Word: brautiganisms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Richard Brautigan's latest work has just drifted in from out West and is now crashing at neighborhood bookstores. Revenge of the Lawn is a collection of 62 stories written between 1962 and 1970 that fit without the slightest crowding into a 174 page book. The pieces range in length from a few pages to several lines, tiny Brautiganisms that haven't made it into his poetry collections only because the words don't rhyme. Brautigan bills them as fiction but their accent gives them away as autobiographical trivia...
...Brautigan's strength lies in his affectionate and ingenious trivialities. He takes the random actions of strangers and old girlfriends into his musings and they come out pleasant speculations and philosophical chuckles. One four-pager describes the narrator's spring fun-ins with two of his ex-girlfriends that end with anti-climactic cups of coffee. "They say in the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love," Brautigan concludes. "Perhaps if he has enough time left over, his fancy can even make room for a cup of coffee." For other stories he doesn't stop...
...Brautigan's most charming vignettes echoes the talent of a far greater contemporary writer. His "High Building In Singapore" anecdote is so similar to incidents in Salinger that it seems like emotional plagiarism. In Buddy Glass's epic letter to his brother Zooey in Franny and Zooey he describes a similar encounter with a little girl who was standing at the lamb chop counter with her mother...
...Richard Brautigan sounds continually like a low-key Buddy Glass oriented to Big Sur rather than New York City. The stories in this book could be entries into a hip, West Coast Buddy's journal. They both have that funny way of describing the commonplace, and they give casual gestures the liveliness of dialogue. The two narrators share the same fanciful tone and Brautigan can go far with his fancy...
...Brautigan is at his best when he lets fancy take over completely. In "The Literary Life In California 1964" he describes a bookstore browser skeptically looking through one of his own books. After a few minutes of nervous indecision the man takes out a penny and tosses it. After looking at the coin the man puts back the book of poetry and walks out of the store looking very relaxed. "I walked over and found his reluctance lying there on the floor," Brautigan writes. "I put it in my pocket. I took it home with me and shaped it into...