http://www.wbur.org/npr/123439516
February 6, 2010
The book Trout Fishing in America was published in 1967 and became an
instant cult favorite. Guest host Audie Cornish speaks with writer
and former national poet laureate Billy Collins about the book's
author, Richard Brautigan. Collins describes Brautigan's writing as
an American form of surrealism.
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AUDIE CORNISH, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of Richard
Brautigan, an iconic writer from the '60s and the author of the book
"Trout Fishing in America." The book title, which has inspired
communes, a tribute band, and at one point, a teenager to legally
adopt its name isn't really about fishing; although, it does wind its
way around America's creeks, rivers and valleys. Throughout its 112
pages, the title appears as the name of a person, a place, an idea,
leaving narrative conventions along the wayside.
"Trout Fishing in America" is being reissued with an introduction by
Billy Collins, a writer and former National Poet Laureate who joins
us now from our New York bureau.
Billy Collins, welcome.
Mr. BILLY COLLINS (Author, Poet Laureate): Thank you. It's good to be
with you.
CORNISH: So in your introduction you talk about traveling in the same
circles as Richard Brautigan back in San Francisco. Tell us about
him. What was he like?
Mr. COLLINS: Well, I never met him personally. There were various
spottings of him. He was very easy to spot, and I describe him in the
introduction as being a very tall fellow who combined hippie dress,
colorful shirts and beads with 19 century pioneer clothes, including
a waistcoat and boots, all topped by an enormous beat-up Western hat.
He looked like a man who had just stepped out of the same
pre-industrial America, whose passing he lamented in his fiction
-post beatnik and pre-hippie.
He was thought of as a rather mysterious figure; a man that didnt say
much but was doing something very peculiar in his writing.
CORNISH: He's been described as a little bit Beat generation, a
little bit hippie generation, or a sort of bridge writer. And I'm
wondering if you can give us a sense of what that meant?
Mr. COLLINS: I think he just fell between the generations. And I know
from reading a book by his daughter, Ianthe, that he really didnt
want to be identified with either. But he did give off a sense of
being a guy from another time and I think in "Trout Fishing in
America," one of the under songs in the book is a kind of lament for
the passing of a 19 century, or even earlier pastoral America and its
replacement by an industrial America.
CORNISH: Can you read that passage from the book?
Mr. COLLINS: Yeah. One of the features of the book is very peculiar
metaphors. And in this little chapter in the beginning is basically a
long comparison of trout to the American steel industry. I'll just
read a paragraph here.
As a child, when did I first hear about trout fishing in America?
From whom? I guess it was a stepfather of mine. Summer of 1942. The
old drunk told me about trout fishing. When he could talk, he had a
way of describing trout as if they were a precious and intelligent
metal. Silver is not a good adjective to describe what I felt when he
told me about trout fishing. I'd like to get it right. Maybe trout
steel. Steel made from trout. The clear snow-filled river acting as
foundry and heat. Imagine Pittsburgh. A steel that comes from trout,
used to make buildings, trains and tunnels. The Andrew Carnegie of
Trout! Explanation point.
CORNISH: For people who aren't so familiar with his style, can you
talk about what were some of hallmarks of this particular book, and I
guess of Brautigan?
Mr. COLLINS: The book "Trout Fishing in America" refuses to be a
novel. There's no kind of consistent character development, or
chronology or a plot, really. And it also refuses in a way to be a
book. For example, the first chapter of "Trout Fishing in America" is
a discussion of its own cover. It has a strange self-awareness of
itself as a book. And the other aspect that's very consistent is the
sense of very bizarre comparisons. He talks about furniture that
looks like baby food.
CORNISH: Right.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. COLLINS: And he talks about an old woman who tends a huge wood
furnace like the captain of a submarine in a dark basement ocean
during the winter. And some of the comparisons are quite moving and
others are just plain bizarre. He describes a woodcock, a bird that
has a long bill on it, that's like putting a fire hydrant into a
pencil sharpener then pasting it on to a bird. It's a kind of an
American brand of surrealism that I think was very new at the time.
CORNISH: It was published in 1967 and what kind of impact did it have then?
Mr. COLLINS: Well, it had - I think it had a huge impact. It achieved
a kind of instant cult status, not just for adolescents but I think
for a whole generation that was weaned on a much more traditional
kind of fiction. And I think it also had to do with something of the
drug culture, that this was a kind of refracted and drugged way of
looking at things. It was a disruptive and surrealistic vision.
CORNISH: Is there anything about today's generation and about the
kinds of media that's out there that you think lends itself to trout fishing?
Mr. COLLINS: If we suffer from a kind of cultural ADD, in that we're,
you know, jumping from one thing to another, and there's quite a bit
written about how Googling is changing people's reading habits, this
is a very episodic book. It jumps from one thing to the other. It's
not interested in kind of long consistent thread of meaning, and in
that sense, it seems perfectly fitted to our computer times.
CORNISH: Billy Collins, former United States poet laureate. He wrote
the new introduction for the reissued book Trout Fishing in America,
and he joined us from our New York bureau. Billy Collins, thank you
for speaking with us.
Mr. COLLINS: Thank you.
.
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