Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

by William Hjortsberg

  Their second effort at making a good picture came soon after, when Edmund arrived at Brautigan’s Geary Street apartment to shoot the cover for In Watermelon Sugar. This time, the muse of the moment was but a passing fancy, a woman no one, not even Edmund Shea, seemed to remember. Richard never wrote her any letters, although he corresponded frequently with his other lovers. Her name was Hilda Hoffman. A graceful Virgo, she had only recently moved to San Francisco from New York, where she had been a member of a singing and dancing troupe. For a brief period, she had been Paul Krassner’s girlfriend, although he recalled only her hippie sobriquet and even that recollection remained vague, “Morning Dove . . . Morning Glory . . . Morning Star, something like that.” Brautigan wrote a poem for Hilda that later appeared in Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt.

  As always, Richard took charge, directing the whole operation. They went to work on the rickety stairs leading down from Brautigan’s kitchen to the trash-filled backyard. Stacks of old newspapers stood in sodden piles on the landing. Hilda parted her long fine blond hair straight down the middle and wore a cute little summer minidress ending just above the knees. Richard posed her standing alone on the stairs holding a mop, evoking the domestic qualities of Pauline, one of the characters in his novel.

  Richard got in on the act himself, sitting on the stairs a step or two behind Hilda, peering owlishly over her right shoulder. Edmund took a couple double-exposure shots as an experiment, showing Hoffman’s face framed in the doorway while her full figure hovered ghostlike in front. “I always liked that,” Shea remembered. Richard felt otherwise. After looking over the contacts, he chose a medium-close two-shot, which appeared on the front of the book.

  The next cover girl was indeed just that, a two-year-old child. She was obviously the only early model with whom Brautigan was not intimately involved. Caledonia (Jahrmarkt) Batman was the daughter of art gallery owner Billy Batman. For someone whose father was a junkie, she appeared remarkably well-adjusted. Bill Brach, who to this day has never read any of Richard Brautigan’s books, encountered Caledonia playing at a cookout in the backyard of a Digger house in the Haight-Ashbury. Many Diggers were in attendance, including Billy and Joanie Batman, Peter Berg, and Peter Coyote.

  Bill Brach aimed his camera at Caledonia and took several pictures as she wandered barefoot through the grass. Brach can’t remember if Brautigan asked him to take the photos or saw them at a later date. In any event, Bill was never paid for his work. This was appropriate under the circumstances, as the photographs appeared on the cover of Please Plant This Book, which was given away for free. Brach printed the pictures in an old-fashioned oval format suggesting nineteenth-century daguerreotypes. Brautigan used three on the folded cardboard covers of his book. Two were close-ups, and the other showed Caledonia from behind, walking away from the camera. Ianthe Brautigan felt jealous when she saw another little girl pictured on one of her father’s books. Over the years, Ianthe has often been incorrectly identified in rare book catalogs as the child pictured on Brautigan’s singular publication.

  The notion of a record album featuring the work of Richard Brautigan first sparked into life in London in October of 1968, when Barry Miles brought a list of poets and writers over to Paul McCartney’s three-story Regency house in St. John’s Wood. The Beatles started Apple Corps in April 1967 as a holding company to avoid paying millions of pounds in taxes. The logo came from a René Magritte painting of a big green apple (Le Jue de Mourre) owned by McCartney. A year and a half after the start of the Apple record label, the Beatles formed a division devoted to inexpensive spoken word and experimental releases. John Lennon christened it Zapple. (“A is for Apple. Z is for Zapple.”)

  In the midst of these trendy times, the only thing London lacked was a hip bookstore on the order of City Lights. Peter Asher (half of the pop group “Peter and Gordon” and married to Marianne Faithfull), John Dunbar (brother of Jennifer Dunbar, who would later marry Ed Dorn), and Miles decided to open Indica, a gallery/bookshop at number 6 Mason’s Yard. Paul McCartney helped paint the walls and put up shelving. John Lennon met Yoko Ono at an Indica art opening.

