"Expressing a human need, I've always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise."

You'd think I'd remember when I first read Trout Fishing In America, as that odd little "novel" changed me significantly. It was the late 1970's for sure. I might have borrowed it from my high school sweetheart's dad -- I was a big Vonnegut fan at the time and perhaps he suggested Brautigan as being cut from the same offbeat (or off-Beat as in the Beat writers?) cloth. Another part of me thinks I just bought the book because I found it in a used bookstore and liked the title. My friend Chip had one or more of Brautigan's poetry books, so maybe I got onto him that way. It's a strange black hole in my memory.

In any case, I became obsessed with reading everything I could find by Mr. Brautigan and I think I found most of them in a local used bookstore.

In writing the below comments on the novels, I realized I've not read many of them for many years. I'll attempt to correct that this year and update them with more recent comments.

A Confederate General From Big Sur (1964)

First novel and not his best. I don't even remember the story actually.

Trout Fishing In America (1967)

My favorite and I'm not alone as it is probably his best loved book by his fans. It's not really about trout fishing, though a lot of fishing takes place all over America. It's hard to describe but it's full of beautiful language describing many of the simple wonders of the world.

In Watermelon Sugar (1968)

A strange book about a town called iDEATH (shades of prophetic i-ness!) where everything is made from watermelon sugar and everyone fears the tigers.

The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster (1969)

One of the poetry collections. I'm on the fence about his poetry. Some of it is really moving -- compact and precise words. Some of it is kind of silly and a little too much of what people hate about San Francisco of the 1960s. But there is a lot of good stuff here.

The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 (1971)

I like this book a lot and have read it probably more than any of the others. It's the story of a strange librarian who runs a strange library that takes books written by anyone who cares to drop off a manuscript. He meets an achingly beautiful woman who becomes pregnant and they decide to travel to Tijuana to obtain an abortion. Some of the stuff hasn't aged well, but it's basically a really moving love story.

Revenge Of The Lawn (1971)

A collection of short stories. Some are brilliant, some are little more that a collection of a few related sentences. As with The Pill, when the stories are good they are great and when they are not good, well, at least they are short.

The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western(1974)

Probably my favorite next to TFIA. The actual monster of the Hawkline mansion is very clever and the twin Miss Hawklines creepy but sexy. It's a very funny book that is every inch a gothic western as it promises.

Willard And His Bowling Trophies: A Preverse Mystery (1975)

Probably my least favorite of his novels. I've only read it once so it is probably owed another reading. Willard does in fact have a collection of bowling trophies and they go missing.

Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel (1976)

Conceptually my favorite of his books -- a writer tosses rejected pages of a novel in progress into a garbage can, where they take on their own life and continue to write themselves.

Dreaming Of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 (1977)

Not his best. I haven't read it in twenty-some years so it's probably time to visit it again.

The Tokyo-Montana Express (1980)

I read this when it first came out and thought it was reminicent of TFIA. Worth another read.

So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away (1982)

The only one of his novels I've not read. Yet. It was the last published before he killed himself.

An Unfortunate Woman (1984, pub 1994)

His actual last novel, not published until a decade after his death. It made me very sad when I read it.