From the December 2012 issue:  Man Underwater: the democratic fiction of Richard Brautigan

Or read the article in PDF

Quite the interesting reviewof Jubilee Hitchhiker in the LA Review of Books by Stan Persky.

I haven’t finished Jubilee Hitchhiker – not even a 1/4 of the way thru. Gatz’s very detailed account hasn’t pulled me in (added to my lack of time for pleasure reading). I’d love for an editor to get ahold of this book and, as Stan says, help to understand the significant moments of Richard’s work & life instead of every moment. I also found the overwhelming amount of facts about everything distracting – and long 😉

I have to agree with one of the commenters about the irony of the author of the lengthy review complaining about the length of the book. 😉

This article in HuffPo is a reprint of Steve Heilig’s essay from a collection of Brautigan  essays (Richard Brautigan: Essays on the Writings And Life ) and also points to his review of the new biography – Jubilee Hitchhiker

The 2 books referenced on Amazon:
      

Canongate is republishing 24 of their titles including Richard Brautigan’s Sombrero Fallout. We won’t see it u until sometime in 2012 but there will be a introduction written by Jarvis Cocker (be still my heart). 😉

There is Darkness on Your Lantern

The Pumpkin Tide

After Halloween Slump

Boo, Forever

Halloween In Denver

The Pumpkin Tide

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.

from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster 1968

After Halloween Slump

My magic is down.
My spells mope around
the house like sick old dogs
with bloodshot eyes
watering cold wet noses.

My charms are in a pile
in the corner like the
dirty shirts of a summer fatman.

One of my potions died
last night in the pot.
It looks like a cracked
Egyptian tablecloth.

from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster 1968

Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.

from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster 1968

There is Darkness on Your Lantern

There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind,
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heard is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.

I’d like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields fo ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still.

from Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt 1970

Halloween In Denver

She didn’t think that she would get any trick or treaters, so she didn’t buy anything for them. That seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, let’s see what can happen with that. It might be interesting.

We’ll start off with me reacting to her diagnosis of the situation by saying, “Hell, get something for the kids. After all, you’re living on Telegraph Hill and there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood and some of them are certain to stop here.”

I said it in such a way that she went down to the store and came back a few minutes later with a carton of gum. The gum was in little boxes called Chiclets and there were a lot of them in the carton.

“Satisfied?” she said.
She’s an Aires.
“Yes,” I said.
I’m an Aquarius.
We also had two pumpkins: both Scorpios.

So I sat there at the kitchen table and carved a pumpkin. It was the first pumpkin that Ihad carved in many years. It was kind of fun. My pumpkin had one round eye and one triangular eye and a not-very-bright witchy smile.

She cooked a wonderful dinner of sweet red cabbage and sausages and had some apples baking in the oven.

Then she carved her pumpkin while dinner was cooking beautifully away. Her pumpkin looked very modernistic when she was through. It looked more like an appliance than a jack-o’-lantern.

All the time that we were carving pumpkins the door bell did not ring once. It was completely empty of trick or treaters, but I did not panic, though there were an awful lot of Chiclets waiting anxiously in a large bowl.

We had dinner at 7:30 and it was so good. Then the meal was eaten and there were still no trick or treaters and it was after eight and things were starting to look bad. I was getting nervous.

I began to think that it was every day except Halloween.

She of course looked beatifically down upon the scene with an aura of Buddhistic innocence and carefully did not mention the fact that no trick or treaters had darkened the door.

That did not make things any better.

At nine o’clock we went in and lay down upon her bed and we were talking about this and that and I was in a kind of outrage because we had been forsaken by all trick or treaters, and I said something like, “Where are those little bastards?”

I had moved the bowl of Chiclets into the bedroom, so I could get to the trick or treaters faster when the door bell rang. The bowl sat there despondently on a table beside the bed. It was a very lonely sight.

At 9:30 we started fucking.

About fifty-four seconds later we heard a band of kids come running up the stairs accompanied by a cyclone of Halloween shrieking and mad door bell ringing.

I looked down at her and she looked up at me and our eyes met in laughter, but it wasn’t too loud because suddenly we weren’t at home.

We were in Denver, holding hands at a street corner, waiting for the light to change.

from Revenge of the Lawn 1971

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