“Everything is different about her,” Richard wrote in a poignant unpublished short story called “The Deserted Imagination.” He sat on a red ceramic dragon in the little park at the edge of Chinatown, watching Ianthe play in the sandbox. Running his hand through her hair, Brautigan watched the sand fall from her tin cup and thought about all the lost time. She used to call him “daddy.” He knew “every turn and motion of her body and her mind and took deep pride in that knowing.” Now that time was gone forever. Richard felt that he was playing at being Ianthe’s father. “We are strangers sitting on a dragon together.”
The next night, Brautigan visited Bob Miller and told him his estranged wife was back in town. He mentioned seeing his daughter the day before and that the “vast difference” he noticed in her made him “feel strange.”
“Oh, God,” Bob Miller said. “Yes, Goddamn it to hell. They change without your being able to do anything about it.” Miller had three children of his own. As an example of the enormous transformations that take place during long separations, he told Richard about being incarcerated at San Quentin. Before going into prison “he took a good look around.” As the years passed, nothing seemed to change. “Everything remained the same.” Bob felt “suspended there.” When Miller was finally released he saw the San Rafael–Richmond Bridge standing in front of him for the first time. The bridge hadn’t been built when he started doing his time. “Oh, God, Look what they’ve done!” Bob exclaimed. Vast changes had transpired while everything stood still for him.
Brautigan dealt with his unhappiness by writing about the feelings he experienced. Disguised as fiction, his unpublished handwritten short stories read like journal entries. A piece dealing with his daughter’s return he called “To Love a Child in California the Way Love Should Be.” The narrator can only spend half an hour with his daughter, “put in an appearance as they say. I had a lot of things to do that day [. . .] She broke into wild joy when she saw me.” His daughter is excited by her new sandbox. “Al [Tony Aste] made it for me from bricks and sand.” She takes him downstairs to see the sandbox, and they play catch with her ball in the warm California sunshine until it is time for the narrator to leave. “And I told her very carefully and gently and lovely that I had to go out and see some people and that I would see her soon.” The little girl starts to cry. “I kissed her goodbye and gave her a big hug and kissed her again and it was not enough, nor would it ever be [. . .]” As he hurries down the stairs, she stands crying on the top landing. “Her voice falling after me saying love over and over again [. . .] It was 12:30 and I had many places to go. I walked down the street to them. They could not come fast enough.”
Anna Savoca broke up with Brautigan in early October. Loie and Erik Weber had an older friend, a furniture builder named Clayton Lewis, who lived in Virginia City, Nevada, the old state capital during the heyday years of the Comstock Lode silver boom. Mark Twain began his career in journalism there at the Territorial Enterprise during the Civil War, and a hundred years later, the abandoned mines and weathered Victorian buildings became an outpost for what would soon be called the counterculture. Erik introduced Anna to Clayton and they both felt an immediate and powerful attraction.
When Anna told Richard that things were over between them, he grew extremely distraught. In an emotional gesture a few days later, Brautigan cut his wrists at Anna Savoca’s apartment, smearing the walls with blood. Anna told Erik Weber about it in vivid detail. “She came home and she saw blood on the walls and all over the place and went into the room and Richard was sitting there with his wrists cut. It was very dramatic.” Brautigan’s wounds turned out to be superficial, and he did not see a doctor. He had done it to show Anna how much he loved her but she remained unimpressed by histrionics. The gesture made her angry, and she moved up to Virginia City to live with Clayton Lewis. The pair stayed together for about a year before Anna Savoca’s ardor cooled. She married her beloved Wally after all. Because the connection to Clayton had come through Erik Weber, Richard became “a little pissed” at him and their planned photo session was postponed.
Evergreen Review number 31 appeared in October. It contained four excerpted chapters from Trout Fishing in America (“The Hunchback Trout,” “Room 208, Hotel Trout Fishing in America,” “The Surgeon,” and “The Cleveland Wrecking Yard”) and attracted more attention among important literary editors in New York. Donald Hutter of Charles Scribner’s Sons wrote to Brautigan, “remarkable work—uniquely personal in its voice and astonishingly suggestive—one of the most memorable first exposures to a new writer I can recall.” Hutter asked to see the rest of the novel if it wasn’t already committed elsewhere.
