Jubilee Hitchhiker (55 page)

As Kyger recalled, Richard expected to become an overnight sensation, swept up in the whirlwind, much like Jack Kerouac or the Beatles. He talked of going to New York. “He'd just be off the map,” she said. “He'd be out there somewhere.” Joanne and her new partner, the painter Jack Boyce, “just cracked up” over the whole conceit. “Yeah, Richard, this might be the last day I'll see you,” she said to him, tongue in cheek.

In the end, Richard Brautigan did not win the Formentor Prize. The award for 1964 went to Gisela Elsner, a German writer, whose novel,
Die Riesenzwerge
, was published in America by Grove Press as
The Giant Dwarfs
. The news came as a blow for Brautigan. “His whole soufflé deflated,” Joanne Kyger remembered, “and Richard went on with his life.”

Another disappointment followed soon after. Don Allen sent a manuscript copy of
Trout Fishing in America
to Robert Creeley for his consideration. They were editing a collection of “new American” fiction for Grove together, and Don wanted to include something by Brautigan. For various reasons, Creeley didn't take to the material. “I was in a weirdly funky state of mind,” he recalled, “and I decided it was too much a shaggy dog story.” At the time, Creeley favored the work of John Hawkes, his friend from Harvard, several of whose nightmarish experimental novels (
The Cannibal
,
The Goose on the Grave
,
The Beetle Leg
,
The Lime Twig
) had already been published by New Directions. “I was trying to get [him] in,” Creeley said, “and Don felt, I think reasonably, that for our interests in that book that Jack Hawkes was too European.” Maybe it was a trade-off, no Hawkes, no Brautigan. “I just didn't get Richard the first time,” Creeley admitted. He stuck to his position and rejected this most American of writers from the
New American Story
anthology. In retrospect, Creeley remembered that essayist and critic Warren Tallman, who wrote the introduction to the story collection, said to him, “It's wonderful stuff, Bob. What's with you?”

Not all news was bad news. Early in July, Brautigan received a handwritten letter from Charles Newman at
TriQuarterly
saying they planned to publish an excerpt from
A Confederate General from Big Sur
in their fall issue. Newman asked for a biographical statement and promised to send a check and the galley proofs “shortly.” Richard wrote back the next day with the requested information.
TriQuarterly
's acceptance offset Susan Stanwood's letter turning down “Two Armored Cars” and the chapters from
Trout Fishing
. “Although they are grand exercises in the ludicrous, they are simply too fragmentary for us. Sorry.” She asked to see “more sustained pieces, in which there is some real character or plot development.”

A month later, Brautigan wrote again to Charles Newman, wondering “what's happening?” The promised check and proofs had yet to arrive. Grove was releasing his novel in October. Time seemed to be running out. Newman answered that there had been a screwup.
TriQuarterly
had three addresses for Richard in its files and somehow their envelope containing the proofs and a $75 check had gone astray. Nothing could be done about the proofs. They'd run out of time. Newman promised to send another check. He also asked to see more work. The first issue of the magazine was scheduled for September 15.

A check from
TriQuarterly
was mailed to 123 Beaver Street at the beginning of September. On the tenth, Brautigan sent Charles Newman two more chapters from
Trout Fishing in America
, adding, “If you decide to use them, payment on acceptance would be very much appreciated.” Always generous with his friends, Richard suggested that Newman contact Philip Whalen and Michael McClure. The editor wrote back immediately, saying he'd get in touch with them both and asking to see “a large hunk” of
Trout Fishing
. “We think very highly of your work here.”

Richard took the manuscript of
In Watermelon Sugar
to Jack Spicer, hoping for the sort of dynamic input his mentor had provided for his first novel. Spicer's alcoholism and paranoia had intensified during the three years since the writing of
Trout Fishing
. It was a period in which Spicer produced some of his most powerful work.
The Heads of the Town up to the Aether
, his first copyrighted book (Spicer was opposed to copyright protection on the principle that a writer did not “own” his material) had been published by Dave Haselwood and Andrew Hoyem at Auerhahn Press in 1962. In 1964, Spicer returned to White Rabbit Press, now under the direction of Graham Mackintosh, who designed and printed
The Holy Grail
, the poet's seven-part reworking of Arthurian myth. “In the context of the ‘power' that led to such writing,” Robin Blaser observed, “I think Richard wanted his place in it, so to speak, beside Spicer—an admirable desire in a young writer.”

