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by Harvey Leavitt?
University of Nebraska at Omaha
On first reading Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar, one senses that something extraordinary has happened to the form of the novel, to the intellectual and aesthetic conventions to which we have become accustomed. Brautigan's work is jigsaw puzzle art that demands more than close reading; it demands an active participation by the reader, a reconstruction of a vision that has been fragmented but warmed by a private poetic sensibility. Three avenues of accessibility, the novel as a utopian instrument, the analogues to the Garden of Eden, and natural determinism converge and create a frame for Brautigan's novel.
Brautigan has created the utopian dream for the post-industrial age of affluence, beyond IBM, and finally beyond curiosity. His longings, unlike other utopian ideals, have no claim on progress, no uplifting of the material condition of man, no holy wars to redistribute the physical wealth, no new metaphors for survival based on the securing of human necessities, and no emotional nirvanas. Other utopian dreamers have responded directly to the events of their age, but Brautigan is responding to the cumulative ages of man, and no response can be significant for him that does not place the entire past on the junk heap (the forgotten works). Nothing will do but a fresh start, with a fresh set of assumptions; In Watermelon Sugar takes us back to the beginning, for this is Eden, with its syllabic and accented soul mate iDEATH, reconstructed.
The phrase from which the book draws its title is the initial indicator of Brautigan's reconstructed garden, for "In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again." We enter the novel during the "again" stage, man's second great attempt to obtain an earthly paradise; the unnamed narrator implies the failure of the past and indicates the social purpose of his creation when he states on the first page. "I hope this works out." Although we shall not attempt here to discover all of the Biblical analogues, we should point out that the narrator of the novel gives us a list of things he will tell us about (IWS, pp.8-9) and that the list encompasses twenty-four items, the same number as books in the Hebraic version of the Old Testament. In addition, the novel is divided into three books, again paralleling the current division of the Old Testament into three sections. In themselves, these similarities are not important, but when coupled with the physical descriptions of the rivers (IWS, p.2), an analogue to the four rivers traversing Eden, and with the natural setting of piney woods, watermelon fields, and golden sun, the natural beauty and simplicity of an Eden seem apparent. The narrator also describes his simple shack made from natural materials and tells us, "I have a gentle life" (IWS, p.1).
All leads to the obvious, that the narrator is Adam II, that he originated not from the dust, but is rather a creation of rational man-eating tigers who have eaten his parents and left him an orphan. The new Adam emerges, not out of the dust of a universe in chaos, but out of the debris of a systematic and highly developed social order. His navel is intact, but the past is becoming less and less intelligible to him; the forgotten works are a British Museum of discards, the books and wisdom in disarray and intellectually inaccessible, and the physical world a shambles of objects without meaning. The new Adam finds his past as bewildering as the land outside Eden was to the old Adam. Adam II is created, not by the hand of God, but out of a disintegrating social order whose meaning is lost. It is not a world in which God is dead, for God has never existed. Its creative force is scientific, rational, and competitive, in which emotions run high over rights of ownership for materials of survival, and the creation is its antithesis. The tigers incorporate the human qualities of rational discourse and instinctive survival (they eat Adam II's parents not out of malice, but out of hunger). The tigers symbolize the destructive ambiguity of man, his instinct for survival and his rational nature that allows him to explain his acts of violence in terms of survival. As civilization becomes more and more sophisticated, the connections between violent acts and survival become less direct, until finally man loses the ability to connect his deeds with his goals. Such perverted nature is one that needs to be eradicated in Brautigan's cosmos.
If one sees civilization as an elaborate rationalization process, as Brautigan apparently does, then the return to the good life must allow for the destruction of the accoutrements of the rationalistic society. The forgotten works are the destroyed society; as the new society builds it must discover its own realities. The dimensions of iDEATH are circumscribed in new ways from the vanished structure. If man faces up to his biological nature, if he realizes that sophisticated civilized acts grow out of biological instincts and drives, then he must connect his acts directly to his goals in order to return to the essential of existence. Better yet, he must allow himself to become an instrument of nature. From Brautigan's vision, then, glows a natural determinism that is exhibited throughout the novel.
