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Archive 1

Beat generation

I'm not sure Brautigan qualifies as "beat generation". I believe the article once made reference to this. He's more like a "post-beat" though I'm sure he benefitted from being located in San Francisco, with its association with the beat scene. Sources anyone? Katr67 19:03, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

How about:
'The influence of the Beat Generation was evident in many aspects of the counterculture which came afterwards. Richard Brautigan was one writer whose career bridged the Beats and the hippie era. Too young to have participated as a full-fledged Beat, he had hung out on the fringes of the San Francisco literary scene from 1954 onwards. Perhaps the most widely read author of the sixties' counterculture, his book Trout Fishing in America sold over two million copies. His previous novel, A Confederate General From Big Sur, had attracted little attention when Grove published it in 1964: "Some critics liked it, others didn't, and the public was overwhelmingly indifferent. Generally publicized as a novel of the Beat generation, it appeared long after the Beats had ceased to interest the American public" (Foster 1983).
Brautigan was just one of those whom Gregory Stephenson, in his excellent introduction to The Daybreak Boys (Stephenson 1990), termed "second generation Beats:"
younger men and women who, in the late fifties and early sixties, responded to and were inspired by the Beat Generation. Some notable second generation Beats would include Ed Sanders, Ken Kesey, Ted Berrigan, Emmet Grogan, Bob Dylan, Richard Brautigan, and Richard Fariña. Their writings and activities, together with those of the original Beats, helped to catalyze the second phase of the impact of the Beat Generation: the counterculture of the late sixties and the early seventies.'

... from http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/UnspeakableVisions/Absorption.html ... Katsam 09:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks for the references. Some of this is referenced in the beat generation article too. So, not to start a huge argument or anything, but does he belong in Category:Beat writers? Katr67 14:23, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't think he does. By my lights, we'd do well to take him out of that category.Katsam 07:00, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Too negative

I'm sorry but this entry, beginning with his suicide then moving on to pan his work really, for lack of a more explicit term, sucks rocks!


I feel this article is far too negative and that quote should not be there.

Yes! I agree. And while I am not without some admiration for Ferlinghetti (our paths have crossed many time here in San Francisco), I believe his subjective statement carries far more weight than its value in such a short and incomplete article. ". . .I guess Richard was all the novelist the hippies needed. It was a nonliterate age." One would have to include Ken Kesey in that "nonliterate age". The complete statement reveals much about Ferlinghetti, but very little about Brautigan or his work. --terry1944
If that's the case, if Ferlinghetti's comments as a peer of Brautigan's are in some way unrepresentative of the opinion of Brautigan's peers or of critics of the time generally, then try adding some more appropriate examples. --Calton | Talk 00:29, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Indeed, one of the hazards of constructing a biography piecemeal is creating a lopsided profile that waits to be righted. Terry1944 02:50, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I've expanded the article and balanced it out a bit. It's a start at least. --Sachabrunel 14:20, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Well Done! Terry1944 19:35, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
People who think of Richard as a naif or thought he needed to "grow up" probably felt that his writing lacked self-mockery or what is today erroneously termed irony. The problem is that the irony is there, but it's so subtle that even guys like Ferlinghetti don't catch it. Ferlinghetti also said Richard could "never be an important writer", yet I've got a feeling Richard is more recognizable as a part of the national culture than Ferlinghetti will ever be. --Bluejay Young 04:47, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Unfashionable?

"This negative view of his work from the new literary establishment took hold in the late 1970s and early 1980s, though it could be said that his unpopularity was based on fashion and wilful misunderstanding." I don't see evidence for the generalization here that "a negative view of his work took hold" or that he suffered from "unpopularity". He published about a bazillion books and has a cult following even today. Where's the unpopularity? If someone doesn't have a back-up for that, I'd like to take it out. Katsam 21:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

His work was unfashionable, especially with the literary establishment, in the late 70s and early 80s, just look at the earlier versions of this page to see this. --Sachabrunel 11:15, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Very often when something is popular with "the masses" or with the ordinary readers like you and me that just pick it up off the stands, the lit'ry establishment will decry it as "genre fiction" or worse. [1] [2] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bluejay Young (talk • contribs) 05:01, 26 April 2007 (UTC).

The quotes included in this article are too critical of Brautigan.

Redirect or disambig for Brautigan

I have proposed twice on your Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Today#Brautigan that there should be something to catch Brautigan and it should be a redirect or a disambig page, but your admins User:Rmhermen and User:SteveBaker are apparently too busy with Star Wars and Star Trek and rejected twice an item about a real writer, so I'm dropping the stuff here and give up on this thing, okay?

Brautigan may refer to:

{{disambig}}

P.S. : or, this should at least be a redirect item: Richard Brautigan is very famous, refering to him as just "Brautigan" is quite common, and thus there should be SOMETHING to catch it at Brautigan, redirect or dab.

