Richard Brautigan: Stories in His Style

Richard Brautigan: Stories in His Style is a site devoted to short stories written by William Hammett in the style of Richard Brautigan, poet, novelist, and short story writer.  Brautigan lived from 1935 to 1984.  His fiction, both novels and short stories,  were written in a surrealistic style that was sometimes playful and humorous, sometimes darkly satirical.

The original stories by William Hammett on this site are extremely short and exhibit the elusive, surrealistic quality of Brautigan's short story collection titled Revenge of the Lawn.  They range in length from one sentence to a few paragraphs.  Taken together, they represent brief slices of life and random details that hint at much larger themes.  The plots of the stories are drawn from average people going about their daily business, the idea being that the more important truths about life are found in everyday situations.

The surrealistic quality of some, though not all, of the stories, reflects the author's belief that the ordinary situations of life are doorways to deeper, mystical aspects of human existence.  They also reflect the author's abiding interest in quantum physics and the idea that perception, to a large extent, governs the outcome of events.  This relationship between perception and reality was also an ongoing theme in the work of Brautigan, although the relationship was usually expressed a polarizing tension in his novels.

Such extremely short fiction is now generally referred to as flash fiction, although the term was not in general use at the time Richard Brautigan wrote his many short stories that were eventually collected in Revenge of the Lawn.  They were simply called short stories, which was part of the attraction to readers in the 1970s.  Garrison Keillor, author and host of A Prairie Home Companion, wrote a piece in the New Yorker in 1972 called "Ten Stories for Mr. Brautigan and Other Stories."  The ten short stories were eventually published in Keillor's 1981 collection of stories called Happy To Be Here.

Hammett's short stories, of course, are first and foremost, intended to entertain.  A list of these stories may be found in the sitemap below or by clicking on Index of Stories by William Hammett.

William Hammett is the author of several novels, including The Ghost of Richard Brautigan, a satirical novel using the short chapter format of Richard Brautigan's novels.  A link to the novel at Amazon can be found in the right sidebar of this site.  Hammett is also the author of numerous poems and short stories published in respected hard copy literary journals around the country.

SITEMAP

Home
About
Index of Short Stories by William Hammett
Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan: Stories in His Style
Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan
Richard Brautigan Timeline
The Richard Brautigan Library
Articles on Richard Brautigan
Resources for Researching Richard Brautigan's Life and Work
The Prose Style of Richard Brautigan
Books about Richard Brautigan
The Novels of Richard Brautigan
The Short Stories of Richard Brautigan
Poetry Collections by Richard Brautigan
The Uncollected Poetry of Richard Brautigan
The Unpublished Poetry of Richard Brautigan
The Ghost of Richard Brautigan
William Hammett
Contact

Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan

The Revenge of the Lawn is a collection of stories by Richard Brautigan.  Its complete title is Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970.  As the name implies, the collection of stories was written between 1962 and 1970, with most stories having been previously published in various literary journals and magazines, many of which were small and avant-garde.  The collection also contains two chapters originally intended for inclusion in Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America.  These are "Rembrandt Creek" and "Carthage Sink."  Like most of Brautigan's writings (e.g., the chapters in his novels), the stories are short, surrealistic, and satirical.

Some of the stories are as follows:

Revenge of the Lawn
1692 Cotton Mather Newsreel
Elmira
Coffee
The Scarlatti Tilt
The Weather in San Francisco
Ernest Hemingway's Typist
The Old Bus
The Ghost Children of Tacoma
Talk Show
Blackberry Motorist
Thoreau Rubber Band
Lint
One Afternoon in 1939
Banners of My Own Choosing
Atlantisburg
The Betrayed Kingdom
Greyhound Tragedy
Crazy Old Women Are Riding the Buses of Today
Holiday in Germany
World War I Los Angeles Aeroplane
A Study of California Flowers
Women When They Put Their Clothes on in the Morning
A Complete History of Germany and Japan
Getting to Know Each Other
The Post Office of Eastern Oregon
Corporal
Lint
Pale Marble Movie
A Short History of Oregon

The collection remains a classic among Brautigan fans, and many tributes using Brautigan's quirky economical style have been written since his death, including thirteen vignettes in the New Yorker.

~William Hammett

SITEMAP

Home
About
Index of Short Stories by William Hammett
Richard Brautigan
Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan
Richard Brautigan Timeline
The Richard Brautigan Library
Articles on Richard Brautigan
Resources for Researching Richard Brautigan's Life and Work
The Prose Style of Richard Brautigan
Books about Richard Brautigan
The Novels of Richard Brautigan
The Short Stories of Richard Brautigan
Poetry Collections by Richard Brautigan
The Uncollected Poetry of Richard Brautigan
The Unpublished Poetry of Richard Brautigan
The Ghost of Richard Brautigan
William Hammett
Contact