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Peter Thorpe's review of The Edna Webster Collection
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Brautigan Arrives at Land of Giants: A Review of The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings

by Peter Thorpe?

Often called "the last of the Beat Generation," Richard Brautigan was born in 1935 and committed suicide in Bolinas, Calif., at the age of 49 under a cloud of drinking and despair. He is best known for a brilliantly kinky book called Trout Fishing in America and for numerous literary excursions into the underground. Other well-known novels by Brautigan are A Confederate General from Big Sur and The Hawkline Monster. There are also nine volumes of superb poetry, including The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster and Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork.

The last-mentioned is emblematic of Brautigan's work, for he dabbled in surrealism, constantly juxtaposing ideas that normally have nothing to do with each other. Somehow, he was able to fit everything together, creating some of the most interesting and challenging writings of the later 20th century. His fame rose steadily in the '60s and '70s, and since that time he has been a dynamic fixture in American literature.

Although he reminds us of Haight-Ashbury and the "Beat" scene in San Francisco — Ginsberg?, Kerouac, the City Lights bookshop and all that — Brautigan has transcended that scene, moving beyond regionalism to take his place among the giants.

It's a far cry from his impoverished and humble beginnings in Eugene, Oregon.

When Brautigan left Eugene at 21 to seek his literary fortune in California, he had already produced a substantial body of high-quality poetry and fiction, most of it about love. He left the manuscripts to a certain Edna Webster, whose daughter he'd been courting and whose son was his best friend. There was a note: "On this third day of November, 1955, I, Richard Brautigan, give all my writings to Edna Webster. They are now her property, and she may do what she wishes with them."

Edna kept the writings for nearly 30 years before releasing them, and they now reside in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley. The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings brings these writings to the public, where they should find a warm reception by aficionados of Brautigan and by newcomers to his strange and troubled world.

Much of the power of Brautigan lies in his ability to surprise convincingly. We are often led along on a prosy path, lulled into dropping our defenses, and then suddenly ambushed. The result is a mixture of discomfort and delight, as in i dreamt i was a bird:

I was
resting
between courting
sessions
when some kids
snipped me off
with a BB gun.

Among the prose sketches of The Edna Webster Collection, we find the same lovely treachery. In a mini-play called Linda, two lovers kiss while standing above the dead body of a young man who was heartbroken in love. After they walk hand-in-hand across the stage and disappear into the wings, we hear a burst of laughter and the curtain goes down.

The message, if there is one, seems to be that we will never really connect with each other; we will go on living physically close together and, spiritually, miles apart.

The isolation forces the individual to fall back on his own creativity. Perhaps, for Brautigan, there was no salvation but in art.

Readers will appreciate this glance into the young mind of an American master. In The Edna Webster Collection, we are witnessing one of the most exciting "finds" in the history of American literature.


Rocky Mountain News?
September 19, 1999



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