Donald Barthelme, whose first collection of short stories, Come Back, Dr. Caligari, was soon to be published by Little, Brown, worked as an editor of the art-literary review Location and wrote to Richard Seaver at Grove Press, saying he and Harold Rosenberg were “very impressed” with the portions of Brautigan’s work they had read in Evergreen. They were anxious to see more of the book for possible publication in their own magazine and offered a payment “around $150 for an excerpt” of the length that appeared in the Grove periodical.
Richard learned of these recent developments through Donald Allen, to whom the letters had been forwarded. Heady news for a homeless and near-destitute poet. Fame and fortune seemed to glow like a rising moon just beyond the distant horizon. Allen had been working diligently on Brautigan’s behalf but suggested to Richard that a New York agent might better serve him at this stage of his career. Don had someone in mind, a man named Ivan von Auw Jr., an associate at the Harold Ober agency, the firm that had once represented F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Richard Brautigan wrote to von Auw immediately. The agent replied to 1482 Washington Street, which Brautigan had given as his return address, saying that he was “interested in principle,” but wanted to read Richard’s book or at least those parts excerpted in the Evergreen Review before giving an answer. “I am very hesitant to take on a new writer unless I have a very strong personal reaction to his work.”
Von Auw sent a copy to Donald Allen, who, by coincidence, had already written a letter to him about Brautigan, “a young San Francisco writer with a distinctly original talent.” Allen discussed both his novels (the first, “a brilliant Western surrealist [. . .] performance,” the second, “closer to conventional story,” but “also an elaborate and amusing employment of metaphor”), tracing their wayward course through the treacherous currents of New York’s publishing world. Allen said that Brautigan had that day sent off “copies of the two novels for your consideration.”
Four days later in Dallas, an assassin’s bullets blasted away the dream of Camelot, and the nation’s flags hung at half-mast all the way to Christmas. A terrible sadness lingered throughout the land, reinforced by those indelible images (frames from the Zapruder film, Jackie’s bloodstained pink Chanel suit, the riderless black gelding with gleaming boots inverted in the stirrups, John-John saluting the caisson, Jack Ruby gunning down Lee Harvey Oswald on TV over and over again) burned into the American psyche like a freeze-frame nightmare.
Richard Brautigan felt part of the collective shock, living like everyone in “a tunnel of mourning,” but had problems of his own to worry about: no money, no place to live, no publisher yet for his two unique novels. Although he told Donald Allen that he was “well into his third novel,” in truth, he had done almost nothing on “Contemporary Life in California.” Brautigan compiled a handwritten list of fifteen possible chapter titles (“April California,” “Fame in California,” “The Names of the Characters in This Novel,” “The F. Scott Fitzgerald AAHHHHHH”), drawing a small box next to each one, planning to check them off in turn as each was written. By the end of November, very few boxes contained check marks.
Things started looking up in December. On the first of the month, Richard moved to apartment C at 483 Francisco Street, not far from Fisherman’s Wharf. By some happy coincidence, Ginny and Ianthe lived one bl
ock away on Bay Street and he could visit his daughter as often as he wished. Going on four, Ianthe felt happy to be within walking distance of where her father lived. Richard’s new place was a sublet, the owners away in Mexico. They were friends of Brautigan’s and charged him only $45 a month rent. In return, he had to look after their birds.
The back of the apartment contained a large foliage-filled aviary. Pierre Delattre remembered “twenty or thirty [. . .] little parakeet types.” Erik Weber thought they were “huge birds.” Price Dunn recalled “a whole bunch of songbirds.” Richard’s job was to feed them every day and change their water. There was “a little vacuum cleaner to tidy up the aviary when it was needed.” One afternoon, Delattre accompanied him to a hardware store in North Beach to buy chicken wire for repairing the cages. Richard Brautigan took the welfare of his feathered charges very seriously.
