Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

by William Hjortsberg

  The Grateful Dead had been scheduled to follow the Airplane but canceled at the last minute after the attack on Balin. The Flying Burrito Brothers took their place and played beautifully. Their set was interrupted by the roar of choppers when the Oakland Angels arrived and drove their bikes down through a crowd pressed as close together as rush hour commuters. Up next came Crosby, Stills and Nash, their delicate harmonies upset by the violence erupting around them. The Angels swilled beer and bashed at an overenthusiastic crowd attempting to clamber up onto a stage built too low for safety.

  Gatz Hjortsberg was at Altamont, along with his wife and young daughter and several friends from Bolinas, who had given them a ride. Just back from his first stay in Montana, he marveled at the size of the crowd, equal to half the Treasure State’s population. The Bolinas contingent had set up with blankets and picnic baskets high on the hill above the stage. Here the mood remained happy and calm. The music sounded far away, like the approach of a distant parade. Children played; food and joints circulated freely; the only violence to be seen was through a pair of binoculars. The little Bolinas group headed home at sunset, before the real trouble began.

  As it grew dark and cold, bonfires built of creosote-treated fence posts were lit. The fiery scene reeked of damnation. More than an hour passed, and still the Rolling Stones had not appeared. The impatient crowd grew increasingly restive. Backstage, the band chatted and tuned their instruments. Furious, Bill Fritsch told Mick Jagger, “You better get the fuck out there before the place blows beyond sanity.” When Jagger replied they were “preparing” and would go “when good and ready,” Sweet William got really pissed. “I want to slap his face,” he said. “I told him, ‘People are gonna die out there. Get out there! You been told.’”

  At last, the Rolling Stones came onstage, surrounded by a cordon of Hells Angels. Mick, whiskey bottle in hand, broke into “Sympathy for the Devil.” Camera crews recorded the event. The Maysle brothers filmed it all for their documentary, Gimme Shelter. The anarchy reached its apex during the opening verses of “Under My Thumb.” Meredith Hunter, an eighteen-year-old black man wearing a lime green suit, leaped toward the stage, stoned out of his mind on meth and brandishing a pistol. In an instant, Alan Passaro, a former Gypsy Joker who had prospected the Frisco Chapter of the Angels for eight months prior to gaining membership, rushed toward Hunter.

  One shot was fired before Passaro, in what Bill Fritsch described as “a classic street move,” twisted Hunter’s arm away, reached behind with his free hand, drew his sheath knife, and stabbed the black man to death. That single wild round saved Passaro from a death sentence. The Maysles captured it all on film. “We didn’t know that we’d get lucky,” one of the brothers later remarked. A slowed-down snippet from their movie was introduced as evidence at Passaro’s trial, leading to his acquittal on the grounds of self-defense.

  A few months later, after Erik Weber returned from India, he and Richard got into a conversation about the Altamont incident. “Jesus! What a bunch of assholes these Hells Angels are,” Erik remarked.

  “Oh, no,” Brautigan replied, siding with the Angels. “Mick Jagger’s life was in danger. They were protecting his life and had every right to kill the guy.”

  Richard’s fellow Digger Emmett Grogan adopted a similar position, saying in an interview, “And Meredith Hunter dying like a sniveling maniac instead of like a determined man—that was his fault.” Any way you sliced it, Hunter’s savage killing provided an unforgettable demonic moment and perpetuated Altamont as the symbolic end of the flower-power sixties, a dark and bitter Götterdämmerung for the Love Generation.

  Just as the shining promise of the sixties gave way to the cynicism of the Nixon years, Richard Brautigan’s own star ascended. Work done in obscure poverty during the hippie decade now cast its golden light upon him. Money, previously in short supply, came in abundance. Helen Brann asked Delacorte for an advance of $50,000 for Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt, once again to be paid in annual $5,000 installments. Sam Lawrence counteroffered $35,000 (still an enormous sum for a book of poetry), which was accepted, the entire amount to be paid in full 120 days after publication.

