Overheard at Table 3: Richard Brautigan

At the California Institute of Technology

At the California Institute of Technology

By Richard Brautigan 1935–1984 Richard Brautigan

I don’t care how God-damn smart

these guys are: I’m bored.

It’s been raining like hell all day long

and there’s nothing to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Verble says: Now don't let anybody ever tell you any different, THIS man was the voice of my generation.   It was not Dylan, it was not Hendrix, it was not Leary or Abbey Hoffman or MLK or anybody else, it was Brautigan . . . full of humour and snark and sadness lurking behind the pleasurable insanity of his prose.   He was the madcap laughs, he was the stuffed pelican on the shelf, that remains in a man's house through several wives, he was the shady hat character selling mangoes out of a wooden cart on the side of the road at the base of a mountain where it's been raining all day and then the mudslide comes and just misses the cart but takes out the highway and he's still standing there saying, "now how cool is that?"

 

and it was so sad that he killed himself when the 80's began.   Maybe he saw the future: maybe he saw Reagan, maybe he say Cyndi Lauper, I don't know.   But something scared the hell out of him, and he took himself out before he could be taken, and that was sad, but somehow it let me know that the psychedelic era was truly over.   Maybe he did that to let us all know.