Book of a Lifetime: Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan

From The Independent archive: Sarah Hall on ‘Revenge of the Lawn’ by Richard Brautigan

Deceptively informal: Richard Brautigan (Archive)

Many attempts have been made to define Richard Brautigan’s work – Beat, scat, Zen Buddhist, magical-realist, hippie, cult, outsider, naive, pacific, lunatic. Nowhere is his work’s resistance to categorical designation more apparent than in Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970. I came across this oddest collection in my late teens, which might be a perfect age to discover Brautigan. The vim and originality of tones and images, the berserk plots and off-the-wall incidents, seemed perfectly pitched to appeal to a rebellious, youthful sense of humour. The language was deceptively informal, poetic, “hip”.

Back then I was a troubled reader, full of northwest rain and rural loneliness. Books felt like portals into even remoter worlds – papery oubliettes where no one else existed and the author was absent. I wanted company, not a textual abstract. But here was a sudden, slender volume that was host to a multitude of companionable voices. Some of the pieces were startlingly brief; I could open the pages and hop in and out. More than this: amid the rabble of characters was a singular presence – the writer was there, in some state or other. He was there, playing around, often exposed and steering the narrative the way authors were not supposed to. I could imagine verbal and metaphysical light bulbs going on above his head. I could see him crafting these extraordinary, joyful, lovelorn gifts of prose and handing them over to me, the reader. And what gifts!

The 2014 paperback edition, issued to mark 30 years since the author’s death (Handout)