In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Richard Brautigan was a counter-cultural icon. Now he is little known and receives scant acknowledgement for his important contribution to innovative American fiction. His best work is an exuberant interrogation of literary conventions and categories. He wrote poetry that can seem like minimalist prose, prose that can seem like poetry, and idiosyncratic novels that mischievously parody their own modes of being. Brautigan’s most radical work,
Trout Fishing in America, amounts to a re-imagining of the American novel. His experimental work was also commercially successful, answering a call from John Barth, among others, for a non-elitist literature. Brautigan’s poetry is mostly underwhelming, but his poetic sensibility is much more rigorously deployed…
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Citation: Tanner, John Edward. "Richard Brautigan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 June 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=552, accessed 23 November 2024.]
