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Richard Brautigan

Started by holyzombiejesus, June 19, 2019, 08:16:05 PM

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holyzombiejesus

Talk about Richard Brautigan here.

studpuppet


holyzombiejesus

Has he ever had a decent cover for one of his books? The first I read by him was one of those big Houghton Mifflin collections. I remember being struck by how funny Dreaming of Babylon was but it never seems to be rated very highly. I also vividly remember feeling sick after reading his description of genital warts.

studpuppet

The old Picador ones aren't too bad.

       

Hawkline Monster was my first, and then Trout Fishing. Then I lost Hawkline Monster and it made financial sense to buy a bind-up from Compendium every so often. He's up there with Boris Vian as someone that every one should read at least one book of.

wosl

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on June 20, 2019, 08:40:29 AM
Has he ever had a decent cover for one of his books?

The Picador pbk In Watermelon Sugar is nice:



It's also about my favourite book of his (that I have a copy of and that I've had several reads of), despite the bloke who did the intro for the Rebel Inc. edition of Revenge Of The Lawn (a great set of short stories) essentially writing it off as hippie tosh.  A genuinely strange and dream-like book, beatific and unsettling, with a whimsy that's held in check enough for it not to become cloying.  Others I remember enjoying a lot are Sombrero Fallout and The Tokyo-Montana Express, although my view of those might be coloured by the fact that I took them with me on a visit to Berlin (I bought the bottom omnibus shown in stud's photo while I was there), and so they form a part of a bigger set of good memories.  I'd need to have a go at them again to see how they stand up, which would mean tracking down copies.

holyzombiejesus

Why do nearly all of them have him on the cover? I can't think of any other 20th century author who has appeared on a fraction as many of their own covers as RB has.

studpuppet

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on June 20, 2019, 04:29:36 PM
Why do nearly all of them have him on the cover? I can't think of any other 20th century author who has appeared on a fraction as many of their own covers as RB has.

I'll see your "author on the cover" and raise you this guy (who's not even the author):

   

   

   

     

(I came here to post on something else and just wasted 30mins setting this post up...)

wosl

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on June 20, 2019, 04:29:36 PM
Why do nearly all of them have him on the cover?

He's often not alone; in many he's seen next to his companion du jour.  Whatever the reason, the photos were very much created for the covers, with Brautigan orchestrating the shoots and taking pains over the selection of the setting and the clothes that he and his partner would be seen in. (That said, one of the best of the covers notably doesn't feature RB, although he still very much had a hand in its design: the Jonathan Cape edition of Sombrero Fallout):



I like many of the covers; they somehow manage to avoid being exercises in pure narcissism, and they stand out, with a quaint, not-of-their-time/timeless look of their own (an effect that tends to get diluted when the photo portraits are reduced in size and become part of a more elaborate design).

garbed_attic

Brautigan's cute and then occasionally disturbing, but mostly cute. I find it hard to locate precisely why I like some of his novellas (Hawkline Monster) far more than others (Willard and His Bowling Trophies).

easytarget

Quote from: studpuppet on June 21, 2019, 11:24:22 AM
I'll see your "author on the cover" and raise you this guy (who's not even the author):

By the time it got to this one I was convinced you photoshopped the whole thing. That's a fucking funny title.

Yeah, Hawkline Monster is great - what's the next one I should read?

Mobbd

Quote from: wosl on June 21, 2019, 03:26:12 PM
Whatever the reason, the photos were very much created for the covers, with Brautigan orchestrating the shoots and taking pains over the selection of the setting and the clothes that he and his partner would be seen in.

This is true. And he sometimes refers to the cover photograph in the actual text of the book. The covers are important and cannot be changed by a publisher or a designer in good faith.

Mobbd

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on June 19, 2019, 08:16:05 PM
Talk about Richard Brautigan here.

I'm a very big fan.

The Abortion is one of my favourite books ever.

Revenge of the Lawn is beautiful, beautiful. Micro-stories, carefully structured, almost poetry.

One of its stories from Revenge of the Lawn that always stands out in my memory is A High Building in Singapore: http://brautigan.cybernetic-meadows.net/tiki-index.php?page=A+High+Building+in+Singapore

garbed_attic

Quote from: easytarget on July 25, 2019, 05:57:13 AM
Yeah, Hawkline Monster is great - what's the next one I should read?

Chiming in to support Mobbd in stating that The Abortion is wonderful!

Blinder Data

Never read him before. This thread inspired me to get Troutfishing... out of the library. I hope it's a good place to start.

djtrees

Uploaded this to Youtube a few years ago...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ur4BBKLWM I really like the bits that I read a while back. One of them unique voices, that kind of skirts around hippy bollocks, but cuts through it.

Mobbd

Quote from: Blinder Data on July 31, 2019, 04:22:43 PM
Never read him before. This thread inspired me to get Troutfishing... out of the library. I hope it's a good place to start.

It is. It's highly typical of what he does and is at least in the Top 5. Ideal starting place.

Mobbd

Quote from: djtrees on August 01, 2019, 10:19:14 AM
Uploaded this to Youtube a few years ago...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ur4BBKLWM I really like the bits that I read a while back. One of them unique voices, that kind of skirts around hippy bollocks, but cuts through it.

Thanks. This is lovely. I'm sort of delighted that his first proper reading here is the telephone booths/high Victorian ceiling moment from Trout-Fishing. It always struck me as unusual and it immediately comes to mind when someone mentions the book. "but in some strange way by going in there and catching a few trout, I kept the telephone in service. I was an asset to society."