Alcopop!

Meanwhile, in between weeping for both Posh Fish and Ian Dowie this week, I caught a glimpse of this post on artsWOM asking for “people to submit their choices of books they would most want to read just before the end of the world” – which struck me as a rather cool question. So safe in the knowledge that goFASTER>>, 4 or 5 Magicians, Family Machine, Sam Isaac and DSP (amongst others) would be on the stereo whilst civilization crumbled – I decided I’d go for ‘Trout Fishing in America’ by Richard Brautigan as my novel of choice.

Why? Mainly because as the sun set on our dying earth, it would fill me with an ironic sense of humour, pity at the charming, and genuine parts of our lives that were being destroyed – and remind me that for all the brilliance this world provides, there’s a whole lot of crap that deserves to go down with it! Similarly, while this book embraces what is beautiful in the sanctity of nature, unlike those texts that naively paint only the cityscape as a brooding, dark and evil place – Brautigan reminds us that one cannot avoid the death and corruption – even amongst the shady glades.

Secondly, while Brautigan delights in exposing the pollution of nature and society as the result of urban expansion, one poignant scene at ‘The Cleveland Wrecking Yard’ sees a charming salesman selling slabs of the trout river itself amongst a stack of toilets, he does not deny that city life itself still may be fun. Despite their anti-social perceptions, drunken days on the city bench, and sharing happiness with the ‘Kool-Aid Wino’ bring a carefree positivity to proceedings.

A truly flawed genius, Brautigan’s seminal novel of a seemingly whimsical trout fishing journey through America, is in fact a disturbing, insightful and fantastic commentary on youth culture, the beat movement and general American politics. More than that though, it’s one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read, packed with literary and historical references which mean there is always something new to discover (although this could perhaps be mildly frustrating if the world was about to blow) – and written in the kind of poetic prose that genuinely shocks, amuses and challenges the expectations of the reader – without ever appearing pretentious.

Yeah – so have that exploding world!