  John published quirky poetry and gained a reputation as the “avant-garde” Beatle, but it was Paul who first explored experimental ideas. McCartney wrote, “When [John] was living out in suburbs by the golf club with Cynthia and hanging out there, I was getting in with a guy called Miles and the people at Indica.” Paul regarded Zapple as “the point of connection between Apple and Indica Bookshop.” He and Lennon chose Miles “as the de facto label manager.”

  When Miles brought his literary checklist over to McCartney’s Cavandish Avenue pad, Richard Brautigan was known in England only through Trout Fishing and Confederate General, but had gained a reputation sufficient to be ranked alongside Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Kenneth Patchen, Charles Olson, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the list of luminaries. Zapple’s plans included not just poetry, but electronic music, lectures, avant-garde theatrical productions, “anything off-beat.”

  Miles first contacted Brautigan early the previous October, before the Zapple name had been coined and the division was known as “Words from Apple.” Richard wrote back, saying he was interested and proposing a notion to record his vision of America.

  In January 1969, Miles flew to America to begin recording the initial projects in the low-budget series. Miles traveled first for five days to Gloucester, Massachusetts, to record Charles Olson reading his poetry. He stopped next in New York for a session with Ken Weaver, the drummer with the Fugs. Weaver hailed from Texas and hoped to have an album of “Texspeak,” a folksy ramble showcasing his gifts as a good-old-boy redneck raconteur. Miles recorded hours of tape, but no album was ever released.

  After two hectic weeks on the East Coast, it was on to California with a detour to Los Angeles, where Miles met Charles Bukowski, who at that point still worked for the post office and was almost totally unknown. Having never read in public, Bukowski felt nervous about reading with anyone listening, so Miles “wired up an Ampex 3000” along with a microphone and stand in the living room of the poet’s “run-down” East Hollywood house and left the equipment and a dozen reels of blank tape. This field session became Bukowski’s first professional recording. Miles told Buk he’d collect the finished tapes in a week or so and headed north to Frisco.

  Miles arrived “a bit exhausted from traveling and constant work.” Richard was ensconced at Valerie’s place on Telegraph Hill. “He moved in to Kearny Street and more than once,” she said, “because, of course, we fought a lot.” The low-budget nature of the Zapple project prompted Miles to inquire about cheap lodging. Valerie “volunteered” that he could sleep on her couch. “Miles in turn hired me as a gofer, for want of a better word,” she said. Miles remembered it was Richard who suggested Valerie for the job as his “assistant.”

  Like Brautigan, Miles didn’t drive a car, so he rented “a shiny green” Ford Mustang. Part of Valerie’s job involved serving as his chauffeur. Miles also recorded the work of Michael McClure and Lawrence Ferlinghetti while in San Francisco. Golden State Recorders on Harrison Street had several other acts booked in February, so juggling his schedule between the three poets left Miles with a bunch of free time. He and Valerie took to cruising about the Bay Area together in the Mustang. They explored Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods. Valerie introduced her boss to the No Name Bar in Sausalito. Inevitably, they drifted into a brief love affair. Valerie found skinny Miles to be a fantastic lover, the best she had been with up to that point in her life. (She ranked both Brautigan and Ferlinghetti “lousy” in bed.)

  Wanting to keep their fling a secret (Miles had a wife back in London), the couple spent many nights in L.A. While commuting from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Valerie and Miles crashed at Frank Zappa’s spacious mock-Tudor house high in the Santa Monica Hills. From there, they drove together over to De Longpre Avenue to collect the Charles Bukowski tapes.

  Buk had a hangover. A middle-aged wom
an in a black slip and fishnet stockings skulked about. Valerie retained distinct memories of the “bad boy” poet’s place. “I can still see the beer cans.” Never mind the pile of car tires stacked in the corner of the living room. During their time in L.A., they visited folk singer Phil Ochs and the novelist Stephen Schneck (who was a friend of Valerie’s) and attended a performance by the as-yet-unrecorded Alice Cooper at the Whiskey A G-Go.

  From the start, Brautigan’s relationship with Miles was strained. “Miles and Richard were not each other’s greatest fans,” Valerie observed. Class differences played a part. Miles, a proper English chap, was “somewhat uppity,” in Valerie’s candid assessment. Creative disagreements during the recording sessions were rubbed raw by jealousy. Miles hoped to finish the project in two weeks (his instructions had been to “get as much recorded as possible” and edit in London).