In Watermelon Sugar, like the Old Testament, is a work of teaching and guidance. It sets up the law and creates the myths of the future. In place of a tree of knowledge, we now have the forgotten works, both of which test man's obedience and his curiosity. Instead of the fruits of Eden, we now have statues of beans, of carrots, of rutabagas, of grass. In Brautigan's Eden man does not merely accept what nature has given; his artistry is commanded to build monuments to nature. Margaret is a combination of the apocryphal first wife of Adam, Lilith, a demon who flies away from him, and Eve, who tempts him with knowledge. We clearly see Brautigan's vision when Adam II turns down a piece of apple pie (IWS, p.109) and moments later Margaret hangs herself from an apple tree (IWS, p.113). Adam II has resisted knowledge and curiosity. Completely free from the dead Margaret, he has Pauline, the new Eve who is totally integrated into nature. To carry the character analogue a bit further, inBOIL and Charley, the brothers, become the Cain and Abel figures of iDEATH. InBOIL cuts himself off from the communal family, immerses himself in the remnants of the forgotten works, loses himself in the numbness of alcohol, and loses touch with nature; he and his gang end up by mutilating their sense organs (IWS, p.94), cutting off thumbs, noses, ears, eyes, in an act of defiance that is willed self-destruction, the only outcome for those who are not commanded by nature.
Brautigan's teleological system, like the Old Testament's, creates a systematic social and ethical order. The most literal plot device, the Adam II, Margaret, and Pauline triangle, hints at jealousy, and a kind of joyous celebration of life pervades the novel. Aside from the direct jealousy and the implied joy, emotion seems to have little place in iDEATH. Although Margaret and inBOIL feel boredom, jealousy, and hatred, their emotions are the stuff that myths are made of, the straying sheep, the peoples of Sodom and Gomorrah, the original sinners fallen from grace. The commune, however, remains untouched by their falls, and iDEATH as a philosophical system remains intact with Adam II and his Eve unsullied by Margaret and inBOIL. Whatever passes for emotion in the novel, then, is evolved out of natural determinism. After Margaret's death, nature imposes a mood and a state consistent with funereal dignity. It is black, soundless Thursday, and while preparations for a dance go forward, nature imposes a dignity on the death scene. No strong emotion occurs in love making either. A short chapter (IWS, p.37) demonstrates the sensory nature of experience rather than abstract romanticizing about it. Pauline says in her sleep, "The lamb sat down in the flowers... The lamb was all right." Again, safety when one is integrated with nature, but always through the use of metaphors from nature and not filtered through the self. Adam II in the same scene talks of his touch upon her and her smell — direct sensory experiences — natural, growing out of his biological nature and not charged with abstract emotion. Adam II foreshadows the absence of emotion in the new society when he relates the story of his parents' death at the hands of the tigers and reveals his preoccupation with arithmetic (IWS, pp.33-5).
The physical world of iDEATH and the countryside reveals the teleology further. Watermelon sugar, the building material of the society, is not only physical, but a state of mind. It is the material out of which planks and windows are made, but it is also the product out of which a life style is made. Its natural source, its sweetness, its infinite capacities make it a metaphor for the good nature, the nature with which one may become fully integrated. Watermelon sugar is also an extension of the fluid space and time of the novel. One is never certain of his location in space, whether inside or outside of buildings since the flow of events in the novel and the differences between a natural setting and housing made of natural materials is never clearly delineated. Here again, the setting is totally integrated with natural determinism.
