I’m not exactly sure I’m following Richard Braughtigan’s whole Trout Fishing in
I get this notion that this personified and itemized idea of “trout fishing” is something precious, and perhaps is something that meant a lot to Braughtigan, if it wasn’t just some obsession he had and liked to write about. Trout fishing in
Braughtigan’s piece on the Cleveland Wrecking Yard and the trout stream for sale was something that Monty Python could do justice to. Braughtigan and the Monty Python cast share a little bit of the same sense of humor. This concept of selling a trout stream and all that comes with it—trees, flowers, bugs, fish, animals, grass, ferns, birds—is farfetched, yet it’s put together and formulated well, almost as if a clean substitution of something else for “trout stream” and “deer” will make complete sense. Braughtigan makes the completely abnormal seem, well, completely normal.
He has a way of telling his story very straightforward, and it flows like an organized stream-of-conscience, made evident by his throwing in of random things here and there. For the most part it all makes sense, but it’s hard to tell why or how, it just does.
I did like the story of the 6th graders writing Trout Fishing in
What Braughtigan might be getting at is the commodification of America’s wilderness and the California bush (as illustrated by his piece, A Note on the Camping Craze That Is Currently Sweeping America) in the sense that pieces of America can be bought or sold, whether it be paying for a campsite or selling actual lengths of trout stream. Nature isn’t being appreciated the way it is supposed to be appreciated, so instead Braughtigan uses these creative ways to relay a message about
5 comments:
I'm with you on not exactly understanding the multifaceted "Trout Fishing in America" but I think that you’re onto something when you say that it symbolizes the commodification of American wilderness. I got that sense throughout the book, but had it strongly validated by the "Cleveland Wrecking Yard" chapter, along with the chapter you cite, "A Note on the Camping Craze That Is Currently Sweeping America."
I agree with you that his prose seems very stream-of-conscious. After reading "The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster" I can see why. Brautigan strikes me as the type of poet who keeps a journal through his poems: they seem born of the moment and largely empirical. "Trout Fishing in America" was Brautigan's first novel (although published as his second). His wife at the time, Virginia Alder (who accompanied him on the camping trip during which he wrote Trout Fishing) said that "when he began to write Trout Fishing in America . . . He had to learn to write prose; everything he wrote turned into a poem."
Source: http://www.brautigan.net/trout.html
Braughtin's writting is free flowing, but in a way that's much different from HOWL and other Beat poets. "Sea, Sea Rider" is a good example of the nature of his stories almost. In a way they have a tendency to almost get away from him, as though his thoughts consume him and he is so locked into what is going on in his own mind. Although I'm sure every word in the store keepers speech about "what happened up stairs" were strategically placed, when reading it you can really get the sense of a man with so many built up thoughts and he is finally able to let loose. I admire his ability to let his mind wander with no filters or second thoughts.
It's so true, and so interesting: how can a writer write in a "straightforward" fashion, in a "stream-of-consciousness" way?! I mean, how does that work? How do we make sense of the seemingly random collection of episodes?
Bri, you raise a good question about how this style contributes to making commentary, and I dig everyone's comments. Does reading this collection of journal-poetry/wandering thoughts work? Does it make us realize anything? Remember also that RB's style also contrasts majorly with other formal literary traditions...
If we keep going with the "anticommidification" idea, how does it play out? Maybe RB's way of talking about commodification is by making it look absurd? Or perhaps by playing with the idea?
Dude, it turns out one of my friends from home is like obsessed with this book, so we were talking about it. She said she has been trying to figure it out for six years. This is what she told me (I kind of trust what she says because she's been reading it for a lot longer than me):
She told me that he wanted to write a book with stories from his life, but you can't just write a book about your pathetic life because he wasn't really famous or anything, so he wrote stories from his life and in each one he replaced a word with 'trout fishing in America.' You can't just write a book about your life, but you can write about trout fishing in America.
All the stories were tied together with this theme of trout and water-bodies, which was kind of his quirky way of making an autobiography. If you think about it, it kind of was an autobiography because the stories in the beginning are about when he was young, and then they relate to one another in a kind of chronology (like how the same characters show up again later).
I am with you as well with not understanding the whole connection in "trout fishing in America." Your idea and connection with the title and theme relating to the American Wilderness makes complete sense. I also agree with you that his style is very straight forward. His poetry seems like he more so states his ideas, but because of his talent he is able to put the words together in a very unique way.
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