We Become Like Theaters

Richard Brautigan's most successful novel was Trout Fishing in America, but I think The Abortion has some of his best prose.

The excerpt below is one of my favorites:

She had put a pot of coffee on before she had gotten into the tub and I was standing there watching it perk and watching her bathe at the same time through the open door of the bathroom.

She had her hair piled and pinned on top of her head. It looked beautiful resting on the calm of her neck.

We were both tired, but not as nervous as we could have been facing the prospects of the day, because we had gone into a gentle form of shock that makes it easier to do one little thing after another, fragile step by fragile step, until you've done the big difficult thing waiting at the end, no matter what it is.

I think we have the power to transform our lives into brand-new instantaneous rituals that we calmly act out when something hard comes up that we must do.

We become like theaters.

I was taking turns watching the coffee perk and watching Vida at her bath. It was going to be a long day but fortunately we would get there only moment by moment.

"Is the coffee done yet?" Vida said.

I smelled the coffee fumes that were rising like weather from the spout. They were dark and heavy with coffee. Vida had taught me how to smell coffee. That was the way she made it.

I had always been an instant man, but she had taught me how to make real coffee and it was a good thing to learn. Where had I been all those years, think­ing in terms of coffee as dust?

I thought about making coffee for a little while as I watched it perk. It's strange how the simple things in life go on while we become difficult.

"Honey, did you hear me?" Vida said. "The coffee. Stop daydreaming and get on the coffee, dear. Is it done?"

'I was thinking about something else," I said.

but I can see

Star Hole
by Richard Brautigan
 
I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,
 
watching light
pour itself toward
  me.
 
The light pours
itself through  
a small hole
in the sky.
 
I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things are
  faraway.

Corporal

Excerpted from Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan, ©1963:

Once I had visions of being a general. This was in Tacoma during the early years of World War II when I was a child going to grade school. They had a huge paper drive that was brilliantly put together like a military career.

It was very exciting and went something like this:   If you brought in fifty pounds of paper you became a private; seventy-five pounds of paper were worth a corporal’s stripes and a hundred pounds to be a sergeant, then spiraling pounds of paper leading upward until finally you arrived at being a general.

I think it took a ton of paper to be a general or maybe it was only a thousand pounds. I can't remember the exact amount but in the beginning it seemed so simple to gather enough paper to be a general.

I started out by gathering all the loose paper that was lying innocently around the house. That added up to three or four pounds. I'll have to admit that I was a little disappointed I don't know where I got the idea that the house was just filled with paper. I actually thought there was paper all over the place. It's an interesting surprise that paper can be deceptive.

I didn't let it throw me, though. I marshaled my energies and went out and started going door to door asking people if they had any newspapers or magazines lying around that could be donated to the paper drive, so that we could win the war and destroy evil forever.
An old woman listened patiently to my spiel and then she gave me a copy of Life magazine that she had just finished reading. She closed the door while I was still standing there staring dumbfoundedly at the magazine in my hands. The magazine was warm.

At the next house, there wasn't any paper, not even a used envelope because another kid had already beaten me to it.

At the next house, nobody was home.

That's how it went for a week, door after door, house after house, block after block until finally I got enough paper to­gether to become a private.

I took my God-damn little private's stripe home in the absolute bottom of my pocket. There were already some paper officers, lieutenants and captains, on the block. I didn't even bother to have the stripe sewed on my coat. I just threw it in a drawer and covered it up with some socks.

I spent the next few days cynically looking for paper and lucked into a medium pile of Collier's from somebody's base­ment which was enough to get my corporal's stripes that im­mediately joined my private's stripe under the socks.

The kids who wore the best clothes and had a lot of spend­ing money and got to eat hot lunch every day were already generals. They had known where there were a lot of maga­zines and their parents had cars. They strutted military airs around the playground and on their way home from school.

Shortly after that, like the next day, I brought a halt to my glorious military career and entered into the disenchanted paper shadows of America where failure is a bounced check or a bad report card or a letter ending a love affair and all the words that hurt people when they read them.