Rivers, bridges, trout, and foxfire tombs all speak to us of iDEATH. The land is laced with rivers, operating as a multiple symbolic structure. They are fertile and life giving, but they are also the burial places for the dead. Like the trout hatchery that is built on the ashes of the immolated tigers, we have death and instant rebirth. The pattern continues after Margaret's death, for soon after a new baby is born in the town. Again the connection with the dead past is made, and hope emerges only when the new world is built on top of the ashes of the past. Burial in the river is the new immortality, for in the glass shrines the dead are a part of the world of iDEATH and their memory is never lost. The new Eden, without a God, produces a pantheistic integration. Like the trout, the dead become part of the river, totally incorporated into their environment, and witnesses to the new Eden. The trout, like watermelon sugar, are Brautigan's idealized nature, and they furnish the reader with a normative standard. The bridges, too, help to establish iDEATH's connection with Eden (IWS, pp.13-5). The abandoned bridge on which the tigers were killed was set afire and partially destroyed, but the two ends remain intact. Symbolically, Eden is one end and iDEATH the other. What is between needed to be destroyed. The real pine bridge is contrasted with what has been abandoned: on it are lanterns shaped like the faces of children and trout, innocence and idealized nature, while on the abandoned bridge are tiger lanterns, rationalistic carnivores.
Like Eden's, iDEATH's enemy is knowledge and curiosity. Perhaps implied in the assumptions of every utopian work, activity must cease when one succeeds in creating his perfection. The status quo must be maintained for all utopias; only the point at which existence is frozen makes them different. In Watermelon Sugar creates a non-authoritarian rule, an intensely self-disciplined society which limits its parameters consciously, while Eden is circumscribed by an outside authority. Brautigan's goals are substantially the same as those of the Old Testament, but he uses a humanistic rather than a deistic device to maintain iDEATH.
Natural determinism, like religion, demands giving up the self to an outside force. Control is shifted and incorporated into a trilogy of symbols emerging from the name of the commune, iDEATH: I death, id death, and idea death.
"I death" is an outgrowth of the literal communal setting, but it transcends that level and also demands that self be submerged in order to achieve an integration with nature. The first person pronoun is dead in a social order that makes itself conscious of the interdependency of its parts, in a world that knows no dominion of superior animals. Thus iDEATH is an Eden without the built-in supremacy order that was established for Adam I and Eve. Classification begets power, and power begets pride, and pride is an emotion. Emotion is mostly absent from iDEATH, and thus the built-in failure for the original Adam and Eve, which finally made them challengers for power, is eliminated in iDEATH.
"Id death" is a natural outgrowth of the previous ideas. In a supercharged world of identity crises, no one is in iDEATH, for only the sensory self is significant, not the psychological self, which is diminished in iDEATH. The libido is transmuted into the purely physiological, the superego derives from the past, which does not exist. Finally, the ego is an extension of I, which has been essentially banished from iDEATH. Again, Adam II has reshaped Eden and eliminated another source for the Fall.
"Idea death" shares its source with Eden from which knowledge is banished. The original tree of knowledge led to a civilization remote from nature, but Adam II puts temptation outside his gates; the contamination cannot come from within, for a conscious act must be made to pass through the gate with its warning to the forgotten works. Thus Adam II has learned from Eden again, although, as with everything else in iDEATH, sin and knowledge take a physical form rather than the abstract condition of knowing.
In many ways the new Eden is the Bible for the contemporary college generation, a generation that rejects man's mastery over nature, rejects intellectual rationalism, rejects authoritarianism, and emphasizes the natural elements in existence, embraces the environment, and lives collectively rather than individually. The novel finally becomes the new Genesis, the Bible for a new world, with new assumptions, that is carried in the hearts of the young. Such moral stricture according to Brautigan is naturally rather than divinely inspired. Like other utopias, iDEATH creates a sense of boredom, of inaction, and the mundane tasks of existence seem to pale before the activities of an inBOIL who acts out, who literally rebels at the world of pure sensation by his acts of sensory mutilation. Adam II as the passive chronicler is not made of the stuff that we have come to know in traditional prophets, but in a world of new assumptions, he is perhaps the archetype for the future. By any standard, most utopian novels are not exciting reading, and yet an emotional appeal that demands every man to speculate on a future good exerts a pulling force on the reader. Brautigan takes us a step beyond because he bends the language, he shapes a universe of half-inch rivers and grand old trout, statues of grass and a waste land that even the birds avoid. The poet is inseparable from the novelist, so utopia gains a new dimension.
Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction? 16.1
1974: 18-24
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