Billy Collins' Introduction to Trout Fishing in America

U.S. Poet Laureate recently wrote the introduction to a new edition of Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, the 1967 breakout novel that made Brautigan popular among those within and without the Beat Generation and the counterculture.

Collins asserts that Trout Fishing in America and Brautigan's writing were not mere "hip stoner babble," but rather a new and nonlinear way to approach reading fiction.  In fact, he said in the interview linked below, the book challenges the very concept of what it is to be a novel.

Collins also believes that the novel resonates in today's culture given the nature of the internet and social media, which feeds readers in small bits and pieces in a very nonlinear way.  This, he points out, is analogous to the brief poems and short stories of Brautigan, as well as the short chapters and, at times, seemingly disjointed prose of the author.

The article, Billy Collins' Introduction to Trout Fishing in America, is also itself linked to an NPR interview.

~William Hammett

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