Ms. Hen reviews Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar

Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar

Richard Brautigan

Houghton Mifflin Company

1967, 1968

Ms. Hen read TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA many years ago, when she was a young hen. She had read in the newspaper that a high school student changed his name to Trout Fishing in America, and she thought it was the strangest thing she had ever heard. She wanted to know why a person would change their name to the name of a book. She happened to find a copy of the book in her house, which was odd; whoever lived in the house before had left it behind. The book was moldy and it smelled, but she read it, and she was able to comprehend why a person would change his name to the name of this book. The novel isn’t about trout fishing, even though there is trout fishing in every chapter. It’s about everything in the world, and it’s about the meaning of life, and how the totality of existence means that the universe is strange and nothing makes sense. She understood the book when she read it back then, but did not hold on to her copy. She bought another copy recently for her trip to San Francisco because she remembered it was a San Francisco novel. And it is. She did read some of it on her vacation, and she finished it on the plane ride home. She looked up the man who changed his name to Trout Fishing in America, and she discovered that now he teaches English in Japan.

In this book are two other books, a book of poetry, THE PILL VERSUS THE SPRINGHILL MINE DISASTER, which Ms. Hen did not read, because she finds it difficult and tedious to read poetry, even though she does write it, sometimes reading it makes her eyes cross; it also contains IN WATERMELON SUGAR, which Ms. Hen truly enjoyed.

IN WATERMELON SUGAR is about a town made of watermelon sugar. There is no location or state mentioned where the town is located, but Ms. Hen imagines it is in California. This book is quirky. The protagonist does not have a name, and he is writing a book and he does not know the subject. He lives in a small town, and bizarre things have happened there. Tigers once roamed the town and killed people. A gang of dangerous men ran around and harassed people, who ended up in a bloodbath. Ms. Hen thinks she liked this more than TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA, because it was more of a linear narrative, and she could understand the characters better. But the message is the same, nothing makes any sense in the world, and some things are just demented and distorted, but we have to do the best we can to find happiness.

Ms. Hen learned that Richard Brautigan committed suicide at the age of forty-nine. It made her sad to think that someone so talented and intelligent could take his own life. She thought of other writers who killed themselves: Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf. She thinks that they might have felt the world too deeply and honestly and that drove them to take their own lives. The world can be an insane and erratic place, and sometimes people can’t survive. Ms. Hen mourns for these writers, and their stars that shone and had so much to say, but were dimmed too soon.

Ms. Hen reviews Big Sur

Ms. Hen at The Beat Museum

Big Sur

Jack Kerouac

Farrar Straus & Giroux

1962

Ms. Hen read some books by Jack Kerouac when she was young, as most people do when they are young. She read ON THE ROAD, and THE DHARMA BUMS, and when she read them, she liked them. She was not as educated then as she is now, however. She decided to read BIG SUR to prepare for her trip to San Francisco, and she ended up reading the book while she was there on her vacation seeing the sights and being a tourist, riding the cable cars, and taking pictures of The Golden Gate Bridge.

When Ms. Hen read ON THE ROAD, she thought that the writing was very fast, and might have needed some more time spent on the editing. When she read BIG SUR, she was surprised how many misspelled words there are, and also how much punctuation is missing. Ms. Hen wonders if he would get away with that if he were a woman.

That brings Ms. Hen to another point. People have said that Jack Kerouac and the Beats did not like women, and she could tell by this novel that this was true. Kerouac describes in length all the men friends he has, and how interesting they are, and what about them is cool and fascinating, but the women characters are only perceived as a piece of flesh, people who "look good in a tight pair of bluejeans." Ms. Hen didn’t like this. She thought she liked Jack Kerouac, but she decided if she met him, she wouldn’t like him, and he probably wouldn’t like her either.

This novel is about a writer who has become famous, and has a hard time being famous, and afterwards spends some time in Big Sur, at his friend’s cabin in a valley near the beach. He enjoys his solitude, but yearns to go back to San Francisco where the action and the parties are taking place. He goes to The City Lights Bookstore, where Ms. Hen visited on her vacation, and he tries to get together with his friends and get drunk. He hangs out with his friends, and eventually meets a woman, who was involved with his friend Cody, and Jack has an affair with her. He thinks she’s unstable, but he’s unstable, too. They take her son and some other friends with them to Big Sur. Everything ends up in a mess.

At The City Lights Bookstore

Ms. Hen was in the process of reading BIG SUR when she went to the Beat Museum in San Francisco near The City Lights Bookstore.  She saw some artifacts that the writers had when they lived in San Francisco, there are lots of pictures, and Allen Ginsberg’s organ, and she watched a film about the writers, who incidentally, were all men. The Beats didn’t like women writers, and if a woman was trying to write, they thought it was cute. Ms. Hen doesn’t like this. She doesn’t regret reading this novel, because it’s well written, and enthusiastic, but she doesn’t think she will be reading Kerouac or other Beat writers any time soon.

Allen Ginsberg's organ

Ms. Hen reviews Autumnal Tints

Autumnal Tints

Henry David Thoreau

Applewood Books

Originally published 1862 in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY

Ms. Hen had never read anything by Thoreau before, though she has been to Walden Pond, and walked where he had walked. She wasn’t impressed by Walden because she thought it was too commercialized and it is not a nice hike in the woods since there are partitions to protect the paths, and when she went there she felt like a rat in a maze. It is not the same as when Henry trod the earth in his time.

