a bit like Richard.

nice interpretation of ‘the scarlatti tilt’!

On Feb 1st, Vesuvio’s in San Francisco is having a tribute to Richard. No details on the siteother than times. FYI, if that link doesn’t work – try Vesuvio’s Event Page.

Last month I posted about an event in Vancouver (WA) called XXI Century Brautiganism. The event was a multimedia performance hosted by the DTC (digital technology & culture) department & students at WSU (Washington State Uni).

To catch up… here’s an article published in a local paper before the event.

One of the folks on our mailing list has been kind enough to supply images & the commentary below about the event:

Do you remember the cold Friday evening of December 4th, 2009? Well, I sure do, that was the historical night when about 50 people gathered in Vancouver WA to celebrate a great (and even local!!!) wordsmith – Richard Brautigan.

Dr. John Barber and some of his students put on the event, complete with archival video footage of Richard many had never seen before playing on a giant screen, plenty of history on his books and life, and also a portion where humans read Brautigan’s wonderful words from the past from old fashioned books (remember those things?), scraps of paper and yes: handheld electronic devices. Hey, this is the future after all – all watched over by machines of loving grace indeed!
 
Many great poems, stories and lines were shared by the class members, some of us simply audience members/fans of Brautigan, and even Dr. John Barber himself read some verses: an actual friend and acquaintance of Richard’s: what a great host for an evening of Brautigan celebration.

People took turns at the mic reading their favorites, I even read two of his poems, a man in the crowd got up to read, in its entirety, the Kool-Aid Wino chapter to us from Trout Fishing in America… ahhh… 
 
While the event was in progress, they were feeding footage up onto a tower outside on the campus, so that all of the snowmen and snowwomen of Vancouver WA could see the the great poetry tower mentioned in Richard’s 1967 poem Rainy Day Gary Snyder Poetry Night. Yes, dear reader, it was all pretty magical.
 
The archival video portion featured lovely music made by one of the students, artsy visuals with Brautigan’s words incorporated and many other great images. Very well done!
 
Hopefully there will be more footage from the event online someday for all to enjoy, I have gleaned that it will someday be posted, but patience in needed.

I took a few quick photos and rough videos - though they are far from professional, they might just give you a quick simple idea of the spark in the auditorium that night.
 
I had a blast. My son, who was only a few weeks old at the time, slept in the comfort of his mother’s arms while great words and memories hummed all around him.
 
7odd, who’s on the mailing list & was lucky enough to attend XXI Century Brautiganism

7odd’s pix & video

[flv width="320" height="240"]http://riza.com/richard/img/VancouverWSUevent-brautigan-7odd.flv[/flv]

Here’s another video of the event (found on youtube!):

Thanks 7odd for your contributions!!!!

Update: Here’s a link to another story about the event from the local newspaper

yesterday, jarvis cocker (formerly of pulp) started doing a weekly radio show on BBC6.

during the show jarvis says richard brautigan is one of his favourite writers.

and then reads ‘what are you going to do with 390 photographs of christmas trees?’ (it’s about 42 minutes into the show. fyi, it sounds like they keep the archive for 7 days only)

he asked people to send in their pix of abandoned trees but i think something is wrong with the gallery on the BBC site. there’s only 5 pix online & the page is loading weird for me. (at about 55 minutes into the show is when he talks about the pix). You can send him your pix at jarvis.6music@bbc.co.uk

you can read ”what are you going to do with 390 photographs of christmas trees?” here

On Dec 4th, the students of will host a tribute to Richard.

They will read poems or passages and members of the audience are invited to as well. An interactive performance will be projected on a building to envoke a vision of a ‘pretty poetry tower’.

Here’s to hoping it makes its way to the net but if you’re in Washington state, you might want to check it out (and report back to us!)

Read more here

inspired by richard’s ‘the scarlatti tilt’, dene grigar is publishing 1 micro story every hour for 24 hrs

you can get info about the project and watch it progress on twitter.

a great reading of ‘complicated banking problem’

Torpedo is a 4x a year literary journal / magazine / printed object / whatever we call them these days.

The most recent edition is dedicated to Richard Brautigan. His daughter, Ianthe, wrote the intro and was involved in selecting contributor pieces. The magazine contains works of Richard’s (stories from Revenge of the Lawn, excepts from In Watermelon Sugar, Trout Fishing in America, A Confederate General from Big Sur and others)

The Book Show is a radio program from Radio National / Australian Broadcasting Corp and last week’s (April 20 2009) show featured Torpedo in ‘Fishing for Richard Brautigan’.

The show features a brief interview with Ianthe Brautigan. The majority of the program is talking to the the founder/editor of Torpedo and contributors of the latest issue of torpedo

probably the most interesting thing (IMO) is ianthe’s quote regarding not feeling like she needs to protect her dad anymore.

she also briefly talks about teaching ‘trout fishing in america’ to one of her classes. how cool would it be to be in one of those classes!

thanks to Phil who posted this cool sketch of brautigan on his flickr site

the artist is justin kempton and he’s put together a series of authors & musicians as seen here in his writer’s mugs ebay site