Trout Fishing In America, The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon
Sugar
by
Richard Brautigan
Read May-June 2007
Copy borrowed from Ramsey County Public Library, Maplewood branch
Essay written July 6th, 2007
I'm going to have to divide the essay of this book into three sections, because it was three books. I don't ordinarily read books like this, which are made up of more than one book, unless I own it and can read them all separately. But like this, from the library, you have to read them all within a few weeks of each other, or only read the ones you want and somehow I feel like that's cheating. Really, I just checked this out because I wanted to read In Watermelon Sugar, but I couldn't find that one anywhere on its own.
Trout Fishing In America
Weird. I read An Unfortunate Woman by Brautigan last fall and enjoyed it immensely, and was rather disappointed that Trout Fishing In America wasn't more of the same. It seemed either like a very long and pointless inside joke between the author and himself, or something so symbolic and erudite that it was over my head. Either way, I breathed a sigh of relief when this was over.
The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster
Poems! Not bad, at that. But he's no Charles Bukowski.
In Watermelon Sugar
Definitely better than Trout, but still pretty bizarre and not necessarily in a good way. I'm all for bizarre, I guess, but this didn't seem to have a point. Again, unless it was just over my head. I suspect that English professors judge this one to be pretty overrated and drug-addled goofballs find it underrated. Depends on how many chemicals you've taken. I have evidently not taken enough. I still liked An Unfortunate Woman better. I didn't hate this book at all, but I guess I don't feel like I was left feeling enlightened or even entertained. Gravity's Rainbow, for all its bloatedness, still left me with some wonderful images even though I didn't understand the overall picture. I can't say the same for this one.
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