  Delacorte wanted to publish the books as quickly as possible to capitalize on their success with the other three Brautigan titles. Richard exercised his creative control, suggesting that Rommel be designed by his friend Andrew Hoyem and the type set at Grabhorn-Hoyem, Andrew’s San Francisco press. Sam agreed. For the first time, on the page listing his prior publications, Brautigan marked his earlier poetry chapbooks with a footnote, declaring them “Out of Print.” He also included The Abortion on his list, with an asterisk proclaiming the book was “Not Published.”

  Soon after, Brautigan had his serendipitous meeting with Beverly Allen and arranged for the rainy-day sandbox photo shoot. By mid-January, the cover photograph arrived in Sam Lawrence’s Boston office. Edmund Shea had not yet been paid for his previous work for Dell and inscribed the accompanying card “Peace, love.” Richard decreed the title be printed on the dust jacket in all capital letters, like “a headline.” An instant dispute arose when Brautigan insisted that his name not appear on the front cover. Seymour Lawrence hated the idea, feeling “very, very strongly” that it would considerably “damage sales potential.”

  Helen Brann sided with Sam on this one, advising her client that “from a practical standpoint and a professional standpoint,” his name should be on the cover of Rommel. Richard won her over on the phone the next day, explaining his design concept in great detail and pointing out that neither his name nor his image appeared on the cover of The Pill, which continued to sell extremely well.

  Brautigan had it all his way, right down to the blurbless flap copy. Each contained only a single poem: “Jules Verne Zucchini” on the front flap, “Critical Can Opener” gracing the rear. On the back cover, traditional home of the author’s photo, Richard placed Edmund’s picture of a tin toy pail and a crumbling sand cone.

  Things were not well for Timothy Leary as the sixties came to an end. In January 1970, a jury in Orange County, California, found him guilty of marijuana possession charges, the result of a Laguna Beach bust a couple years before, when two roaches were found in the ashtray of his car. Already appealing a twenty-year federal sentence for a previous pot bust at the Mexican border in Laredo, Texas, in 1965, Leary got ten years maximum. He was sent first to Chino State Prison for psychological testing (ironically, tests Leary had developed himself) and later on to the California Men’s Colony–West at San Luis Obispo to begin serving his term.

  To celebrate Richard Brautigan’s thirty-fifth birthday, John and Margot Patterson Doss hosted a huge party at their town house on Russian Hill. Lew Welch wrote a poem to celebrate the occasion:

  JANUARY 30, 1970

  Dear Richard,

  On this very day, in 1889, Franklin

  Delano Roosevelt was born. Had he lived,

  He would now be 81 years old.

  Would he have liked your books?

  What present would he give you on

  this mutual birthday?

  A chest of California grapes?

  Lew

  About 250 guests joined the festivities. “I think the whole literary scene in San Francisco was in our living room,” John Doss recalled. “People were packed like sardines,” Margot added. Herb Caen, one of the throng, wrote in his column the next day that if a bomb had fallen on the Doss home it would have wiped out the West Coast literary establishment. Richard came early and placed little trout pictures he had drawn all over the house. “In every room,” Margot said. “In every bathroom.”

  At Brautigan’s request, the party was catered by Kentucky Fried Chicken. “Buckets and buckets, because that’s what Richard wanted to eat that time.” A life-sized plastic statue of Colonel Sanders greeted arriving guests in the front foyer. At some point, a wandering wit placed a fat joint in the Colonel’s hand, setting the tone for the ensuing hilarity. The Dosses had the foresight to remove
their carpets, sparing them from trodden bits of greasy spilled chicken. John took the car out of the garage. They used the space for dancing. He decorated the place with paper kites and played colored lights over them. “Like disco, before disco was disco,” Magda Cregg recollected.

  Things got out of hand when Joanne Kyger and young Billy Burroughs, son of beat patriarch William Burroughs, had a disagreement that Margot Doss described as “this awful set-to.” Both were quite drunk, Burroughs perhaps more so. Magda Cregg remembered that Joanne liked to fight. Another time, “she threw a jug of red wine at LeRoi Jones.” The dispute came to an end when somebody escorted young Burroughs out the door.

  Margot carried the birthday cake, aglow with three dozen candles, into the dining room, and everybody congregated around the big table. “Richard, you have to blow out the candles,” Margot said.

