2) Brautigan's Search for the American Dream

In the Summer of 1961, Brautigan set off with his wife Virginia and his Daughter, Ianthe, in their Plymouth Station Wagon. The Wagon was armed with lanterns and stoves, sleeping bags, a card table, a 7' bamboo fishing rod, and a portable typewriter. It probably looked like this:


In 1967, Trout Fishing in America was published, the result of the trip in the well-armed Plymouth that occured six years earlier throughout the expanse of Idaho's Stanley Basin. Brautigan had eventually traded away that 7' bamboo fishing rod and later still, that rod was sold on eBay. The people who were looking to buy it saw this:


(I can't properly footnote in the blog, so let me say here that the previous information was gathered from this page: http://www.brautigan.net/trout.html)


Trout Fishing in America, itself, is a black joke that someone is the brunt of. You might not know it, but Trout Fishing in America could have other people laughing at you!

The Mayor of the Twentieth Century wears a costume of Trout Fishing in America in order to hide himself while he murdered. Trout Fishing in America Shorty is a crippled wino rolling around in a wheelchair. "Shorty, ha! You would be short too if you didn't have any shins!" he seems to say. Trout Fishing in America himself is a middle aged, average American, who is a blue collar worker and an avid fisherman. Trout Fishing in America is what the sixth graders write on the backs of the first graders. Trout Fishing in America is a concept for a ballet to be performed in Los Angeles based upon the movements of carnivorous plants.

Trout Fishing in America is embodied as many people, both alive and dead. It is a rich gourmet with Maria Callas for a girlfriend. It appeared to be dead from asphyxiation to the medical examiner, who dissected its skull and sent it to be put in a cask of spirits. Trout Fishing in America leaves short commentary at the end of some vignettes. He also exists as someone who has been around since Lewis and Clark and been there to experience it, well, almost all of the American Experience, excepting a particular Deanna Durbin movie.

This is what Deanna Durbin looks like, and according to Trout Fishing in America, not what the Missouri River looks like:



Just to get an idea of what Trout Fishing in America is, these are some of the things which it embodies. Yet Trout Fishing in America is meant to be surreal and elusive, like the experience of Alonso Hagen in "Trout Fishing on the Street of Eternity," who never does catch a trout despite his numerous attempts to over a span of years. (see p.80-85)


Perhaps it is best to describe Brautigan's work here as another quest to find what Hunter S. Thompson tried to describe as the Heart of the American Dream. Both Thompson and Brautigan seem to divide the time of their search between the road, hotels, the great outdoors and wilderness, the inner city, and the social experiences with average Americans. The question that comes naturally from their experiments is: did they find the American Dream? I think the answer has to be unequivocally no, neither found the American Dream, but they put forward poetically graceful concepts about what the American Dream is. For Brautigan, the concept of the American Dream can be boiled down into four words, "Trout Fishing in America." It's accessible to every American, whether in rags or riches, and it comes from the grace of the American land in both the mind of the innermost quarters of the cities and the hearts of the lush, untamed wild.