Richard Brautigan: Trout Fishing in America

I am trying to remember who introduced me 

to Richard Brautigan. I should know. 

Someone who reads him must be intriguing. 

Trout Fishing in America 
pdf here

Trout Fishing In America is an abstract book without a clear central storyline. Instead, the book contains a series of anecdotes broken into chapters, with the same characters often reappearing from story to story. The settings of most of the chapters occur in three locales: 

1. Brautigan's childhood in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. 
2. His day-to-day adult life in San Francisco. 
3. A camping trip in Idaho with his wife and infant daughter in 1961. 

Most of the chapters were written during this trip.

KNOCK ON WOOD (PART TWO) 

One spring afternoon as a child in the strange town of Portland, I walked down to a different street corner, and saw a row of old houses, huddled together like seals on a rock. 

Then there was a long field that came sloping down off a hill. The field was covered with green grass and bushes. 

On top of the hill there was a grove of tall, dark trees. At a distance I saw a waterfall come pouring down off the hill.  

It was long and white and I could almost feel its cold spray. There must be a creek there, I thought, and it probably has trout in it. 

Trout. 

At last an opportunity to go trout fishing, to catch my first Trout, to behold Pittsburgh. 

It was growing dark. I didn't have time to go and look at the creek. I walked home past the glass whiskers of the houses, reflecting the downward rushing waterfalls of night. 

The next day I would go trout fishing for the first time. I would get up early and eat my breakfast and go.

I had heard that it was better to go trout fishing early in the morning. The trout were better for it. They had something extra in the morning. 

I went home to prepare for trout fishing in America. I didn't have any fishing tackle, so I had to fall back on corny fishing tackle. Like a joke. 

Why did the chicken cross the road? 

I bent a pin and tied it onto a piece of white string. And slept. 

The next morning I got up early and ate my breakfast. I took a slice of white bread to use for bait. I planned on making dough balls from the soft center of the bread and putting them on my vaudevillian hook. 

I left the place and walked down to the different street corner. How beautiful the field looked and the creek that came pouring down in a waterfall off the hill. 

But as I got closer to the creek I could see that something was wrong. The creek did not act right. There was a strangeness to it. There was a thing about its motion that was wrong. 

Finally I got close enough to see what the trouble was. 

The waterfall was just a flight of white wooden stairs leading up to a house in the trees. 

I stood there for a long time, looking up and looking down, following the stairs with my eyes, having trouble believing. Then I knocked on my creek and heard the sound of wood 

I ended up by being my own trout and eating the slice of bread myself. 

The Reply of Trout Fishing in America:

There was nothing I could do. I couldn't change a flight of stairs into a creek. The boy walked back to where he came from.  

The same thing once happened to me. I remember mistaking an old woman for a trout stream in Vermont, and I had to beg her pardon.  

"Excuse me, " I said. "I thought you were a trout stream." 

"I'm not," she said. 

Trout Fishing in America pages 3-5