Sources

62.147.36.113 23:33, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Done.Katsam 09:21, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Sources

So there's this source tag saying the article needs more sources. I agree that it looks shady that pretty much all the references point to the same site. But that site is a repository of information from all manner of books, magazines, articles etc.

So, if I go through and find the original citation that each footnote is referring to, can we take the tag off? I hate tags. Katsam 09:21, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

If an editor feels a specific fact is challangeable then they should request an inline citation for that fact rather than just tagging an entire article that does list references. That just seems lazy to me. At the same time if you add a fact that could be challenged then the burden is on you to provide the inline reference. I went ahead and removed the tag for now. Awotter (talk) 23:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

When did he leave for San Francisco? The article says two different dates. Katr67 (talk) 22:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I checked the main reference, it states he attempted to move to San Francisco several times but didn't have the funds to stay. The sentence I added is pretty clunky, but I think it explains why he's then back in Oregon. Awotter (talk) 02:34, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The Tokyo-Montana Express

On the bibliography page of Brautigan's books, The Tokyo-Montana Express is listed under "novels" - not under "short stories." Only Revenge of the Lawn is listed under "short stories." While it's true that TTME is a collection of stories, unlike ROTL, the stories do have a unifying theme, as does Trout Fishing In America.

So, I think that in all the Brautigan templates, TTME should be moved from "stories" to "novels." Anyone disagree? Jphillst (talk) 03:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Funny you should raise this issue as I just finished re-reading TTME and was asking a writer friend of mine what constituted a "novel". I was having a hard time convincing myself that this was indeed a novel. I tend to agree with the reviewer quoted at http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0418,bkpark,53367,10.html:
"Perhaps, when we are very old, people will write 'Brautigans,' just as we now write novels," wrote Lew Welch in the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner back in 1968.
But, not only does TTME list itself as a novel on the "Books by Richard Brautigan" page, so does So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away and An Unfortunate Woman. Either Brautigan himself or his publisher(s) considered this a novel. So, i agree with you even though i think his books defy classification.Ronald Joe Record (talk) 19:34, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
TTME and TFIA both seem to straddle the line between the novel and the short story collection. However, I think both can be classified as novels as the chapters have a unifying theme. (Many beat writers -- like Kerouac, Vonnegut, etc. -- wrote "novels" that were essentially travel diaries, so TTME could also fit under that classification.)
Revenge of the Lawn, on the other hand, is more or less a miscellaneous collection of random writings from over an eight-year period that didn't seem to fit anywhere else.
I changed the listing on this article and the bibliography page. Later, the individual templates for each of Brautigan's book pages should be changed as well. Jphillst (talk) 03:14, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
An anonymous editor has moved The Tokyo-Montana Express back into Short Story Collections. I suppose there's good argument for either classification but I recommend going with what Brautigan and/or his publishers felt which was to classify this work as a novel. How does this work on Wikipedia ? Do we have to decide this same question over and over again every time someone puts it back ? Ronald Joe Record (talk) 23:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Again an anonymous editor has moved The Tokyo-Montana Express back into Short Collections. Is this a never ending cycle? Is TTME a novel or a collection of short stories? I guess we'll never know. Especially since those that represent the short story side of the argument are only IP addresses. I'm changing it back in accordance with Brautigan's listings. Ronald Joe Record (talk) 04:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The God of The Martians

The unpublished novel The God of The Martians was deleted from the bibliography section. With an appropriate reference, should this be restored? Ronald Joe Record (talk) 19:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Suicide

"It is said" that he left a suicide note that says 'Messy, isn't it?'

Sounds like it could as easily be a rumor. Cite please.

I do realize that I'm posting from an IP notorious for vandalism. I forgot my password.204.107.82.210 (talk) 19:32, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

This biography needs massive improvement!

There are comments going back to 2005 noting the poor content, but no one has taken it upon themselves to work on it. Richard Brautigan was an extremely popular and influential writer and deserves better than this. There is no mention outside of the bibliography of some of his best works, The Hawkline Monster, Willard and His Bowling Trophies, etc. At the least someone could label this as a one-sided and biased attack on a dead writer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.160.218.42 (talk) 23:05, 28 June 2009 (UTC)


There is also no mention of his marriage, the name of his wife, or of his daughter. Kgrad (talk) 14:06, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Erm, there is. What more can I say? Bienfuxia (talk) 08:08, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect county

I made this correction in April; however, someone without map reading skills deleted my correction. Richard Brautigan did live in Pine Creek, Montana. Indeed, I pass his old house, along with the barn where he did his writing, nearly every day. As a Park County resident, I know that Pine Creek is in Park County, not Gallatin County, which is the next county to the west. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lara Avara (talk • contribs) 20:36, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Writer / poet category

