A Confederate General from Big Sur by Richard Brautigan

A Confederate General from Big Sur was Richard Brautigan's first novel, written in 1961 and published in 1964 by Grove Press.  The novel did not sell well and went out of print quickly.  It was later republished after Brautigan became a cult figure thanks to the success of his novel Trout Fishing in America.

Brautigan and his first wife Virginia went to Big Sur to visit with a friend, Price Dunn, in 1957.  many of events of their trip found their way into the pages of the novel, such as counting punctuation in the Gideon Bible.  Dunn became the character of Lee Melon in the book.  Dunn and Brautigan were both students of the Civil War.

The novel also derived inspiration from Henry Miller's 1957 memoir Big Sur as well as the anticipated Kerouac book Big Sur.

The plot can briefly be summarized as follows.  In 1957, main character Lee Mellon believes that he is descended from a Confederate general haling from Big Sur, California.  Oddly, there is no historical record of the general, although Mellon meets a drifter in the Pacific Northwest who claims to have heard of the Confederate from Big Sur.  Given the questionable nature of the general's existence, Mellon struggles to find the truth about his possible ancestor.  His metaphysical battle against modern-day America mirrors the battle of the United States against the Confederacy.  The novel's general theme, therefore, is personal perception versus reality as exemplified by Mellon's search.  The theme of imagination versus reality would dominate all of Brautigan's subsequent novels.

~William Hammett

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