Brautigans

I've always read a lot of books, with at least several competing for my attention at any given time, and that makes it easy to pick up on certain things like rhythms, patterns of speech and so forth. One thing that I always notice, usually by its absence, is atmosphere, the mood created by the author when his or her words are strung together. When you read a lot of books you come to realize how rare it is when a writer can not only tell a story well but also impart an aura into their work that becomes palpable, as unique as a perfumed page that moves the emotions and the spirit like an internal music. Someone who wrote with that ability, and many times created a tone of profound beauty that fascinated me even when I understood little of what I was reading, was Richard Brautigan. Author of the celebrated Trout Fishing in America, which became something of a cultural landmark, he also wrote other books that reeked of some friendly yet ghostly presence that escaped from each page upon reading.
The very first time I ventured into one of his all-too-brief works was with Willard and his Bowling Trophies, one of his least popular books among literary critics, and one of my favorite books ever. I won't spend any time trying to describe his writings; only the books themselves can do that. But his chapters, seldom more than a page or two in length, could turn a few lines of scant detail into precious art in much the same way as would a freely sketched drawing by Rembrandt. With barely enough material to fill the page, both captured souls and essences in a manner that made it seem as if that was their primary purpose for living. Or maybe in Brautigan's case, the only thing that kept him alive.
Brautigan's life, in fact, was over just months after I began reading my mothers copy of Willard..., and I still have the small obituary she cut from the newspaper after his body was discovered inside his house in Bolinas, California. A bit ragged from age, it is used as a permanent bookmark in her small, hardback copy of his final book, So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away. A few years ago, his daughter, Ianthe Brautigan, wrote You Can't Catch Death, an amazing book that's on par with every great thing her father wrote, and in all honesty (given the circumstances that helped to create it) much more emotionally mature. It is a dual biography both of Richard's life and her life with - and after - him, an attempt to understand his upbringing, his career, his suicide. It also happens to be the kind of simple, funny, tragic and very human story that Richard Brautigan himself seemed to love writing.
Perhaps because two of the first Brautigan books I ever read were in fact Willard and his Bowling Trophies and So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away, I imagined that death was a common theme in his writings, unaware that there is far more joyful innocence and whimsy in his words than anything else. Reading much of his work only after his suicide somewhat tainted the happiness that was there on the page. But it is still there, and it still acknowledges that there were times indeed when he truly felt it, and I can assume truly loved living as well. And hopefully those times were not as brief as his chapters suggested.
I wouldn't know where to tell anybody to begin if they wanted to start reading his books, and I might tell them to start with You Can't Catch Death before they read any of them. Or maybe just pick one at random and wait until you have a quiet hour to spare. It's for certain, though, that they're friends worth having.
A decade before his death, Richard Brautigan described the melancholy he felt once when passing by some homes affected when the Yellowstone River in Montana overflowed. It was, he said, 'the silence of flooded houses'.
And so long as you know that there's plenty of beauty and laughter still inside them as well, I think those are perfect words to describe what he has left us.