Jack Spicer turned Brautigan down without a word of explanation. Spicer tended “to let go” of any writer in his circle once he achieved any measure of success. Richard had a book contract with Grove Press, had published in the
Evergreen Review
,
City Lights Journal
, and elsewhere. The new issue of
Evergreen
(no. 33) had just appeared, containing five further chapters from
Trout Fishing in America
(“Witness for
Trout Fishing in America
Peace,” “A Note on the Camping Craze That Is Currently Sweeping America,” “The Pudding Master of Stanley Basin,” “In the California Bush,” and “Trout Death by Port Wine”). Brautigan was on his way.

Stung by Spicer's refusal, Brautigan turned to Robin Blaser, who liked him and “cared about his writing.” Blaser considered
Trout Fishing
“a masterpiece.” Jack Spicer and Blaser had been friends since their time together in Berkeley in the late forties and had exchanged new poems with each other, sometimes weekly, over the years. “Richard would have known that,” Robin Blaser observed, many decades later. “There was a kind of magic—North Beach magic—between Jack and Richard. That was not the case between Richard and me.” Brautigan had formed “a kind of dependence” on Spicer and “took it hard” when the older poet terminated their working relationship. Needing someone to play the role of mentor, Richard consulted Robin Blaser, a talented poet Jack Spicer treated as an equal.

The resulting connection between Brautigan and Blaser gave rise over the years to the false assertion that Robin Blaser had “edited”
In Watermelon Sugar
. A biography of Jack Spicer recorded this as fact. Not long ago, Robin Blaser set the record straight: “Richard came to me and
asked if I would go over his unfinished manuscript. We met, as I remember, two or three times in a bar. Richard read to me, and we talked about the wonderful, strange imagery. If revision resulted, I never knew about it, and I certainly did not assist him in editing
In Watermelon Sugar
, a book I like very much.”

Early in September, Richard Brautigan began submitting
In Watermelon Sugar
to magazines. He sent it first to Susan Stanwood at the
Saturday Evening Post
and, on the same day, mailed three more chapters from
Trout Fishing
to
TriQuarterly
. Although the new novel was under contractual option to Grove Press, he held off sending them a copy of the manuscript. They had not yet accepted
Trout Fishing in America
for publication. Richard decided to hedge his bets.

Small irritations kept Brautigan from enjoying the sweet smell of his own success. Topping the grievance list was the dust jacket Grove Press had designed for
A Confederate General from Big Sur
, incorporating a four-color reproduction of a 1959 painting by Larry Rivers entitled
The Next-to-Last Confederate Soldier
. Richard didn't care for it. He also didn't like the dust jacket copy, which stated that one of the “purposes” of the novel was “to give a serious portrait of a ‘beat' character and a critique of the beat way of life.” Brautigan had no interest in being identified with the Beat Generation and didn't consider himself to be a beatnik. Larry Rivers's painting was tainted by the artist's Beat connections. Rivers was a noted Greenwich Village bohemian and had acted the part of Milo in
Pull My Daisy
. The jacket copy also referred for the first time to Brautigan's “soft and thoughtful whimsy,” a description he detested.

Richard Seaver sent Richard Brautigan an advance copy of
A Confederate General from Big Sur
and his accompanying letter informed him of Grove's decision to postpone the book's publication until January of 1965. Seaver feared a first novel published in October or November “might get lost in the shuffle” during the Christmas season. He also took issue with Brautigan's objections to the dust jacket.

