About three weeks ago I finally finished an old copy of Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America. My advisor came across it in a thrift store and thought I should have it. Wow, what a waste of time. The alternate title I'd suggest for this work which "catapulted [him] to international fame" is A Bunch of Meaningless Crap in the Form of Tiresome Similes. Seriously, if I had to read "was like" in this book one more time, I would have started using the remaining pages for toilet paper. The only problem is that there would have barely been enough for a clean wipe. I am willing to admit that some of this frustration is because there's practically nothing about trout fishing after the title page. Although, I was forewarned about this by a reviewer's comment on the back cover, it still frustrated me. Most of all because I can't seem to leave a book unfinished; even though this one deserved that fate. And as much as I would like to believe that he represented "the emerging countercultural youth-movement of the late 1960s," associating his writing in this book with that movement is tragic. I don't think anyone can take enough drugs or smoke enough dope in order to justify the publication of this thing. The inartistic, uncreative overuse of similes in Trout Fishing in America actually makes me feel sorry for the drugged-out hippies of the free-love Sixties. I mean, they were forced to explain themselves in the context of this complete waste of paper. It's pretty hard to climb out of a hole that deep. Oh well, the book is closed now and will be quickly donated to the thrift store. Or, as good ole' Richie might say, my disposing of this book was like the vicious flushing of a dead goldfish down a toilet bowl.
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