Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan.epub

My initial misperception of Trout Fishing in America is important, because through that confusion Brautigan reveals one of his most prescient messages. The how-to, instructional facade of the title is deceptive; as Hayden argues, no formula exists for success in trout fishing, Brautigan declares through his formulaic, cause-and-effect-laden anecdotes, just like no formula exists for success in America. Throughout Trout Fishing in America, high ideals are corrupted by personal greed; formulas and recipes fail to produce expected outcomes. The American Dream itself is illusory like those streams and ponds or expectations that inflate fishing trips.

Hayden writes, “The narrator’s personal growth parallels the picture of nature he presents. The wilderness, which represents a kind of innocence, is fouled by society, while the narrator’s boyhood idealism turns into disillusionment.” Schmitz adds, “Trout Fishing is about that confrontation, Brautigan’s tragicomical reading of the portentous myth imposed on him.” Plenty of fish are caught in Trout Fishing in America, but they are landed in repulsive contexts; when one’s elixir turns into fool’s gold, a myth’s farce is revealed, and new meanings are discovered.

This is the journey that all anglers and writers make, which is why trout fishing is such a potent metaphor for this tragic comedy: the excitement, hope, and anticipation for a fishing trip can easily be mythologized but just as easily be deflated when reality surfaces; no fish were caught, the weather didn’t cooperate, fishing gear broke, and the idyllic setting was contaminated by civilization.

Brautigan’s vision also raises an important question about the purpose of literature in society: should it reveal or discover? What’s the difference between the two? Should contemporary literature pursue both? Can it afford not to? Brautigan does both in Trout Fishing in America, and his novella is a call to arms demanding that more writers do the same. Brautigan’s use of irony and absurdity, both of which are sadly cliché these days, is masterful, and through them he reveals and discovers new meanings about nature, prose, and society.

Irony and absurdity are stocked throughout, but how can any narrative with episodes of fishing excursions not contain these elements: the sport if filled with ironic twists, absurd surprises, and irrational outcomes (I’ll refrain, for the sake of brevity, from narrating the time I witnessed a log in a local brook move; a bull shark attack a mating stingray outside Annapolis, Maryland; or found a frozen, but still breathing, bottom dwelling ocean orange filefish in a shallow Florida estuary).

Like fishing, life, culture, and society are, at times, surreal, ironic, and absurd tragedies. Throughout Trout Fishing in America, Brautigan reveals that structures and connections can be found within everything, and the absurdity of our condition is that our reactions to irrationality too conveniently assume irony. By labeling something ironic or absurd we undermine its realism, and this, according to Brautigan, may be our most tragic of flaws.


However, amidst the linguistic acrobatics and social commentary, Trout Fishing in America offers unique insights about trout fishing because Brautigan finds something enlightening, redemptive, and magical about the sport. His attempts to balance Trout Fishing in America with trout fishing in America are a struggle, and as Schmitz writes, “Trout Fishing is thus at once a sustained criticism of the myth and a lyrical confession of its attractive values.” As fishermen, we are seduced by the myth of “catching the Big One,” knowing that through our surrender, we become the narrative, and subsequently, own and define it.

When the Big One never emerges, we rewind and revise the myth to suit our needs. Hayden states, “Brautigan’s narrator sojourns through the wilderness of Idaho hoping to find idyllic meaning in a primitive natural order, to be ‘part and particle’ of the organic harmony between fish and stream, animal and forest.” By shedding our identity in the woods along a trout stream, we recreate it, with the help of a few colorful trout and their gamely prodding. Like a shaman, trout fishermen explore nature’s fringes to discover new meanings, and then reveal them through stories, myths, and legends to their friends. America hasn’t witnessed a more effective shaman-fisherman than Richard Brautigan.