Friday, October 10, 2008

Trout Fishing and The City

Trout Fishing and The City

         

In the work by Richard Brautigan, “Trout Fishing in America,” his experience with trout fishing in and around The City (San Francisco) is the backdrop for his vision of what The City stands for. The moments and events he has experienced within the bay area pepper this work. In placing the action of his “novel” within this context he is painting a picture of the San Francisco the he knows and sometimes loves. The physical attributes of the landscape weaves themselves in and out of his short prose-like poems and a description of exactly where he is and what is surrounding him often begin each short chapter.

He repeatedly places the action, such as in the chapter about fornicating in a damned up part of a local hot spring, within the context of the landscape around him. In this passage he details the rundown manmade hot spring pond as being filled with “green scum” and dead fish floating around its edges. Yet despite these vile decorations this spot has served him and his wife as a romantic getaway from the trials of urban living. He even waits until the dead fish passes under his wife’s chin to start making love to her, as if it was a green light. This theme of decay engulfing the landscape, or at least it’s rough and neglected edges, is a recurring theme. Brautigan does not run from it but instead embraces them and finds “excitement” of all forms in it and uses it as a muse for his work.

 Furthermore, Brautigan often begins his short chapters outside. This constant interaction with the open, outdoors of the City makes me think that he did not find comfort in the large urban setting of the city. The outdoors almost seems to be his living room. One such short chapter where he does his living outdoors is the one explaining his after work routine: he goes to the park across the street from a church, buys a bottle of sweet port wine, and he and his friends sit and drink and compare the relative advantages of opening a flea circus to checking into a mental hospital. They sit for hours, until the sun begins to drop and the air take on a chill, to venture home. He lives, drinks, plays and fucks outside in the free spaces that pocket the bay area. This is his definition of life in San Francisco.

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