Sinister: Richard Brautigan wrote better stories when he was alive (off topic)

[garymaher at xxx.com]

On Mon, 14 Aug 2000 22:23:50 +0100 (GMT/BST) Andrea Kittenmouse writes:
> i noticed that at least two people have mentioned the writer Richard 
> Brautigan in the last week or so in Sinister town.  he is one of my
absolute 
> favorites, especially his collection of short stories, Revenge of the
Lawn.  
> has anyone read this?  what are your favorite stories from it?  one of
mine 
> from that book is called "Trick or Treating Down to the Sea in Ships"
or 
> something like that.

Revenge of the Lawn is the one that does it for me, too!  It was
introduced to me by a high school English (meaning literature, mostly,
with a bit of grammar, as opposed to language -- have to translate for
the world audience) teacher, of all people, who presented us with A Need
for Gardens one day.  (The story is about recurring attempts to bury a
living lion in a too-small hole, much to the beast's consternation.)  So
was it this experience, at age 16, that warped me, or was I already
there?

Anyhoo, my favorites at one time (I know this because I marked them in my
book) are / were Homage to the San Francisco YMCA (about a man who
replaces all the plumbing in his house with poetry -- "I look great as a
kitchen sink," Emily Dickenson's poetry said); the aforementioned A Need
for Gardens; and The Post Offices of Eastern Oregon, which I won't try to
synopsize.

Then there's the wonderful Lint, which reads, in its entirety, as
follows:  "I'm haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no
vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint
rather than words.  I've been examining half-scraps of my childhood. 
They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning.  They are
things that just happened like lint."

Just looked at "Trick or Treating Down to the Sea in Ships" for the first
time in a long time.  This man was brilliant!

{I'm sorry, this IS the graduate level literature forum, innit?}

gary

P.S.  Will I never get to the point and start rambling about my precious
B&S?
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