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 "But there is nothing like Richard Brautigan anywhere. Perhaps, when we are very old, people will write "Brautigans" just as we now write novels. Let us hope so. For this man has invented a genre, a whole new shot, a thing needed, delightful, and right." —Lew Welch, reviewing In Watermelon Sugar "All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds." Richard Brautigan was a writer. He enjoyed trout fishing.He was influenced by The Beat Generation and embraced by hippies but did not seem to feel at home with either group. His closest hippie-like affiliation was with The Diggers—Richard Brautigan  , a down-to-earth bunch who sought a realistic path to a totally free economy. He wrote many broadsides for The Communication Company, including a well-known "valentine" about STDs.Urban Legend has it that once The Sixties ended and the hippies got day-jobs, he was left without a significant audience, which may have contributed to his depression and subsequent suicide in 1984. The truth is that he made most of his fortune after the 60s, and hippies were only part of a much larger readership. His books were published in several dozen languages and continue to sell well in the U.S., Europe and Japan to this day. None of his books, with the exception of a few early poetry chapbooks, have ever been out of print.Despite (or because of) his issues with depression, his writing shows a light-hearted sense of humor, a vivid imagination and a love of language. Along with Kurt Vonnegut, he is credited with having introduced Japanese readers to American-style humor, absurdity and social criticism voiced in vernacular prose, beginning in 1975 when their books were first translated.His works tend to be difficult to describe. He uses a simplified, child-like diction (if it won't make your brain explode, try imagining the New Age Retro Hippie version of Ernest Hemingway). His novels will invariably have some One Paragraph Chapters. His later works seem to veer into genre fiction, including detective fiction and horror, but in fact still have more in common with the rest of Brautigan's work than any straight genre piece. He was also a poet, which basically let him crank his imagination Up to Eleven.He occasionally engaged in other creative pursuits. Of note is Listening to Richard Brautigan, in which the author records sounds of daily life in his apartment and reads poems and stories, as well as Please Plant This Book, a book of seed packets with brief poems printed on them (there is now an interactive flash version of this book online... no physical seeds though).Go ahead and give Mr. Brautigan a try. You will smile.Works by Richard Brautigan
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