  “This is the Age of Aquarius,” Brautigan replied. “The candles will go out by themselves.”

  Gary Snyder started chanting “Om.” Others joined in. “He got the whole room just vibrating,” John Doss recalled. And, as if by some miracle, the candles began dimming.

  “They came up again as soon as the chanting stopped,” Margot said.

  “It was a very magical moment,” added Dr. Doss.

  Valerie doesn’t remember going to Richard’s birthday party at the Dosses’, but they were still seeing each other at least twice a week during February and March. Brautigan had already begun his courtship of Sherry Vetter. Valerie was happier with him than at any other recent time, feeling “an openness like we’ve never had before.” She worried that perhaps she was just using him “for service.” At times, Valerie felt “ugly, selfish, lonely” and didn’t want Richard to kiss her, yet she took the time to measure and hand-sew a tailor-made Confederate-style military coat for him.

  Roxy and Judy Gordon followed Richard’s advice and traveled up to San Francisco. They found a place to live in Oakland and set about looking for Brautigan. Roxy knew the hip spots to go but thought getting there was some kind of miracle. “I don’t know how in the hell I even found North Beach,” he reminisced. Roxy hadn’t called Richard, and he was nowhere to be found at Enrico’s. The Gordons “stumbled upon a little Italian restaurant” across the street. This was the celebrated Vanessi’s. By coincidence, Brautigan walked in while they were eating their spaghetti. Spotting an obviously pregnant Judy, Richard borrowed a military expression. “You’re on point,” he said.

  Flush with Delacorte money, Brautigan took the young couple to “many, many parties” and treated them to long afternoons at Enrico’s, buying lots of what Roxy considered “expensive wine.” Lew Welch and Gary Snyder joined them for a libation from time to time. Welch told Roxy and Judy that Richard was “a baby beatnik and the father of the hippies.”

  Brautigan and the Gordons hung out a lot together. “He was always coming over to our house in Oakland,” Judy said, “and we were always going over to his place on Geary Street. We went up and down the coast. The three of us would go to these different bars and restaurants, famous places that he wanted to expose us to.” The Gordons went to several of Richard’s enthusiastically attended readings and witnessed firsthand the rush of fame sweeping like a tidal wave over their new friend.

  Aside from her husband, Richard was Judy’s only visitor at the University of California hospital while she nursed newborn J. C. (John Calvin) Gordon. She remembered the perfect fit of Richard’s gray Confederate coat and how proud he was of the “striking” outfit. Brautigan wore it for the first time when he came to see her. “He looked so, so fine,” Judy said. Roxy and Richard walked along the hospital corridor together and looked down at the Haight through the big plate-glass window. By that summer, “things went weird again” for the Gordons and they headed back to Texas. Richard dedicated Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt to Roxy and Judy.

  One day, Richard dropped by Greg Dewey’s place in Berkeley. Dewey had left Mad River, on the verge of breaking up around the time their second album was released, and played drums now with Country Joe and the Fish, one of the most popular bands in the world. He had performed at Woodstock with them and was riding almost as high as Brautigan. “He was getting famous, so was I,” Dewey recalled. The two old friends spent the day catching up and sharing a bottle. “Busily drinking me under the table, as usual,” Greg said. At one point, Richard asked, “So, what are you planning on doing? Are you going to get rich, or famous, or both?”

  Greg Dewey hadn’t given the matter much thought. He figured if you got famous both things happened at once. “Well, you know, famous,” he replied.

  Richard regarded the younger man with unexpected gravity. “You better plan on getting rich,” he said.

  Good news kept coming Richard’s way. By the end of February, Delacorte ordered a third printing of twenty-five hundred copies for the clothbound edition of the Trout Fishing omnibus. Thus far, Dell had sold over six thousand copies. A week later, the Literary Guild ordered five thousand copies as an alternative selection during the months of July, August, and September.

