University of Virginia Library

Trout Fishing

America: A State Of Mind

By Corbin Eissler
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Richard Brautigan is thirty-four
years old and lives in San
Francisco. He is also a writer, with
one of the most original and
imaginative styles around today.
His latest book, "Trout Fishing In
America" is deservedly gaining recognition
as a "valuable book about
the joys and pains of wandering
about in the world."

"Trout Fishing In America" is a
collection of short chapters, incidents
in the author's life. Each
chapter is a self contained event,
almost a poem in style; part of a
contemporary trend of novel
writing where the impact of the
writing depends primarily on the
imagery and mental connections of
the author.

Fun To Read

But most of all, "Trout Fishing
In America" is fun, fun to read.
The central image of the book,
connecting each of the events, is
that of trout fishing. Mr. Brautigan
seems to cast into his memory,
presenting each catch to the reader.
Some of the earlier story-poems
deal with childhood and such
recollections as that of "The
Kool-Aid Wino," a boy spending his
nickel for "a day's drinking." He
created his own Kool-Aid reality
and was about to illuminate himself
by it" in the face of poverty and a
life where "he has never slept under
a sheet in his life."

Recollections like that of the
Kool-Aid and of using bread-balls
for bait call to mind other incidents
in the reader's own childhood and
make him gradually enter the world
that is presented. The style aids his
identification, rendering specific
incidents in specific visual imagery.
After writing, as a sixth grader,
"trout fishing in America" on the
back of every first-grader, and being
called into the principal's office,
the narrator remembers "looking
out the windows and yawning and
one of us suddenly got an insane
blink going and putting our hands
in our pockets."

Logical Jumps

But the book is more than that,
and the style far from simple. After
a passage of almost straight prose
the narrative often takes a sudden
logical jump, creating a metaphor in
prose. "He went to Paris and
became an Existentialist. He had a
photograph taken of Existentialism
and himself, sitting at a sidewalk
cafe." Things happen such as a
trout stream for sale by the foot in
the Cleveland Wrecking Yard, with
waterfalls (costing extra) "already
gathering dust" in the attic. "I
remember mistaking an old woman
for a trout stream in Vermont."

The style is not poetry. Unlike
poetry, it can not stand alone any
more than any of the superficially
unrelated chapters can. Evergreen
Review printed nine of the
chapters, which was a mistake,
because as the book unfolds a
deeper connection then that the
author's experience begins to
emerge. Passages and objects
continue to recur and gain
meaning. Perhaps the best way of
explaining this connection is that it
is a search for America, conducted
on a highly personal level.

Inward America

This theme is not uncommon in
contemporary writings, in fact it is
greatly overworked. But Mr.
Brautigan approaches his search
from a new vantage point, he turns
inward and looks for America in
his own experience and on his own
terms. The result is that he manages
to avoid both of the problems of
this kind of theme, that of an
overly righteous, revolutionary
crusader and that of the romantic
looking backward. He is of his time
and of himself. He at times is
extremely satiric of commercialism
and a loss of value today. In "The
Salt Creek Coyotes" he says
"capital punishment being what it
is, an act of state business with no
song down the railroad track after
the train has gone, and no vibration
on the rails," they should place a
crown on the head of each
condemned man made of the skull
of a poisoned coyote. But the
search is mainly inward, his own
experiences, observations, and
finally his own values.

Field & Stream

Ramparts magazine says
"Richard Brautigan ... is a special
(very special) correspondent from a
terribly literate sort of Field &
Stream magazine whose contributors
are outdoorsmen on the
order of Turgenev, Hemingway, Bill
Burroughs (expert on abnormal
fauna and miraculous flora), Jack
London," and others. This is
partially true, as the fishing theme
echoes Hemingway in the style of
"Naked Lunch" (without drugs).
But the search is inward, into the
apprehension of America by a
fascinating mind. And the conclusion
seems to finally be "he was
leaving for America, often only a
place in the mind."