Saturday, May 2, 2015

The Prose Style of Richard Brautigan

The prose style of Richard Brautigan is lean and economical, to say the least.  Many have described Brautigan's style has unpretentious and a prime example of post-modernism.  He said exactly what he wanted to say and no more.  This is exemplified by his extremely short poems, short stories, and the chapters in his novels.  Brautigan is also said to have bridged the gap between the beat generation and the culture of the 1960s, although he carried on the literary traditions of the counterculture until his death in 1984.

Brautigan, perhaps because of his birth in the Pacific Northwest, had a strong tie with nature, and a majority of his work demonstrated this connection.  The most obvious example is Trout Fishing in America.  In general, the themes of Brautigan's prose is not terribly optimistic, but rather accentuates what the author regarded as the failure of the American Dream and its attendant values.  While his prose is often humorous and playful, his themes demonstrate pessimism to the astute reader.  In this sense, he has been compared to Mark Twain, the dark humorist who was suspicious of mankind and its foolishness.

Because of the distinctive nature of Brautigan's prose and its seeming quirkiness, he initially found it difficult to find publishers for his work.  He published in many small presses and was even known to hand out self-published material on the street.  City Lights Press, founded by beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, published some of Brautigan's earlier writings.  Kurt Vonnegut discovered Brautigan's work and recommended him to Delacorte Press, which published some of Brautigan's early novels.  After the publication of Trout Fishing in America, mainstream presses such as Simon and Schuster began to publish Brautigan's novels.

An in-depth discussion of Brautigan's prose and literary influence may be found at the Poetry Foundation at Richard Brautigan: a Biography

~William Hammett

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