Has anyone here read it? If so, what did you think?
Back in 1984, I was at the library and found a copy in paperback. What struck me was a review that was printed on the back cover. Total gushing, about how this book was destined to be a perennial, a classic, hugely influential, beloved by future generations as well as the then-current one. I don’t remember the exact wording, but I’m not exaggerating: the review really did make claims to that effect.
Except…it was sixteen years later, and I’d never heard of it. Yes, there are plenty of books published before I was born that I’d also never heard of, but there were many that had achieved “modern classic” status which I had heard of. And I’d never heard of In Watermelon Sugar, not even in passing.
And to this day, I think I’ve heard it mentioned once. On this board. Can’t remember if it was a positive or negative mention. I mean, as time went on, I was exposed to other this-will-change-your-life epics, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*, and I know of Trout Fishing in America, also by Brautigan, but no one has ever mentioned IWS, whether good, bad or indifferent.
So how far off base was that reviewer? Are there secretly a lot of people who love this book and credit it with helping them find their voice, or whatever it was supposed to do? Did anyone read it and not like it? I know House of Leaves is very polarizing, and from the summary I read of IWS, it sounds similar.
I remember in the early 70’s, people were carrying on about what an incredible masterpiece of prosaic cosmic wisdom that book was supposed to be. I broke down and borrowed a copy. I should have known better. The people who were raving about it were the same lightweights who honestly believed that those ridiculous Carlos Castaneda/Don Juan (or whatever his name was) books were literally true stories.
Anyway, I thought IWS was naive, self-consciously impenetrable “I’m a poet!” hippie nonsense. I got about halfway through it before I gave up on it. My reaction amounted to “What IS this crap?”
**BIG BUT…**Disclaimer- I don’t know jack shit about prose/poetry, and I knew even less back then. But I stand by my opinion, such as it is.
Strange, Watermelon Sugar has blended in my mind with A Gift of Watermelon Pickle.
I think some of it had to do with never having anything quite like these books to read before. I remember especially liking Trout Fishing In America, but I can’t remember a thing that I read.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek I still go back to. Siddartha by Hesse I’ve been thinking of reading again.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is really one of a kind. I hope that people still read it – especially guys. But it became something that I had to hold at a distance emotionally because of a tragedy that involved someone associated with the book.
Yes, I remember reading it when it first came out, and enjoying it. But I also remember thinking then that it was very much of its time, and would probably seem rather silly later on.
I haven’t gone back to it to see if I was correct; in fact, I’d forgotten about it.
I read both IWS and Trout Fishing, and while I enjoyed the poems, in the end they were a product of their time.
My uncle gave me a copy of Hesse’s Steppenwolf when I was in my early 20s, claiming it would change my life. I couldn’t even finish it because I got bored.
I read it back around 1970, when I was 15 and just discovering the counterculture. So at the time it was this sort of revelatory thing… not exactly “life-changing” but a part of the change that my life was going through at that point. So I have a soft spot in my heart for it, but I do think it must seem very dated these days. (I should have another look at it sometime.)
Brautigan was an excellent writer for what he wrote. He was really a poet and it shows. His prose works better as small doses of prose poetry. The book I liked best was Trout Fishing in America.
His style was definitely of its time. It became passé very quickly, but a large number of our most talented authors did some work in that style. Donald Barthelme kept it up his entire career. He’s revered but I don’t think anybody reads him either. Or look at Robert Coover’s Pricksongs and Descants, a candidate for anybody’s short list of best short story collections ever, or Russell Banks’ first novel Family Life or Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut.
That style is deceptively difficult. At first glance it reads like random bursts of unconnected description but it can’t be if it’s going to cohere into a full story. The reader has to stay closely involved because all the bits have to kept in mind to get the flavor of the whole. It’s the opposite of the “journey” novel, where lots of separate scenes can be taken in isolation. Readers seem to prefer those and those novels are less demanding.
Brautigan was never one of my favorite writers, but his best work is intensely beautiful. It seems unlikely he’ll come back into favor, but that can be said of most writers who are of their time.