One Sunday not long after moving in, following a visit with Jack Spicer in Aquatic Park, Richard and Ginny walked with Gui de Angulo along the waterfront toward the Embarcadero, sharing a loaf of French bread they’d bought in North Beach. Like four-year-olds the world over, Ianthe ran on ahead. “There was this vast expanse of cement,” Ginny recalled. Not a car or truck in sight. A perfect day for a “recreational” game they played with the seagulls. Richard liked tossing chunks of bread high into the air to watch the eager gulls catch them in midflight.
Ianthe spotted a small animal and ran toward what turned out to be a wharf rat. The rodent bit the child on the hand, and she rushed crying into her mother’s arms. “I don’t know whether the rat actually bit Ianthe,” Ginny said. “I can’t remember seeing any puncture marks.” Gui sprang into action. She “whipped off her jacket,” trapping the rat under the coat. This bold moved spared the little girl a painful series of rabies shots. The Brautigans had the animal tested, and the results came out negative. Ianthe needed only an injection for tetanus in the emergency room. Richard warned his daughter never to pick up strange animals, telling a story of being bitten on the finger in Golden Gate Park while feeding peanuts to a squirrel.
Brautigan got in touch with his old buddy Price Dunn, inviting him to drop by one afternoon. “Richard called me up to come over, and he’s got something that he wants me to read.” The manuscript for A Confederate General from Big Sur rested on a table in the middle room of the apartment. Richard handed Price the stack of pages. “I want you to read this,” he said, “and tell me what you think.” No mention was made of the subject matter. Price sat down and read the whole thing straight through. When he finished, Richard poured them both some wine. As they drank, he asked, “Well, what did you think about it?” Price knew Richard wanted to see if he was “pissed off or offended in any way.”
“It’s fantastic,” Price told him, knowing his friend had created a wonderful character in Lee Mellon. Price Dunn had enough self-confidence to understand that the Confederate General was fictional, inspired by and at the same time unrelated to him. “It’s really a marvelous book,” he said. “Congratulations.” Brautigan felt satisfied and smiled his sly smile, pure delight dancing in his eyes. Best of all, Price told him “this book will sell because it’s closer to the conventional.”
Erik Weber captured that same pleased expression when he came over to the apartment later in the month. Richard had called and asked if he wanted to take the photographs they’d discussed earlier. Dust jacket pictures seemed imminent by then. Erik posed Richard in front of the aviary, the birds flitting between perches in the background. It took only eight shots for Weber to know he’d gotten the one he wanted. Brautigan’s hair was still cut short on the sides, but his familiar public image began to emerge. The drooping mustache partly hid his smile. He wore a turtleneck under a denim shirt and had discarded his black horn-rims in favor of the round rimless glasses soon to become one of his trademarks. Years later, Keith Abbott described the essence of the photograph: “His open, cheerful, confident expression are [sic] characteristic of his belief in his prospects while his blue work shirt displays the uniform of artistic poverty.”
Off in New York, the wheels of commerce continued slowly turning. Coward-McCann turned down Trout Fishing in America. Donald Hutter wrote to the old Washington Street address to reaffirm Scribner’s interest in the book. Donald Allen discussed Brautigan’s work with Arabel Porter of New American Library. She wanted to have a look for their new hardbound series. He also kept in touch with Ivan von Auw, suggesting that the “slicks (Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Mlle, etc.)” might be interested in publishing excerpts, “before giving Location much of the unpublished balance of Trout Fishing, even though they offer to pay, it might be worth trying a few on the fashion magazines.” With this in mind, Allen wrote to Madeline Tracy Brigden, fiction and poetry editor of Mademoiselle, urging her to consider using some sections from both Brautigan novels.
All this time, Dick Seaver of Grove Press had been trying to get in touch with Brautigan. He sent a telegram on Friday the thirteenth, and Western Union informed him that they had hung notices on the doors of two different San Francisco apartments. Checking his files, Seaver discovered he had three addresses for Brautigan and realized in all likelihood none of his messages had ever reached Richard. Failing to find him, he phoned Don Allen with news of Grove’s decision to become his publisher.
