Trout Fishing in America (1967)

I have always thought of this slender Richard Brautigan volume as a novel proper, but Wikipedia calls it a novella, which is fair. It’s not even 200 pages in mass market size. It was written in 1961 but it has a decided summer of love twang—strange, funny, absurdist, deceptively light-hearted. I loved this stuff when I was 18 but sadly it has lost a lot of its charm. It's still a lively little read, remarkable for something with virtually no narrative thread. I liked Brautigan’s native confidence that he could write anything that entered his head and I loved his loopy indulgent metaphors and various flights. I’m still OK with them, but his biography does cast some pall over it now. He committed suicide at the age of 49 and by all reports was a miserable man. A lot of his attitudes toward women are already notably antiquated, not so much toxic as wince-worthy but sometimes toxic. Ultimately he is still daffy and gentle enough that I’m willing to give him a pass, being dead and all. I have some sense that In Watermelon Sugar may presently be his best-liked novel (and/or story collection and/or poetry collection), but Trout Fishing was always up there. In fact, insofar as Brautigan was ever taken seriously, Trout Fishing in America usually went to the head of the class. “Trout fishing in America” means many different things here, including places and people’s names, but one of them is trout fishing in America. Brautigan is plainly aware and enamored of Ernest Hemingway, and Mark Twain too, and he is working consciously in their traditions—combining the humor of Twain with Hemingway’s nouns-and-verbs rhythms and stoic low-energy depression. Brautigan also knows trout fishing the sporting activity, injecting it with veracity as needed into the ongoing surreal twists. Trout Fishing is dreamy and weird, sometimes petty and foolish, more often making things work on their own terms. I still like the spirit but rereading it all these years later did not do much for me. It’s just not as inspired as Brautigan seemed to think it was and many of his recurring poetic devices—such as a statue of Benjamin Franklin in San Francisco—are evocative but a little lame and underdeveloped. But he may be winning over new readers and that’s good to hear. I see him discussed on booktube. He lives on for Harry Styles who wrote a song about watermelon sugar and he lives on for the kid in 1994 who legally changed his name to Trout Fishing in America. For me, Brautigan is a sad figure with an elfin side that can win you over if you have a big enough heart, not that I always do. His humor can be sharp and precise. Worth a look.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.