American Studier is doing a Books that Shaped Me based on the current Library of Congress Books that Shaped America – and Trout Fishing in America is one of them!
What books have shaped you?
American Studier is doing a Books that Shaped Me based on the current Library of Congress Books that Shaped America – and Trout Fishing in America is one of them!
What books have shaped you?
A day like this calls for… Love Poem
Disclaimer: If you are in the sticky sweet phase of love where nothing can ever go wrong… don’t watch this. 😉
The musical duo, Trout Fishing in America, is doing a bookstore & concert tour to support the release of their new children’s book & cd. Chicken Joe Forgets Something Important is a follow up to their 2009 book/cd package.
More info in this Publisher’s Weekly or on the TFIA website
The BBC is airing a ‘series of films about how humans have been colonised by the machines we have built.’ and obviously the title is directly taken from (& attributed to) Richard Brautigan’s poem of the same title.
For those of you outside the UK, I recommend checking out the film maker Adam Curtis’s blog & the BBC site for the show.
The 3 episodes are:
Episode 1 – Love & Power – aired May 23 211 on BBC2. This episode focuses on Ayn Rand & the silicon valley entrepreneurs which both had versions of the perfect world which were ill fated due to power & love (i’m paraphrasing the episode description here… I haven’t seen the show).
Episode 2 – The Use & Abuse of Vegetational Concepts – aired May 30, 2011 on BBC2. This episode focuses on modern scientific ideas of nature & the self regulating ecosystem.
Episode 3 – The Monkey in the Machine & the Machine in the Monkey – aired June 6 2011 on BBC2. This episode focuses on scientists Hamilton & Dawkins & the ‘selfish gene’.
Below is a video of an art installation called ‘Brautigan 2009’. It was at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito California. From what I can tell, it looks like the exhibit was there in about June of 2009.
Chris Sollars is the artist behind the sculpture/multi-media installation. He has a page with lots of pix & info on his site.
The artist represents 7 of Richard’s books:
Revenge of the Lawn (I love the green plastic lawn chair!)
Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt
A Confederate General from Big Sur
In Watermelon Sugar
The Pill vs The Springhill Mine Disaster
The Abortion
Trout Fishing in America
I love the simplicity of each book’s installation.
If you’re in baltimore, MD, USA, you might want to check out this – waterfall (for richard brautigan). It runs til Feb 27 or March 27 depending on what website you read. UPDATE: confirmed it’s Feb 27th.
The artist, evan la londe, credits living in upstate New York, growing up in the woods and Brautigan’s ‘Knock on Wood (Part Two)’ from Trout Fishing in America as the inspiration for this piece. Of that story, Evan says:
The story is filled with a magic that I love; it’s phenomenological and metaphorical all at once.
There was a temporary installation of this piece last October in Prettyboy Reservoir, outside of Parkton MD.  Now it has moved to Baltimore to an art gallery called School33. Details of the venue: school33
Evan is currently working on a video of the installation.  He’s got some cool pix showing the build on Flickr.