Monday 10-20

This exasperated collection of Brautigan’s musings on the state of nature is one to ponder. The personification of Trout Fishing in America is the theme of interest to this response. I am going to assume that Trout Fishing in America as a character represents the “gemeinschaft,” or rural America as it was before the colonialism of industry.
As a “legless, screaming wino” on page 45, T.F.I.A. (with “shorty” added to the end of his title) is despised by the children pressured into charity for the sake of the barely movable man. The protagonists of the chapter, (be they the children or not) relish him as sort of an antique. “Maybe a museum might be started. Trout Fishing America Shorty could be the first piece in an important collection.” (46) T.F.I.A.S. gets his brain cleaned at a Laundromat and is likened to have “pedaled down to San Jose in his wheelchair, rattling along the freeway at a quarter of a mile an hour.” A backwards individual, T.F.I.A.S. has a hard time functioning with societal norms.
This chapter illustrates a direct comparison between T.F.I.A. and the San Francisco homeless community. Chewed up by the urban social order and spit out upon Washington Square, the “winos” are as equally displaced as the decaying environment surrounding the city. In a later chapter titled “The Last Mention of Trout Fishing In America Shorty” the homeless man is revisited by Brautigan and his infant daughter. The attempts to steal from the man and is intimidated when he welcomes her. She is driven to a sandbox, a symbol of nature encapsulated and convenient. It is as though the modern generation that fosters the child rejects the wild, uncontained natured of T.F.I.A. that “stared after her as if the space between them were a river growing larger and larger.” (97). The gap between the old and the new is widening and the old ways of the free spirit are handicapped like the old man.
All of the “replies” signed by T.F.I.A. denote a hint of nostalgia towards nature despite being seemingly unconnected with fishing. “Tomorrow I’m leaving for Alaska. I’m going to find an ice cold creek near the Arctic where that strange beautiful moss grows and spend a week with the grayling” (76). Thus T.F.I.A., fed up with New York, moves to Alaska. Perhaps a final line is crossed with T.F.I.A.; maybe New York was his last attempt to educate the masses on the theory of Trout Fishing. Are the “friends” T.F.I.A. is visiting the city itself? Are they the “dead people” (77) that invade his bathroom to use his sheet to cover themselves up?
In a similar letter style chapter titled “Trout Fishing in America with the FBI,” (41), T.F.I.A. denounces the FBI’s investigation of a criminal as a way to exploit the trout stream. “The FBI agents watched the path, the trees, the black stump, the pool and the trout as if they were all holes punched in a card that had just come out of a computer.” The government is extending it’s law enforcement to patrol the trout stream. Order is placed on the environment according to the laws of modern culture The notion of surveillance adds a mechanical element to the stream, and the FBI agents see the natural environment as another extension of their job (“it appears to be part of their training” 42).
The character of Trout Fishing in America, while taking different pseudonyms and personalities, maintain true to Brautigan’s notions of rural Americana. A thing of the past, something forgotten by most and scorned by modernity. Trout Fishing in America, the man.

A Very Funny Poem by Lucas Turner and Lawrence Ferlinghetti

all the seagulls, seagulls,
awake
and I am dead
and yet my dream is the wake
and I am the opposite

assignment 1 ferlinghetti

“In Golden Gate Park That Day” is a very interesting portrait of SF in Ferlinghetti's repertoire. Here the mongrel space city is captured very cohesively. Ferlinghetti's use of the past tense in “the enormous meadow which was the meadow of the world” twice in the poem. This gives the poem a remorse for the two deadbeats, wadding in a dream long lost (whether or not the two can be called “beats” is indiscernible due to Ferlinghetti's pronounced separation from the movement- maybe hippies?). As the wife hands out grapes to squirrels, “as if each were a little joke,” it is not apparent in the poem who is receiving the pun of the joke: the squirrels or the humans. The tone does not change much until the very when the mood is revealed in a “certain awful look of terrible depression.” Prior to the reader knowing the girls state of emotion, the “joke” can be of life to the two carefree hippies enjoying themselves in nature, pursuing the beatitude between nature/civilization. The trees “dreamed and seemed to have been waiting thru all time for them,” suggesting a home setting and oneness. The two do not speak to each other seemingly in the harmony of the moment. Yet the silence is suggested by Ferlinghetti's repetition of phrases that separate the couple: “without looking at each other” (twice), “without saying anything,” “without any particular expression.” Thus, what could considered a classically romantized portrait of flower children is turned lamentful in the climax. I noticed Ferlinghetti's use of irony in the climax of previous poems; this ending however, does not provide comic relief. The age of free love of the San Francisco sub culture may be on the decline. The hostility suggested with the “without's” make the couple seem dysfunctional. If this poem were written in the 1960's it could have been taken for a critique of the emerging culture. However in a contemporary setting the two figures are much more appropriately “lost” and thus the critique falls upon the larger San Francisco community. Those still seeking the 1960's in public parks may have much to be depressed about.