Ms. Hen liked this book, but she thinks she may have read it too early in the season to truly appreciate it. Thoreau talks about the season and the different trees and plants that transform in the fall. Ms. Hen thinks the writing is lovely, but she wonders if anyone in this day and age has the same amount of time to dedicate to the study of nature. She knows that some people think that Henry was squatting on someone’s land and didn’t have to work like ordinary people, and he had a lot of time on his hands, but she thinks that someone should notice these kinds of things because if nobody does the general population will be immersed in inconsequential trivialities.

Ms. Hen has heard the argument that when the humans have obliterated the earth, the earth will replenish itself after everyone is dead. Ms. Hen thinks Henry would prefer it that way. Ms. Hen doesn’t know what she would prefer, and she hopes she isn’t around to find out.

Ms. Hen reviews The Harder They Come

The Harder They Come

T.C. Boyle

Harper Collins

2015

Ms. Hen discovered this book at the Little Free Library that’s a block from where she lives. She has always been aware of T.C. Boyle, and even went to a reading he did once, but she has never read any of his books until now. She decided to read this because it is about Northern California, not San Francisco in particular, but somewhere near there.

This novel contains three main characters. It starts with Sten, a retiree on a cruise with his wife when their tour group is held up at gunpoint, and Sten kills one of the men attempting to rob them. He has a difficult time handling the notoriety. Sara is a member of an anti-government group and gets into a fight with a police office over her car registration, and eventually picks up Sten’s son, Adam, while he is hitchhiking. The two become lovers, though she is about fifteen years older than him.

This novel is about violence and anger. Sten is a Vietnam veteran and a recently retired high school principal. He has a temper and does not know how to handle retirement. Adam has schizophrenia and has always given his parents problems. Sara is angry at the world and does not want to follow the rules of society, which gets her in trouble.

The beginning of the book has an epigraph by D.H. Lawrence from STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE, “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” To Ms. Hen, this brings MOBY DICK to mind, which is considered the great American novel, a book about obsession and violence. Ms. Hen thought of THE HARDER THEY COME as violent, but inherently male, similar to Moby Dick. Ms. Hen doesn’t think the essential American soul is like this, but possibly the American male soul. The American soul is not completely male, there is a female part to it, and most females do not have violent tendencies. Seeing America as angry and full of killers is just looking at the male side. The female side is primarily something else. The female side might be tortured and depressed as evidenced in THE BELL JAR, by Sylvia Plath, which Ms. Hen thinks could win the prize for the female great American novel. But she digresses.

After reading this book, it brought to Ms. Hen's mind MOBY DICK and violence and school shootings, and she has come to the conclusion that the majority of the young men who have done the shootings recently (and they have almost all been young men) have most likely not read MOBY DICK, but they are living its principals: violence, obsession, not stopping until getting what they want will kill them and others. This is a version of the male American soul, as also displayed in THE HARDER THEY COME.

This novel made Ms. Hen think a lot about other things that were not in this novel. Ms. Hen didn’t love the characters, and she would not want to hang out with any of them, but she understands they are realistic. Ms. Hen doesn’t know anyone like these characters, but she enjoyed this book. A book that makes us look at the wider world and how it might fit in has done its job.HHH

Ms. Hen reviews A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers

Vantage Books

2000

Ms. Hen has had this book in her possession for a while, but she finally got around to reading it. She didn’t for a long time, because she thought it was about a family dealing with cancer, and she thinks that could have been boring and tedious. She finally cracked it open, because she found out Dave Eggers is considered one of the best San Francisco writers, and she is traveling there in two weeks, and she likes to partake in books about a place to get herself ready.

This book is a memoir, but there is some fiction contained. It is about a family of four siblings whose parents have died from cancer separately, within weeks of each other. Dave, the second youngest, twenty-two at the time, is made the guardian of his seven-year old brother, since the two older siblings are busy with work and law school. Dave and his brother Toph, and sister Beth move to San Francisco to start a new life.

One thing Ms. Hen liked about this book was that San Francisco is like a character in the story. The narrator takes the reader on journeys through the streets and the hills and we get to know San Francisco and Berkeley and the people in the area. Ms. Hen decided she could understand what it was like in that city in the 90s with all the young, idealistic people, trying to make a difference in the world, and not caring what the older generation thought of them.

Another aspect of this book that Ms. Hen enjoyed is the writing style. The writing is well crafted and luxurious. The words seem to dance on the page. The author truly knows how to use words to his advantage.

However, even though Ms. Hen enjoyed the exquisite writing, she did not like the narrator. She isn’t sure if it’s because he is immature, or seems like a jerk, or if he’s someone who she decided if she met, she would not like, but that spoiled the book a little for her. She didn’t like learning about the perverse ideas Dave has about women, and the antics with his magazine, and how he tells stories about his friends that he knows would make his book better. Dave doesn’t seem like a nice person to Ms. Hen. Yes, he loved his brother, and he seems “cool,” but he seems too pretentious and unlikeable for Ms. Hen to completely enjoy the book.

Other than the character appearing to be unsavory, Ms. Hen liked some things about this book. She is excited for her trip to San Francisco, and has a better idea of the city now.