Naïf

"As an editor I was always waiting for Richard (Brautigan) to grow up as a writer. It seems to me he was essentially a naïf, and I don't think he cultivated that childishness, I think it came naturally. It was like he was much more in tune with the trout in America than with people."  ~Lawrence Ferlinghetti (source)

()

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan
 
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
 
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
 
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

 

It's an interesting poem, but I think it would have been better if he had just omitted the parts in parenthesis.

I could be wrong-- I don't know what he was going for there-- but it feels like he was attempting to mimic e.e. cummings' style. It's a bit distracting.

 

Sometimes It's Sad

"People need a little loving and, God, sometimes it's sad all the shit they have to go through to find some."  ~Richard Brautigan

Two of a Kind

"My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good whatever; it was simply dragging a child's soul through the dirt."  ~George Bernard Shaw

–•‒

The Memoirs of Jesse James
by Richard Brautigan

I remember all those thousands of hours
I spent in grade school watching the clock
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.

She Seemed to Belong

 Excerpted from A Confederate General from Big Sur by Richard Brautigan, ©1964

We stopped at a little café and got some coffee.  The coffee was brought to us by the world's ugliest waitress.  I gave her an imaginary name:  Thelma.  I do things like that.

My name is Jesse.  Any attempt to describe her would be against my better judgement, but in her own way she seemed to belong in that café with steam rising like light out of our coffee.

Helen of Troy would have looked out of place.  "What's Helen of Troy doing in here?" some longshoreman would have asked.  He wouldn't have understood.  So Thelma it was for the likes of us.

The best thing about Richard Brautigan's novels are the little detours and asides.  You can't focus on the destination, because it's never really clear where you're going.

Me. too.

"I was a strange kid.  I guess you could safely add very."  ~Richard Brautigan

Fragile Steps

Excerpted from The Abortion by Richard Brautigan, ©1970: 

We were both tired, but not as nervous as we could have been facing the prospects of the day, because we had gone into a gentle form of shock that makes it easier to do one little thing after another, fragile step by fragile step, until you've done the big difficult thing waiting at the end; no matter what it is.

I think we have the power to transform our lives into brand-new instantaneous rituals that we calmly act out when something hard comes up that we must do.

We become like theaters.

I was taking turns watching the coffee perk and watching Vida at her bath.  It was going to be a long day but fortunately we would get there only moment by moment.

Probably one of the most complex and daunting things I've ever done was help guide Mona through the process of getting her kidney transplant, and that was exactly how we got through it:  fragile step by fragile step, moment by moment.

This Is For All The Lonely People…

 Excerpted from The Abortion by Richard Brautigan, ©1970:

I reached into my pocket and took out a handkerchief and a candy bar.  When people are troubled or worried, I always tell them that it will be all right and give them a candy bar.  It surprises them and it's good for them.

"Everything's going to be all right," I said.

I gave her a Milky Way.

I used to carry hard candies in my pocket for the same reason.  Chocolate Parfait Nips.  They have a soft chocolatey center that surprises people and makes them happy, particularly if you've never had one before.

There are a lot of unhappy people in the world, and it's surprising how much good you can do them just by slipping them a treat and listening to their stories.

I need to start carrying candies again.

That Hurt People

"(I) entered into the disenchanted paper shadows of America where failure is a bounced check or a bad report card or a letter ending a love affair and all the words that hurt people when they read them."  ~Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn

And Whatever Intimacy

"Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords."  ~Richard Brautigan, in Revenge of the Lawn 

"I thought you were a trout stream."

Excerpt from Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, ©1967:

I remember mistaking an old woman for a trout stream in Vermont, and I had to beg her pardon.

"Excuse me," I said, "I thought you were a trout stream."

"I'm not, " she said.

Almost all of Richard Brautigan's poetry and novels are available for free download from The Brautigan Archives.