SUNDAY REVIEW / TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA / AN EXCERPT

Richard Brautigan with his "muse"
Michaela Le Grand, early 1970s.
Photo by Erik Weber

AN ESSAY ABOUT THE COVER FOR TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA. 

GUEST BLOG / By Richard Brautigan--The cover for Trout Fishing in America is a photograph taken late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco's Washington Square. Born 1706--Died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture. He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other. Then the statue speaks, saying in marble: 

PRESENTED BY H. D. COGSWELL 

TO OUR BOYS AND GIRLS WHO WILL SOON 

TAKE OUR PLACES AND PASS ON. 

Around the base of the statue are four words facing the directions of this world, to the east WELCOME, to the west WELCOME, to the north WELCOME, to the south WELCOME. 

Just behind the statue are poplar trees, almost leafless except for the top branches. The statue stands in front of the middle tree. All around the grass is wet from the rains of early February. In the background is a tall cypress tree, almost dark like a room. Adlai Stevenson spoke under the tree in 1956, before a crowd of 40, 000 people. 

There is a tall church across the street from the statue with crosses, steeples, bells and a vast door that looks like a huge mousehole, perhaps from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and written above the door is "Per L'Universo." 

Around five o'clock in the afternoon of my cover for Trout Fishing in America, people gather in the park across the street from the church and they are hungry. It's sandwich time for the poor. But they cannot cross the street until the signal is given. Then they all run across the street to the church and get their sandwiches that are wrapped in newspaper. They go back to the park and unwrap the newspaper and see what their sandwiches are all about. 

A friend of mine unwrapped his sandwich one afternoon and looked inside to find just a leaf of spinach. That was all. 

Was it Kafka who learned about America by reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.............. Kafka who said, "I like the Americans because they are healthy and optimistic." 

For the complete PDF text of Trout Fishing in America CLICK HERE.  

About the Author: 

Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) was a literary idol of the 1960s and 1970s whose comic genius and iconoclastic vision of American life caught the imagination of young people everywhere. He was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington, and moved to San Francisco in the mid-1950s when he became involved in the emerging beat scene. 

During the 1960s, he became one of the most prominent and prolific writers of the counterculture. Out of this period came some of his most famous works, the best known of which are Trout Fishing in America; his collection of poetry, The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster; and his collection of stories, Revenge of the Lawn. Translated the world over, his works helped establish him as one of the most significant American writers of his generation. 

As his popularity waned towards the end of the 1970s, he became increasingly disillusioned about his work and his life. 

He committed suicide in 1984. He was the author of eleven novels, ten volumes of poetry, a collection of short stories, and miscellaneous nonfiction pieces, works that often employed parody, satire, and black comedy.