Grove had asked Donald Allen to write the copy, but he declined, and the work was done in-house. “I very frankly think it is good jacket copy,” Seaver wrote, “and faithfully presents the book. Maybe it does not coincide exactly with your own ideas of presentation, but in my experience authors must at some point let the book go from them and accept others' vision and evaluation of it.” In any case, nothing more could be done, as the dust jacket had already been printed. If by chance there should be a second printing, perhaps then the jacket might be modified. Brautigan would never forget this slight. He had very strong ideas about typography, layout, and graphic art. In his future dealings with book publishers, Richard made certain to retain complete design control over his titles.

Luther Nichols wrote to Grove that “Richard is certainly one of the most inventive literary talents we have out here.” In November, a letter came from John Ciardi, poetry editor of the
Saturday Review.
“I enjoyed reading Brautigan,” he stated. “I don't know what it's about, but one of the nice things about the book is that the reader doesn't need to know. The man's a writer and the writing takes over in its own way, which is what writing should do. Brautigan manages effects the English novel has never produced before.” The editors at Grove Press were in blurb heaven, but the book had already been printed, and it was too late to include the quotes on the dust jacket.

By the time Charles Newman wrote again to Brautigan early in October, saying he liked
Trout Fishing
and hoped to see more of it, typographic errors foreclosed on Richard's enjoyment of the
moment. A copy of
TriQuarterly
had arrived at Beaver Street. Brautigan thought the first issue “a handsome magazine,” but the chapter titled “The Rivets of Ecclesiastes” was printed incorrectly, with several paragraphs out of sequence. Had Richard seen the galleys, he would easily have spotted the error. He remained calm and polite when he contacted Newman about the matter. He requested
TriQuarterly
“print something in your next issue, pointing out that the chapter was not printed correctly.” Another disappointment came later in October, when the
Saturday Evening Post
rejected
In Watermelon Sugar
. Susan Stanwood explained, “it was simply too vague and fragmentary for our purposes.”

Newman answered Brautigan before the end of October. An editor's “near sightedness” caused the mix-up in Richard's copy. Newman had hoped for “that rarity or rarities, a first issue without typos,” but thought that the story “made sense” in its reformatted version. He claimed, “I like it better the way it is printed,” while admitting this sounded “ridiculously defensive.”
TriQuarterly
offered to print a “rectification” along with the correct version of the final paragraph in their winter issue.

Newman's letter was mailed to 123 Beaver Street. By the time it arrived, Richard Brautigan had moved out. Since returning to the city in July, Richard wrote to Janice Meissner several times. The letters stopped in September, when their romance began to build up steam. Brautigan was primed for a new relationship. In “Beowulf Umbrella,” an unfinished short story scrawled in one of his notebooks during the summer, he observed, “My name is Richard Brautigan [. . .] I have not been laid in weeks. I've grown steadily nervous. I've wandered from bar to bar and found nothing, but at the same time I was looking for nothing. I'm 29 years old. I ended up at a place that Philip Whalen says nice people just don't go to. Gino and Carlo's [. . .]” Finding no action there, Richard wrote a poem called “Marriage,” reducing wedlock to a simple basic formula: “C sleeps with C. C sleeps with C. C sleeps with C,” until enough time passes and “C decides to sleep with D. Then who does C sleep with? Beowulf umbrella.”

Janice Meissner had been charmed by Richard Brautigan's wit. She worked for the Schlage Lock Company, an old San Francisco firm founded by Walter Schlage, whose first invention, patented in 1909, was for a door lock that automatically turned the interior lights off and on. To Brautigan, the company name sounded like “Schlock Lock.” “Richard thought that was very funny,” Joanne Kyger recalled. Janice detested her job. Any man who could make her laugh at her employment woes was worth considering. By the beginning of November, Richard had taken up residence with her in apartment number 4 at 533 Divisadero Street.

From the start, they made a delightful couple. He called her “Candy Pie,” and contemporary photographs reveal an affectionate physical chemistry between them. They were pictured holding hands, hugging and kissing, Janice sprawled like a playful kitten across Richard's lap. She stood a head shorter, barely coming up to his shoulder, yet their blond good looks went well together, her happy full-lipped pout the perfect complement to the frowning down-sweep of his Victorian mustache; her dark-lidded sultry eyes exchanging secret glances with his bemused owlish stare.