My first Richard Brautigan book. I loved it. I remember my sister owned Trout Fishing in America. I was so young that every time I picked it up and looked through it I kept wondering why it wasn't a how-to book on going up to Gross and catching trout.

This book is so quirky. It touches on some serious subjects, but I love the meandering of Brautigan's main character's mind as he thinks about so many things and comes up with so many funny scenarios. It's not quite chronological, the main guy tries to make it so, but it just doesn't happen. The book had a very autobiographical feel to it but I'm not sure that it really is. I checked this out online after I read it and i never quite figured that part out.

I loved the mentions of Colorado, Denver, and Boulder. I wanted more! I definitely will visit some more Brautigan books. ( )

Brief, seems sadly autobiographical. Strangest dust jacket I've ever seen, covers only the lower half of the book. ( )

This small treasure, written back in 1982, was Richard Brautigan's last book before his suicide. His daughter held up its publication because of the haunting memories contained in the book. The waiting was certainly worth it for his fans. Much of how Brautigan's writing brings me pleasure is not clear to my conscious mind, and I'm a little afraid of ruining the magic for myself by overanalyzing his style. His mind and his writing had an openness and a sweetness to it that could lead his readers anywhere—you simply wanted to follow his lead without any fear or judgment.

This book was a writing experiment in which he purchased a 160-page notebook and simply had to fill every page. In form, the book is somewhat of a six-month diary. It has dated entries, but Brautigan doesn't seem able to leave it at that. Many times it seems that the subject, setting, time, and everything else changed several times within a single sentence. His mind jumped around making connections that were many times surprising, but they always "worked." There's a comfort to his writing, even when it's disturbing—it’s always an interesting place to be. One minute he's focused on a shoe in a Honolulu street, next, he'll be describing a tiny spider creating cobwebs in the hairs on his arm ... then ... wait ... he's pondering the reason some unfortunate woman hanged herself in his apartment house. Mixed in are countless other events, nonevents, hard days and nights of drinking, tales of Brautigan and women, and a most disturbing phone conversation between the author and his distant daughter.

What's this all about? Why does anyone want to read these ramblings? My answer would have to be to experience this wonderfully fascinating man's mind, to go along for the ride, and, at the same time, to be thoroughly entertained.

(5/01) ( )

This is an odd little book. I have never read a book by Brautigan before but have heard good things. It turns out those good things were true in this instance. This book was Brautigan's last book and was published after his suicide which makes the last line particularly haunting if you are at all familiar with Greek Tragedy: Iphigenia, your daddy's home from Troy!

It is hard to explain this book because it is technically about the deaths of two women one from hanging and another from cancer however it is composed of talk on all sorts of things from travelling, sexual exploits, and having your picture taken with a chicken in Hawaii. Brautigan's writing shares a similarity with Vonnegut's but I can not pin point exactly what it is.

The book is quite short at only 110 pages but packs quite a few laughs and doesn't really ever seem to be explicitly serious. All seriousness was understated and just below the surface. I enjoyed this book quite a bit. ( )

`You old hippy, you', the bookseller said to me when I bought this. What a cheek, I thought.