Four days later, having learned of the Francisco Street address, Seaver wrote Richard Brautigan with the good news. Grove Press offered him $1,000 as an advance for A Confederate General in Big Sur, at the standard royalty rates. In addition, they wanted an option on Trout Fishing in America (with a $1,000 advance payable within three months of the publication of his first novel) as well as an option on his third novel, the terms to be mutually agreed upon after delivery of the manuscript.
Seaver said Don Allen had told him that Ivan von Auw was now acting as Brautigan’s agent and would officially transmit the news soon, “if he has not already.” Acting in his position of managing editor, Seaver expressed the pleasure of Grove Press to have him as one of their authors. “I think you have done some fine writing, and on the basis of what we have read, am confident you are going to do a great deal more.”
Von Auw wrote to Brautigan on the same day, saying Harold Ober Associates wished to represent him. He included the news that Barney Rosset (Grove Press) wanted to become his publisher. This letter was sent to 1482 Washington Street, and Richard didn’t receive it right away. The next day, von Auw wrote again, this time care of Donald Allen, conveying the same information in greater detail. He asked Don to read the letter to Brautigan and then forward it on to him.
After years and years of privation and struggle, Richard Brautigan could not have asked for a better Christmas present. He finally found a New York publisher and had landed a three-book deal in the bargain. By any measure other than his own native Teutonic pessimism, he should have been overjoyed, yet several things about the arrangement troubled him. He spent the holidays brooding over the details and ate his Christmas dinner alone. Hot dogs and beans (beanie-wienie, his old standby) washed down by a bottle of rum mixed with Coca-Cola.
A day or so later, he attempted to delineate his concerns to Ivan von Auw in two letters he never mailed. The first, Brautigan dictated to a friend who took it down in longhand; the second, he typed himself. Grove’s recent offer was “disappointing.” Richard did not find it “reasonable.” Brautigan’s unhappiness had nothing to do with money. He was upset by the proposed sequence of his books’ publication. I wrote Trout Fishing in America first and A Confederate General from Big Sur second. They were written as the result of an exploratory esthetic. I will not allow the order of this esthetic to be distorted. I believe it should continue to develop in a natural way and be published in the order of its development. I plan on writing a lot of books.” For Brautigan, this was a “crucial” issue. He thought of “Contemporary Life in California” as the next in “a whole series of novels based on this conception.”
Donald Hutter’s continued interest in Trout Fi
shing in America also gnawed at Richard. If Scribner’s published his first novel first, his aesthetic order would remain intact. And what about Donald Barthelme at Location? Shouldn’t he get to see some of the requested material? In addition, Brautigan wanted to know what terms or agency agreement Harold Ober Associates proposed. “I hope that we can work out a mutually satisfactory relationship. It is vital to me, particularly at this stage of my writing career, that I have close contact with and careful guidance from a representative in New York.”
In spite of his many concerns, Richard remained unable to conceal his glee when he bumped into Don Carpenter in North Beach around this time. “He was really smug and smirking and full of himself,” Don recalled, still irritated decades later. “He was on his way, on his way.” Brautigan boasted of getting $1,000 apiece for his books from Barney Rosset. Don Carpenter felt sick listening to him. “I never had a more uncomfortable interview with a poet in my life as standing on the corner of Broadway and Columbus hearing him rant about having sold two novels with that incredibly superior bullshit.”
On December 28, Richard wrote to Ivan von Auw in New York. He said nothing about his displeasure at having his two novels published out of sequence by Grove. Brautigan also didn’t bring up another concern. In the letter he typed but never mailed, he’d been careful to mention he hadn’t signed an agency agreement before being informed Grove Press wanted to publish A Confederate General from Big Sur. It bothered him to think of paying a commission to Harold Ober Associates when no work had been done by them on his behalf. Donald Allen, as an editor of the Evergreen Review, deserved all the credit for setting the wheels in motion with Dick Seaver. Richard skirted the issue, playing his cards close to his vest. “If you will tell me something about your agency and something about yourself,” he wrote, “I will tell you something about myself, and why I write novels.”
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