OUTDOOR LIFE, AND A UTOPIA

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32460, 21 November 1970, Page 10

OUTDOOR LIFE, AND A UTOPIA

trout Fishing In America. By Richard Brautlgan. 112 pp. In Watermelon Sugar. By Richard Brautigan. 138 pp. . The cover photographs and the pictorial binding of these books, facsimile reproductions from the original San Francisco editions, give an indication of the character of the writing: very modem people trying to project themselves back into an obsolete lifestyle. “Trout Fishing in America” celebrates the American outdoor life with all possible wit and invention: the short chapter-divisions range through childhood experiences and the characters met in the pursuit of the sport to the narrator’s adult wanderings after fish, accompanied by wife and baby. There are also, however, chapters with no apparent relevance to anything: never has an angler’s career been described with more compleatness. What previous fishing manual has offered a diary history of fish lost over seven years (“an interesting experiment in total loss”), trout death by port wine, a trout-fishing-in-America demonstration (with slogan “Isaac Walton Would've Hated the Bomb”), a used trout stream for sale (by the foot length), and a drunk cripple called Trout Fishing in America Shorty (“The trout chopped my legs off in Fort Lauderdale. You kids got legs. The trout didn’t chop your legs off. Wheel me into that store over there.”)? From the time the author mistakes a flight of stairs for a trout stream to the final "mayonaise” (“Expressing a human need, I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise.”), the reader is entertained by what must be the most absurd book about trout-fishing ever written. The couple on the cover of “In Watermelon Sugar” look much more serious and contemplative, and rite close-up photo is denied the incongruous background and costumes of “Trout Fishing.” This is, in fact, a much more serious work, in which the author seems to have created his own utopian fantasy world. The unnamed narrator is writing a book in a shack which is “small, but pleasing and comfortable as my life and made from pine, watermelon sugar and stones.” Nearby is iDEATH, a gathering-place where he and his friends eat and have a bed if required. In keeping with the magical atmosphere, iDEATH is “always changing. Its for the best.” The people, 375 of them, live simply and for the most part contentedly, in spiritual harmony with their surround-

ings, in contrast with modern civilisation and its indiscriminate assault on the senses.

There are also a few rebels who are drawn towards “the Forgotten Works,” a deserted factory which symbolically includes among its useless lumber piles of books; these people seem to maintain reactionary standards, and end up by committing useless and messy suicides, a source of bewilderment and sadness to the inhabitants of iDEATH. As often happens with this sort of book, allegorical parallels suggest themselves; the qualities advanced as admirable are perhaps those gained by leaving cities and recapturing spiritual values in a simpler life. But a lot of impact comes from the mere style, which, though not completely original, is at least unusual. From the titles, the author extracts a lot of word gimmickry, and the dialogue works largely through cliche; this gives rise to a calculated flatness, but there is also an insistent tone of pseudo-naivety which many readers will find irritating. Environment The Countryside Today. By Ralph Wightman. Pelham Books. 153 pp. Living in an age deeply conscious of the pollution of the environment, and of the potentially devastating effect of the population explosion upon the countryside, we might expect a book with a title like “The Countryside Today” to be alarming, if not downright pessimistic. In fact it reveals a quiet and steady optimism, an optimism bom of experience and understanding. Ralph Wightman is one of England’s most distinguished agricultural writers. He knows the land and its people. He knows the pressures on both, and he knows the dangers. Yet despite these, he remains optimistic about the future. Looking at the present in the light of the past, he concludes that the problems facing the countryside and its inhabitants, human and otherwise, represent not the first signs, of disaster, but rather, if we are sensible enough to heed early warnings, the beginnings of another agricultural revolution. Agreeing with Mr Wightman, this reviewer feels but one qualm. Doing something about the warnings one heeds costs money. Who will provide it? And will the farmers, noted for their love of independence, accept the mass of regulations which will proliferate as the money is spent and remedies applied?