52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
12. Trout fishing in America.
A colleague loaned this to me. It’s of a piece with writing of the time — squarely avant-garde, almost poetry, Sixties San Francisco. The phrase “Trout fishing in America” becomes a synecdoche, both for a number of representative people, places, thoughts, actions relating to America and for America itself. There’s something elegiac about it: Brautigan may feel that Trout fishing represents something both fundamental about and increasingly missing in his America, as especially represented by a late chapter in which he visits a scrapyard where they’re selling lengths of Trout fishing creeks and various waterfalls. His voice is relentlessly fun, and he’s willing to follow his pen to almost any absurdity it intends. A unique, quirky little book — one that’ll probably get stuck in my synapses long after it should reasonably have faded.
I totally have this book! I think i first read it when I was like 14 after finding it in the garage. is that weird?
also found in the garage around the same time: Vonnegut’s _Breakfast of Champions_ which = favorite book ever.
shane. March 4th. 2010. 7:15 pm.
Shane’s mom: “Now, that we have kids, maybe we should hide all the hippie books.”
Shane’s dad: “Yes, I’d hate to see Shane unduly influenced by the stuff we read in college. But where?”
Shane’s mom: “The garage?”
Shane’s dad: “Perfect.”
[12 years later...]
Shane (to himself): “Hmm, what’s in this box out here behind my old Green Machine?”
jnonfiction. March 5th. 2010. 5:15 am.