Some Favorite Quotes From Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America

Brautigan is someone who has been on my radar and short list of things/writers to read for a while now. Maybe Trout Fishing wasn’t the best place to start, but in the end, the book kept me interested and turning pages throughout its short stack, and I’ll end up reading more from him for sure.

Here are a few of the more memorable passages, in my estimation, from the novel, which exists in many ways as pre-flash flash fiction. It’s almost like there was an exercise going on here in the novel, where a bunch of narrative passages were brought together, and whatever the “theme” or principal noun in the page of writing happened to be, “Trout Fishing in America” replaced it. It becomes a noun, a verb, an activity, a collective, a stand-in for almost anything. Lots to think about here.

From the Chapter “The Kool Aid Wino”

“My friend led the way across the field. One of the pheasants didn’t even bother to fly. He ran across the field in front of us like a feathered pig.

“When we got back to my friend’s house the ceremony began. To him the making of Kool-Aid was a romance and a ceremony. It had to be performed in an exact manner and with dignity.

“First he got a gallon jar and we went around to the side of the house where the water spigot thrust itself out of the ground like the finger of a saint, surrounded by a mud puddle.[...]

“He was careful to see that the jar did not overflow and the precious Kool-Aid spill out onto the ground. When the jar was full he turned the water off with a sudden but delicate motion like a famous brain surgeon removing a disordered portion of the imagination. [...]” (more…)