The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writing by Richard Brautigan came in the mail yesterday. This is a collection of Brautigan’s writing from when he was young [21 or so] and unpublished. It sat in a safe deposit box for years until Edna Webster, the mother of his first girlfriend, contacted a publisher.
I’m glad I picked it up. I read it in about an hour while sunning myself in the park yesterday. Some of the work in the collection was amazing, some was solid, and some was still a bit immature, so it was good to see some seminal Brautigan and the hints for what was to come. In some sense it is easier for me to connect with these poems, because Mr. Brautigan is still fresh and his glumness seems only passing. This is in stark contrast to his later work where it is the humor that is only passing, or is only gallows humor.
One more book and I think I’ll have just about everything he’s written.
Adam,
Talk about a blast from the past! For me Richard Brautigan is all about living in a commune out West, eating microbiotic food , adopting a lifestyle and philosophy that evolved but never disappeared it just went underground making me a domestic anarchist.
Gloom? Never really saw it, I thought Ken Kesey was more gloomy,Robert Heinlein offered a surrealistic vision and Carlos Castenedas brought in a lot of spiritual awareness but Brautigan was just fun to read.
My favorite was “A Confederate General at Big Sur” but I also liked his poems and I will be honest…I read everything he wrote and loved it! Thanks for the flashback!
If you have Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt, you are my new best friend. I have been looking for YEARS for a copy of that book, only to come up empty handed every time.
Funny thing is, I first came across that book totally by accident when a kid in my Poetry Class in high school walked up to me one day and handed it to me saying, “Here’s that book you wanted to borrow.” I was a wee bit confused, as I had not asked to borrow it, and in fact had never heard of this Richard Brautigan, but I think it was some kind of strange fate.
Being that I’m a good book borrower with other people (not libraries, though), I returned it to him after 5 or 6 weeks of constant thumbing through. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
It’s been 9 long years.…have I finally found somebody else that knows what the hell I’m talking about?
I’ve been trying to find Rommel myself for quite some time. If I run across it, I’ll loan it to you.