richard brautigan
The Beat Generation movement of the mid-twentieth century produced a number of American writers who worked at the intersection of poetry, fiction, and experimental prose. Richard Gary Brautigan, born on January 30, 1935, in Tacoma, was among those associated with that movement, contributing work across multiple forms as a novelist, poet, and short story writer.
Writing in English, Brautigan pursued his craft after being educated at South Eugene High School, going on to produce novels, poetry, and short fiction that placed him within the broader cultural currents of the Beat Generation. Two of his novels drew particular attention: Trout Fishing in America, published in 1967, and In Watermelon Sugar, published in 1968. These works, arriving in close succession, represented the core of his output as a novelist and helped establish his presence as a distinct voice in American prose. His engagement with multiple literary forms — fiction, poetry, and short stories — reflected a working practice that refused easy categorization within any single genre.
Brautigan died in Bolinas, with his death recorded in late 1984, the precise date falling in some dispute between September 14 and October 25 of that year. His work is catalogued under the Library of Congress authorized label "Brautigan, Richard," and his novels Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar remain the titles most consistently cited in reference to his career as a United States writer.
Quotes by richard brautigan
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I guess the last remaining question is: What about the sombrero? It’s still there, lying in the street but its temperature had returned to -24 degrees and fortunately for America it stayed there. Millions of tourists have walked all around it but not one of them has seen it, though it is in plain sight. How can you miss a very cold white sombrero lying in the Main Street of a town? In other words: There is more to life than meets the eye.
I do not care to be esthetically tickled in a fancy theater surrounded by an audience drenched in the confident perfume of culture. I can’t afford it.
I think that I would find automobiles a little more interesting if they carried their own parking space with them.
Her voice, delicate as it was, had the strength to it that made one realize why a teacup can stay in one piece for centuries, defying the changes of history and the turmoil of man.
I think my mind is going. It is changing into a cranial junkyard. I have a huge pile of rusty tin cans the size of Mount Everest and about a million old cars that are going nowhere but between my ears.
The Forgotten Works just go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. You get the picture. It’s a big place, much bigger than we are.
One spring afternoon as a child in the strange town of Portland, I walked down to a different street corner, and saw a row of old houses, huddled together like seals on a rock.
