Customer Reviews

So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away

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In this, the last novel he wrote before his suicide by shotgun in 1985, Richard Brautigan returned to the source of all his strongest previous fiction: his marginal, unhappy childhood in the Pacific Northwest. In earlier and better known works Brautigan comes off as a playful, whimsical fantasy-smith almost as interested in amusing himself as in communicating with the reader; but in "So The Wind.." that has changed. The Brautigan who writes this book is a sad but not humorless veteran of life who is trying hard to get his message across to us. The central narrative passage of the book seems to be barely-disguised autobiography, telling the story of an accidental shooting in which the narrator (Brautigan?) killed his best friend in a small Oregon town in the 1950s. This sequence is "framed" by a circular narrative in a much lighter mood; here Brautigan is using a technique normally associated with Latin American "magical realism". The book contains some of Brautigan's most lucid writing. I first read Richard Brautigan when I was 15 in 1972, and I have read most of his work in prose and poetry. For its literary complexity and human depths, I would consider "So The Wind.." his best work. It's a shame the book is out of print.

he takes you in into his heart in this one. the lost that he feels innocense blown away the ache in its place. Its a very ERRIE placeBrautigan walks us through a vanishing america wistfuly he must recover a past thats alreay extinct. HE THINKS THRU BACKWARDS PLACE METAPHORS AND SYMBOLS OF REGRET.places like tombstones on his path to escape an unfortunate act.AS always theres the random wonder in .

he takes you in into his heart in this one. the lost that he feels innocense blown away the ache in its place. Its a very ERRIE placeBrautigan walks us through a vanishing america wistfuly he must recover a past thats alreay extinct. HE THINKS THRU BACKWARDS PLACE METAPHORS AND SYMBOLS OF REGRET.places like tombstones on his path to escape an unfortunate act.AS always theres the random wonder in .