  When Miles flew home, he left six hours of completed tape with the engineers in San Francisco. He thought the album was “by far the best” of everything he had recorded while in the States and was sure the Beatles would “dig it.” Miles felt the record was a “true expression” of Richard’s work. A “followup album might be a good idea.” He wrote to Brautigan from London, saying he hoped “none of the things that happened caused you any pain as none was intended.”

  Richard Brautigan insisted on complete design control over the record album, as he had with all his books. He brought up the matter during a phone conversation with Miles in London early in March. Miles replied in a letter: “The series is designed for people to ‘do their thing,’ so this is wanted. I will make sure that the contract gives you design control over the cover etc. etc.” Richard wanted an album with no writing on the front, much like the cover for Trout Fishing. Miles insisted that “the title must go on the front. “We have issued records with no writing on the front but it cuts sales drastically because no-one knows what the album is. It’s different with books because they are displayed spine-out so people can read the title that way.” Miles thought “a black and white photograph with simple lettering would do it.” Apple authorized him to pay for a photographer.

  Brautigan pressed ahead with the album cover project and brought in Edmund Shea to handle the photography. The photo session took place in Valerie Estes’s apartment. Edmund framed most of his pictures in the front room. He had not heard the tapes. Richard told him telephone calls played a part, and they used Valerie’s phone as a prop. Richard posed Valerie before a pair of closed double doors holding her black rotary-dial telephone. At one point, Shea took a few shots of Valerie talking on the phone. Not wanting to fake a conversation, she dialed a friend. Valerie thought of Edmund as “a round elf” and observed that he worked well with Richard because “he didn’t bicker with Richard over what Richard wanted.”

  Brautigan chose Valerie’s outfit, a paisley tunic she disliked with three-quarter-length sleeves and matching trousers that looked as if they had been made from an imported Indian tablecloth. He had her braid her long dark hair into two thick strands, something else she didn’t like. The picture Richard eventually selected showed his girlfriend smiling and holding her phone with the receiver firmly nested in the cradle. “He had some image that he wanted,” Valerie commented. “I have very negative feelings about that photograph.”

  Edmund Shea spent five hours taking pictures. Part of the time he shot from the street outside the building. Valerie leaned out one window, singing. Richard listened intently from another window. Looking at the contact sheets gave Brautigan a new idea. He liked the pictures of Valerie holding the phone and asked Edmund to take some of him in a similar pose, to suggest they might be calling each other. Shea did this work over at Brautigan’s apartment on Geary Street. Richard posed holding out the phone’s receiver, extending it at arm’s length toward the viewer.

  Brautigan’s telephone had a toggle switch installed on the side, enabling him to turn the machine off when he wished. “It’s really an incredible thing,” Richard said. “It gives you control over the telephone. I’m not a victim of it.” With the switch off the phone would ring but Brautigan couldn’t hear it. It was Richard’s habit never to answer the phone after eleven o’clock at night. “Whenever the telephone rings after eleven o’clock, I just automatically assume that it’s not going to be good news,” he said. “Years and years of practice of answering the telephone at that time of night, bum trip after bum trip. Now, I just don’t answer the telephone anymore.”

  Forsaking the scruffy pea jacket and pinback button-studded vest that had defined his image, Richard Brautigan attempted a sartorial makeover for the record album cover shoot. He wore a new turtleneck sweater (a gift from Valerie), a dignified thrift shop broad pin-striped jacket, and his number 13 medallion. He looked prosperous and well fed, as befitted a man whose income for the first two months of 1969 surpassed his total earnings the year before.

  The day before leaving on his trip to New Mexico and New York in March, Brautigan wrote to Miles, telling him that the title of the album was to be Listening to Richard Brautigan. “It is direct and to the point.” He agreed with the notion of black-and-white photographs. “I may use two or three photographs on the record, but I am not going to send negatives. I am going to send prints because the developing is very important and I always like to have it done in a way that pleases me.” He decided finally to use two photos, one of himself and the other of Valerie, a big smile wreathing her face, both holding telephones. Brautigan asked that Shea be paid a $300 photographer’s fee and that Valerie receive $50 for modeling.

