Various Things
Well, first of all, I discovered that Richard Brautigan was a pretty slap-dash writer with very, very little to say. I can't understand why anyone who ever read one ever said anything good about one of his books. I will never attempt reading one again.
I did finish reading Bruce Guernsey's collection of poems New England Primer. Really good poems. Check them out.
I also started reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, as recommended by John Augustine, the best-read man in the tri-counties. Ford is quite the story teller. And, there's a hopefulness in the character and story that's just hard to find in contemporary writing. The highly-broken character who is slightly less broken by the end of a story is SO tired. In any case, that's not what you'll find in Ford's book. Check it out:
Something else to check out, especially if one is from Michigan. It's called Mittenlit: All about books and authors with a tie to Michigan. What a wonderful site to see. Check it out.
http://mittenlit.com/
Finally, if you've come looking for my new novel, Landscape with Fragmented Figures (and, of course, I hope you have), please buy it directly from the press.
http://smithdocs.net/WorkingLiveshomepage2.html
Also, I had a poem accepted for publication with Oak Bend Review: http://www.oakbendreview.com/
Check them out . . . and, at the very least, read the interview with Gregory Orr.
I did finish reading Bruce Guernsey's collection of poems New England Primer. Really good poems. Check them out.
I also started reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, as recommended by John Augustine, the best-read man in the tri-counties. Ford is quite the story teller. And, there's a hopefulness in the character and story that's just hard to find in contemporary writing. The highly-broken character who is slightly less broken by the end of a story is SO tired. In any case, that's not what you'll find in Ford's book. Check it out:
Something else to check out, especially if one is from Michigan. It's called Mittenlit: All about books and authors with a tie to Michigan. What a wonderful site to see. Check it out.
http://mittenlit.com/
Finally, if you've come looking for my new novel, Landscape with Fragmented Figures (and, of course, I hope you have), please buy it directly from the press.
http://smithdocs.net/WorkingLiveshomepage2.html
Also, I had a poem accepted for publication with Oak Bend Review: http://www.oakbendreview.com/
Check them out . . . and, at the very least, read the interview with Gregory Orr.
posted by Jeff Vande Zande at 2:42 PM
6 Comments:
Independence Day, by Richard Ford is also quite fantastic.
Brautigan, I feel, was a good poet, at least.
http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/678
I have never read one of his novels, thought. Currently I'm reading a novel by William F. Buckley, Jr. (a helluva writer) and next I have Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace planned.
After that? Probably yours. :-)
Brautigan?
I guess you had to be there. I remember the excitement people had reading these Brautigan novels in the 60s.
Trout Fishing in America? It was honey to bees. Everybody owned a copy and was passing it on to people they loved.
Same thing with Confederate General.
A couple years ago I went back and tried to read Trout Fishing and couldn't get beyond the first 10 pages.
What happened?
I think the way we look at time and rocks changed. What I liked about Brautigan was the spaces in between the words, I guess. The way nothing happened on the page but so much happened in the page.
By the way, Jeff, I'm reading your Into the Desperate Country, beautiful writing and a page turner!
So, John, were a lot of people using drugs while Brautigan was writing? That would explain a lot.
As to your kind words about Into the Desperate Country . . . well, thank you.
Be interested to hear what you think of the entire thing.
It pretty much seems that Brautigan represented some kind of hippie coolness. People liked to read him when they were zonked out or remembering being zonked out.
Brautigan was so laid back that he didn't have to make a lot of sense.
Trout Fishing in America didn't have to be about anything, and if you thought it should be then -- well -- you weren't the person it was meant for.
I taught a grad course 4 or 5 years ago on the radical literature of the 60s, and it was interesting to see how those radical novels annoyed most of the students. For all kinds of reasons, those students -- though about the same age as the people the books in the class were written for -- weren't looking for the same thing in a book.
Well, I guess Brautigan was writing for a different time. Maybe the world already felt to real and serious and young people went to books for other reasons.
Although, the world is pretty serious and real right now, and Confederate General in Big Sur still did nothing for me.
It's funny, but Erskine Caldwell was writing in a similar time of turmoil, and his work too strikes me as a little empty -- though full of sex.
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