Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan
Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan
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Trout Fishing in America
A Novel

Author: Richard Brautigan, Billy Collins

Narrator: Chris Andrew Ciulla

Unabridged: 3 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/23/2016

Synopsis

In its first time in audio and with an introduction written and read by poet Billy Collins, Trout Fishing in America is an indescribable romp, by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through America’s culture.Richard Brautigan’s world is one of gentle magic and marvelous laughter, of the incredibly beautiful and the beautifully incredible. Trout Fishing in America is a pseudonym for the miraculous. A journey which begins at the foot of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco’s Washington Square, which wanders through the wonders of America’s rural waterways, and which ends, inevitably, with mayonnaise. Funny, wild, and sweet, Trout Fishing in America is an incomparable guidebook to the delights of exploration—both of land and mind.Richard Brautigan was a literary idol of the 1960s and 1970s whose comic genius and iconoclastic vision of American life caught the imagination of young people everywhere. His early books became required reading for the hip generation, and on its publication, Trout Fishing in America, considered by many as his best novel, became an international bestseller.With it Brautigan caught the public’s attention and became a cult hero. By 1970 Trout Fishing in America had become the namesake of a commune, a free school, an underground newspaper, and more.

About Richard Brautigan

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) was a literary idol of the 1960s and 1970s whose comic genius and iconoclastic vision of American life caught the imagination of young people everywhere. He was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington, and moved to San Francisco in the mid-1950s when he became involved in the emerging beat scene. During the 1960s, he became one of the most prominent and prolific writers of the counterculture. Out of this period came some of his most famous works, the best known of which are Trout Fishing in America; his collection of poetry, The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster; and his collection of stories, Revenge of the Lawn. Translated the world over, his works helped establish him as one of the most significant American writers of his generation. As his popularity waned towards the end of the 1970s, he became increasingly disillusioned about his work and his life. He committed suicide in 1984. He was the author of eleven novels, ten volumes of poetry, a collection of short stories, and miscellaneous nonfiction pieces, works that often employed parody, satire, and black comedy.

About Billy Collins

Billy Collins served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States, in 2001 to 2003, and then as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. He is the author of several collections of poetry. He has won the Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry, the Norman Mailer Prize for Poetry, the Levinson Prize, and the Oscar Blumenthal Prize and been named Poetry magazine’s Poet of the Year and a New York Public Library Literary Lion, among many other awards and honors. He is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the senior distinguished fellow of the Winter Park Institute in Florida.

About Chris Andrew Ciulla

Chris Andrew Ciulla, an Earphones Award–winning narrator with over 350 credits, is an on-screen actor, voice actor, host, boxing analyst, and radio personality. He has performed characters for the popular video game series Fallout and Mafia, and can be heard frequently voicing commercial campaigns. A versatile performer with over twenty-five years of experience, he produces original audio content under his own production banner, Leonardo Audio.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Mykle on June 17, 2010

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK: If you intend to invite me over to your house at eleven PM for an important meeting, but then to not arrive there yourself until one AM, then it is a good idea to leave a copy of this book out on the kitchen counter so that later instead of calling you "flaky teenage pu......more

Goodreads review by Michael on December 14, 2015

Richard Brautigan is an iconic counter-cultural poet and author who is probably best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America. His novels deploy a unique blend of magical realism, satire and black comedy. I recently read an omnibus that included two novels Trout Fishing in America and In Wa......more

Goodreads review by Ian on April 20, 2021

My review of Trout Fishing in America is here: [URL not allowed]......more

Goodreads review by TheBookWarren on June 08, 2020

What a treat Richard Brautigan is, let alone the uncanny excellence of the treat magnified when you get 3 novella’s in one. The charm of RB is in what he doesn’t say, what he chooses to leave out.. this forces one to focus on the afterthought, for the prose is so simply efficient it allows your mind......more

Goodreads review by Zack on July 20, 2024

I like “In Watermelon Sugar” the best, but I just don’t find Brautigan consistently interesting - and tbh the poetry is just not good.......more

Quotes

“One of the under songs in the book is a kind of lament for the passing of a nineteenth-century or even earlier pastoral America and its replacement by an industrial America.” Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate

“Trout Fishing in America drifts like an easy creek. Don’t look for plot in the water; don’t look for plot in this book. The title becomes reference, character, joke, idea. Brautigan is playing around, associating, free-wheeling…What is the sum of all of this play? Is it nonsense? You get out of Trout Fishing in America what you allow the book to take from you. I return to the book not to seek profluence but to step in the water, feel the cool, and carry it with me.” LitHub

“A book infused with a bucolic surrealism and mournful psychedelia that has very little to do with trout fishing and a lot to do with the lamenting of a passing pastoral America…An instant cult classic.” Financial Times (London)

“At times Brautigan can achieve absurdity which is Homeric…This book ought to be required reading in hippie pads.” Los Angeles Free Press

“Delicate, fantastic, and very funny.” Malcolm Bradbury, English author and academic

“First, poet Billy Collins reads his introduction with his usual dry wit, his easy soft-shoe with language setting the tone appropriately. Then comes the affable Chris Ciulia, who is unflappable as he makes his way through surreal scenes and plentiful similes that wash over the listener like a mountain stream. As with many risk-taking texts, this audiobook is best listened to with a relaxed ear; don’t try to ‘get the point,’ or you might miss it.” AudioFile

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