willard and his bowling trophies; richard brautigan

Richard Brautigan is a secret of American skill. Reading Willard and his Bowling Trophies, a one-hundred page nothing of sarcastic analysis of the American sex-life, I can only wonder why I'm not studying Brautigan alongsides the likes of Vonnegut and O'Brien; his style of characteristic half-truths intercepted by implausible irony and sprinkled with absurd humor reminds one and often blows away previous works of satiric beauty.

Though without the maddening meta-writing, mind-blowingly good self-insertion of Breakfast of Champions, Willard reads with the same ubiquitous message of anomaly. As no one is important, as no one is truly special, so too are Bob and Constance singled out as one case of what should be or shouldn't be normal. Their reprisals, something that comes not from deserving it but from the irony that no one individual in the story should deserve the fate that is brought upon them, underscores a sarcastic all-too truth from the American writers of the 60s and 70s: It can happen to anyone.

Without giving away the relishing results, I will describe to you what Willard is "about:" Bob and Constance's proto-sadism in the wake of genital warts; Pam and John's turkey sandwiches; a 3 foot art sculpture and it's bowling trophies; and the three brothers who want those bowling trophies back. As a good friend of mine put it: "This is the first time syntax has ever been funny."

Give it a read. The themes I feel are pertinent to the now... after all, the more death, destruction, and financial ruin that hits the world, the more people ask "why me?"

and I, and it seems Mr. Brautigan, have only to say: "Why not?"

now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading everything is illuminated - jonathan safran foer
now listening bario alto - thievery corporation
i am at the metrosphere office, tivoli, 313e