  Brautigan traveled east in part because Seymour Lawrence bought the rights to his three Four Seasons Foundation books for a single omnibus reprint edition. A couple months earlier, Richard proposed the same arrangement to his former agent, Robert Mills, also representing Don Carpenter. Don happened to be sitting in the agent’s New York office at the time Richard made his call, “collect, of course.” As Don recalled, years later, Richard “yammered at the agent that he wanted Trout Fishing, Springhill Mine Disaster, and one other book brought out as a trilogy, in one volume. And Bob Mills was saying, ‘This is utterly impossible. I can’t have you as a client. You know, Don is here right now. I’m sorry, etc.’ and hung up.” Somewhat chagrined, Carpenter confessed at the time he agreed with Mills. “It was utterly hopeless,” he said, laughing at his own folly in the same breath. “Sold like fucking hotcakes!”

  Richard Brautigan set to work organizing a cover shoot for the forthcoming omnibus edition of his books. Toward the end of April or early in May, with Erik Weber still wandering in India, Brautigan again recruited Edmund Shea for the job. Richard’s first notion involved getting all three former cover muses together for a photo shoot reunion. When that proved impractical, he had a new idea. Brautigan persuaded his daughter to be part of the project, assuaging her hurt feelings over Please Plant This Book. Seeking some sense of continuity with his best-known work, Richard got in touch with his original muse, Michaela Blake-Grand. She agreed to pose with him once again.

  Edmund arranged to take the photographs in the kitchen of a friend’s apartment half a block down Sacramento Street from his place. “Richard had been in the kitchen and stuff, so he liked the idea of shooting it there.” At the photo session, Brautigan orchestrated everything as if directing a movie. He made sure the frying pan Edmund once used to cook him an omelet hung prominently on the white pegboard wall in the background. It added to the homey feel, with the white-enamel stove, coffee can potted plants, and hanging herbs. The tableau Richard Brautigan posed before his found-art stage set deliberately evoked formal family portraits of the nineteenth century.

  In a way, it was family. Ianthe sat at the center, wearing a dress with a big bow. Skilled with a needle, Valerie Estes designed and sewed it for her. Ianthe’s right arm pointed straight out from the shoulder. Her father stood behind her, hands on his knees, hunched slightly forward. Michaela sat to her left, hands hidden behind the folds of her gown. Mickey played the pa
rt of the mother in this family portrait, and for many years afterward, people assumed it to be a photo of Ginny.

  Richard’s hair hung to his shoulders, longer than on the Trout Fishing cover. He wore a loose-fitting black T-shirt with the number 13 medallion dangling around his neck. Brautigan thought Mickey and Ianthe’s floor-length costumes should evoke a connection between current hippie styles and the sentimental appearance of a bygone era. He carefully instructed Valerie on how he wanted his daughter’s dress to look. All three participants bore deadpan expressions of Gothic solemnity.

  The photo session lasted for hours. Ianthe remembered the pain of holding her arm out, take after take. Her father explained his idea for the cover to her. How she was pointing at the front dust jacket flap, which would have no text other than a simple greeting: “Welcome, you are just a few pages away from Trout Fishing in America.” She remembered it as “a very low-key day,” but nine-year-old Ianthe’s fantasy of a career in modeling was forever shattered by the experience.

  Richard wanted to print the dust jacket photo on the front cover as well, so the book looked the same, with or without a jacket. Children’s books often had covers identical to the dust wrapper art, as did the hard back publications of such gifted graphic artists as William Steig and Robert Osborn. Brautigan insisted that Shea be paid a decent fee. “Book publishers hate to pay real money for covers,” Edmund observed. He spoke from experience. Sam Lawrence offered $25 each for the use of the Four Seasons cover photographs in the Delta editions. Edmund Shea was to receive a total of $175, including his new photo for the cover of the Delacorte hardback. Edmund submitted a bill for $1,500 for his services. Sam Lawrence hit the ceiling, fuming that “we usually pay $50–$100 for all rights—jackets, promotion, etc.” After much prodding from Richard, Sam upped his offer to $450.