  Brautigan did his part to help sell copies. Enrico Banducci agreed to let Richard have a book-signing party at his sidewalk café on Broadway. Brautigan started selling and signing books at Enrico’s at eleven in the morning. Banducci went home soon after that. When he returned around nine thirty that night, as was his practice, Richard still sat beside a stack of books, signing, signing, signing. City Lights brought them over by the case, all air expressed from the East Coast by the publisher. “Richard, why don’t you get a stamp,” Enrico said, “and stamp those books. Stamp in your signature. What’s the difference?”

  The line outside stretched far down the block. Banducci remembered “it was really chaotic.” Toward the end of the evening, Brautigan was getting drunk and his ordinarily minuscule signature grew larger and larger until it was about two inches high and took up most of the page. There wasn’t enough room to contain his gigantic scrawl. “I won’t be able to write a fucking word for days,” Richard told Enrico. All told, Brautigan sold and signed over a thousand copies of the omnibus edition that night.

  Originally scheduled for early in April, Rommel’s publication date was delayed by a strike. Orders for hardbound copies were finally shipped on the last day of the month. The Delta paperback edition was released at the same time. Richard’s contract with Dell obligated his publisher to run a full-page advertisement in the New York Times Book Review within four weeks of publication, as well as smaller ads in six other notable periodicals and in every college newspaper where Trout Fishing had been advertised. The page in the Times cost $3,210. The total expenditure for all ads ran to $9,007. It paid off. Within five months, Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt was in its fifth printing with over 120,000 copies in print.

  For Richard Brautigan, 1970 became a year of travel. In February, Helen Brann requested a $500 expense check for Richard from Dell. Mid-March, Brautigan returned to Boston, staying again with Peter Miller and visiting the Trout Fishing in America School. After a couple of days, Miller’s girlfriend, Kat, presented him with an ultimatum: “Him or me!” Helen Brann traveled up from New York with Roz Barrow, joining Brautigan and Sam Lawrence on a trip to the printer, double-checking to make sure everything was in accordance with the work sent to them by Grabhorn-Hoyem.

  Back in New York in early April, Richard stayed at One Fifth Avenue, a twenty-seven-story art deco hotel built between 1927 and 1929 at the intersection of Eight Street and Fifth just above Washington Square Park. The room rate was $25 a day. On the ground floor, the hotel housed a restaurant and bar decorated all in white with salvaged remnants of the luxury Cunard liner SS Caronia, launched in 1905 and scrapped in 1933.

  By chance, Erik and Loie Weber were in New York at the same time, having come over from England on their return from India. They were visiting Loie’s parents. Erik was surprised to get a call from Richard. “I don’t know how he found out where we were or the number, but he did.” Having been in the
Far East for three years, the Webers suffered from culture shock. Seeing an old friend in such a new light only added to their confusion. “It was hard for me to grasp,” Loie recalled. “The Sterling Lord agency, Richard’s books, the money. He was really getting known, so Richard the personage was emerging, and that wasn’t the Richard I knew for ten years before.”

  Erik and Loie hung out with Brautigan for a week or more. They went with him to a celebrity party. Rip Torn and Andy Warhol were among the other guests. “I remember Richard was very impressed that Andy Warhol was there,” Loie said. Warhol was with one of his Factory leading ladies, Ultra Violet or Viva Superstar. “A not-real female,” recalled Loie, who “had just come back from a totally other culture” and felt the alienation of sudden reentry. “This is too weird,” she thought. It got weirder. Warhol pulled down the top of his companion’s gown, exposing her superbreasts for a barrage of snapshots.

  When Erik Weber, who had very little money after three years in Asia, saw that his Trout Fishing cover photo had been used on the Delta edition, he wrote to Sam Lawrence asking for a payment of $200, “as soon as possible, so we can go back to the West Coast.” Erik also resumed his role as Richard’s court photographer, expressing astonishment at his friend’s newfound affluence. “When I left him [to go to India], he was still in rags,” Erik said.

  Weber went with Richard to the Getty Building on Madison Avenue, where the offices of the Sterling Lord agency were located, and took pictures of him in the lobby and standing in the elevator, holding the doors open. This upset the doorman, who came over and said, “No more photographs,” trying to kick them out. They had to call upstairs and have Helen Brann explain it was OK.