<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Brautigan's the best, but this is not his best
Review: I discovered Brautigan recently and have been reading everything I can get my hands on of his. There's three collections of three books. The one with TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA and IN WATERMELON SUGAR is the best one to get if you're only going to get one. But this one is good as well.
REVENGE OF THE LAWN, a collection of short stories, has some great two- and three-pagers that display typical Brautigan wit, humor, and insight. Some, as with any collection, are better than others.
THE ABORTION is one of Brautigan's better plots. And I say this because his style and sense of humor is pretty consistent through all of his work, and you either love it or hate it. If you hate it, you won't like any of his stuff. If you like it, then you'll probably like this one. It seems more original than some of his genre parody stories like THE HAWKLINE MONSTER and DREAMING OF BABYLON. It also seems like it may be a little autobiographical, so the emotion in it feels more real.
SO THE WIND WON'T BLOW IT ALL AWAY eerily forshadows Brautigan's suicide. It speaks to the youth in all of us and carries a great sense of nostalgia. Taken in context with his life and its end shortly after writing this book, it feels like a depressed man looking back at the golden years with complete fondness.
Overall, I'd say this is the second best of the Brautigan collections available.
Rating: 
Summary: FUseanwinkle2
Review: I hate wannabee literature reviewers who think their opinion means something when they obviously have a grudge against the author. Christ the guy is dead! Give him his due. If you don't like something, review something you do like and leave the rest of us who like Brautigan alone. Go to bed, sean. You're drunk!
Rating: 
Summary: So the Wind ... I fell down laughing!
Review: I remember reading So The Wind Won't Blow it All Away for the first time. I was riding in a greyhound bus with the scent of blue hair ladies in front of me. Brautigan discussed his childhood love of cheesburgers and Superman and I couldn't stop laughing. The bus driver had to pull over and take me off the bus to ask me to shut up. Brautigan is a master of words. His visions are fresh and celebratory. I could read his work over and over. If this is your first Brautigan book you will not be let down. He hasn't written a book that will let you down. This one is no exception. Probably his finest three books in one!
Rating: 
Summary: So totally overblown
Review: This guy's is so completely overrated. It's cut-rate stuff, it rings false, it's precious and silly and utterly dull writing. If you really get into this kind of thing, you'd probably be better served to go back to some of the better Tom Robbins material, who, though he's cloying (and can be awfully irritating), at least does this kind of thing more artfully. This is everything that's bogus and annoying about latter-20th-Century California 'Literature.' Ugh.
Rating:
Summary: So totally overblown
Review: This guy's is so completely overrated. It's cut-rate stuff, it rings false, it's precious and silly and utterly dull writing. If you really get into this kind of thing, you'd probably be better served to go back to some of the better Tom Robbins material, who, though he's cloying (and can be awfully irritating), at least does this kind of thing more artfully. This is everything that's bogus and annoying about latter-20th-Century California 'Literature.' Ugh.
Rating:
Summary: So the Wind ... I fell down laughing!
Review: With the possible exception of The Hawkline Monster, Revenge of the Lawn represents Brautigan's best work. It is a collection of wonderfully loopy stories that although they may not focus on developing a specific narrative thrust, instead hone in on capturing a real sense of time, place and experience. Each piece is certaintly idiosyncratic and individualistic only to the unique voice that was the late Brautigan. As a fellow native of the Pacific Northwest, I find his work as collected here sentimental, haunting and vividly descriptive and alive. It is also a fine example of regionalistic literature as his work, while abhereing to the old addage "only the most personal is the most universal", simply couldn't occur in any other region of the world- and that makes it live in all geographical locations. The other stories collected here, may loose some of Revenge of the Lawn's focus, they never the less reflect a sadly overlooked American writer.
<< 1 >>
|