I restored the original Category:Writers from Oregon after it had been replaced with Category:Poets from Oregon. I don't object to using both, but as his most famous work (and indeed a giant part of his oeuvre) is a novel, it makes sense to use the higher order category. Writers includes poets; poets doesn't include other kinds of writers. --— Rhododendrites talk |  19:45, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

  • Aboutmovies changed it back once again with the following edit summary: "he is already in a poet cat; what we ALWAYS do is move them down, which is why he is in the American poet cat and not American writer or just plain Poet; see WP:CAT on how things work around here." What on WP:CAT are you referring to? I may very well be ignorant of this. It seems to me, though, that you shouldn't move someone into a subcategory just because the subcategory exists and the subject can be made to fit. If the higher-level category is a more accurate fit, why would that not apply? What service does it do to anyone to more narrowly categorize if the more narrow categorization represents the subject in a less accurate way? I'm not prepared to challenge some categorization guideline here; I'm just trying to understand why it makes sense. --— Rhododendrites talk |  01:28, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
  • In addition, each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs. This means that if a page belongs to a subcategory of C (or a subcategory of a subcategory of C, and so on) then it is not normally placed directly into C. Here, poets are a subcategory of writers, thus every poet is also a writer. That is how the categorization tree works. Thus, the text supports on multiple occasions that he is a poet, and since he was already in an Oregon people cat, we move him down. Now, if/when there is a short story writers from Oregon cat, he would be placed in that as well. Otherwise, what ends up happening is that an article gets placed in every possible category, which leads to over categorization. For instance we could place him in Writers, American writers, American short story writers, Writers from Oregon, and just about an endless list. But, since an article places in a subcat is considered part of the parent cat, we try for the most specific. This is why I just removed him from the post modern cat, as he is already in there via the Beat Generation writers cat. I did just add him to the Writers from Eugene cat, as he should have already been in a Eugene related cat, which because he was a writer means we then move him down. Hope this helps. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:45, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
    • @Aboutmovies: - Thanks for the explanation; that does help. The question I still have hinges on "logically" belongs. Let's say instead of "poets from Oregon" there were "Gothic writers from Oregon." He wrote a "Gothic Western," which is indicated on the page, so could logically be included. But if the point is to be useful, why doesn't "writers" serve him better? I agree that it makes sense for a page to be removed from a higher order category when added to a subcategory; "logically" just seems easily confused for "if it can possibly." (Though FWIW, it's true that Brautigan is very famous as a poet, so this isn't a direct analogy). --— Rhododendrites talk |  14:15, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
      • The logically belongs is determining which cats it belong too to begin with. That is basically covered in the first part of WP:CAT, the part where it talks about defining characteristics. Here, he obviously belongs in a poet cat, as he already was in one. But lets say he wasn't, and lets say it did no mention he was a poet in the lede, and lets say he really wasn't known as a poet, but somewhere in the article in mentions that he wrote a poem one time. Well, then we would not define him as a poet, despite the fact that he wrote a poem, as poetry would not be a defining characteristic, which means it would not be logical to place him into a poets cat. Aboutmovies (talk) 14:53, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

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Paranoid schizophrenia, alcoholism, and suicide

I've added a fact tag to the statement that Brautigan was a paranoid schizophrinic and alcoholic which contributed to his suicide. The article cannot contain this kind of statement without citation. In fact, it would appear impossible to me to cite any kind of source which would verify the contributing factors to his suicide. We should probably remove this statement but I'm leaving it here for now in order to allow attempts at producing verifiable 3rd party citations. Ronald Joe Record (talk) 18:39, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I had already added a fact tag there, and it had been removed. Mental illnesses are important yet sensitive subjects that should be mentioned. However, as such if we are gong to claim that he had a mental illness we should be able to cite a source for such a claim, especially if we are to claim such profound an impact on his life. Hyacinth (talk) 00:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
The article is full of unsourced controversial claims including abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, and so on. Other statements like how many times he met his biological father or whether his parents were divorced or separated also need citations. Wikipedia articles need to be verifiable by reliable independent 3rd party sources. Ronald Joe Record (talk) 17:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
The simple fact is that these claims are not controversial. These are things pretty universally known about him. Citations surely only need to be given when something is in dispute. It's just unfortunate that there's not that much available to use as source material. Bienfuxia (talk) 13:11, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Brautigan was diagnosed with schizophrenia after he threw the rock through the police window, but I'm not aware of evidence he was in fact schizophrenic throughout life even assuming the original diagnosis was correct. The depression and alcoholism are uncontroversial and widely known (see Ianthe's book and many other sources). Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t…." (Hamlet, II, ii, 211).96.235.138.179 (talk) 02:46, 24 October 2017 (UTC)Reinhard Eldritch
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