Analysis of Richard Brautigan

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Magdalena Šedrlová WATERMELON SIXTIES: Analysis of Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar on the Background of the 1960s Counterculture in the United States Bachelor ’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. 2008 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature 2 Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor, doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr., for his pertinent remarks, useful hints, patience and support. 3 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………..6 PART ONE: ACULTURECOUNTERMAINSTREAM:Explainingthe Counterculture…………8 ChapterI:Origins………………………………………………………………10 ChapterII: TheSixties………………………………………………………….17 1.PhilosophyandStyle…………………………………………………20 A)Peace………………………………………………………...20 B)East…………………………………………………………..21 C) Nonconsumerism…………………………………………...22 D)Love…………………………………………………………23 E)Turnon,tunein,dropout–thedrugculture……...…………24 PART TWO: WELCOMEIN WATERMELONSUGAR……………………………………………27 ChapterI:RichardBrautigan–A WestCoastwriter…………………………..27 ChapterII: TheStoryof In Watermelon Sugar ………………………………...29 ChapterIII: ThematicandSymbolicAnalysis…..……….………………….....34 1. In Watermelon Sugar asamirror ofthecontemporarysociety……...34 A)iDEATH–a modelofautopiancommunity………………34 B)TheForgottenWorks–cemeteryofthetechnocracy…….…39 2. In Watermelon Sugar asanLSDvision…………….…………….....41 4 3.Onceuponatimetherewas - In Watermelon Sugar asafairytale….44 A)Genreclichés………………………………………………..44 B)Style…………………………………………………………45 4.Underminingelements……………………………………………….46 A)TheTigers…………………………………………………...46 B)EmotionalvacuumatiDEATH……………………………...49 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………...52 APPENDICES ……………………………………………………………………….53 WORKS CITED ……….….….….……………………………...……...….………..63 5 INTRODUCTION It is incontestable today that the 1960s were one of the most significant decades inAmericanhistory.The tenyears between1960and1970meant radical changes in manyspheres of life of all Americans.The scope of these changes,whichinclude new political developments,the rise of the blackmovement and the fight for the rights of blackAmericans,the Americaninvolvement inthe Vietnam war,andalsomanynew trends inculture and social behavior, is of course toowide to be coveredinthis thesis andsois the workof RichardBrautigan.That is whyI decidedto focus the thesis solely onone of Brautigan’s best knownnovels, In Watermelon Sugar ,andonits relationto therisingyouthcounterculture. In fact, Richard Brautigan constitutes a linking element between the 1950s emergingcounterculture, represented bythe beat generation,andthe boom of the hippie movement,whichfloweredfullyinthe mid1960s.While the beats canbe regardedas a relativelysmall group,the hippie life-style was embracedbymillions of youngpeople, almost bya whole generation,as JohnPhillips put it inhis song“SanFrancisco.” The age difference is quite important whenspeakingof the contrasts betweenthe beats and the hippies,because,bythe time the beats hadmovedfrom New Yorktothe Jazz cafés of San Francisco’s North Beach, most of them were already in their early thirties; whereas thehippie crowds of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashburywere mostlyteenagers or youngpeople under twentyfive.Nevertheless, the terms “hipster” and “hippie” show a clear linkof continuitybetweeneach other.“Hipster” was usedtodesignate at first Jazz musicians, andthenJazz fans,drugdealers and other sorts of half-criminals whose lives were miles off the daily routine of the “regular” citizens.“Hippie” came intousage in 6 its today’s sense in the early 1960s and referred to a beatnik who moved to Haight- Asbury. Although Richard Brautigan settled in San Francisco as early as in the mid 1950s,he was never a real part of the beat movement,thoughhe knew the beat authors andsome of them were alsohis goodfriends.However,it is hardtodecide whether he was or was not a beat,because evenliterarycritics are not sure about where toput him. The facts are that: he is certainly mentionedinsome beat anthologies,his earlypoems were published in beat magazines, and Larry Keenan included him in his 1965 photographcalled“The Last Gatheringof the Beats,” which was takeninfront of the City Lights bookshop (see appendices 1 and 2, pp. 5354 ). His ties to the beats are therefore not negligible, but it is also true that,as a twentyyear oldpoet (he was born in 1935) givingout his poems inthe streets,he was not taken muchseriouslybythe ten years older beat stars.Inaddition,he didnot gainliteraryprominence until the 1960s andheis bestknownas ahippiewriter. Inthe afterwordtothe bilingual EnglishCzecheditionof In Watermelon Sugar MartinHilskýclaims that this novel is as closelyconnected withthe secondhalf of the 1960s as Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby is withthe 1920s or Kerouac’s On the Road with the 1950s (184). Although this may appear an exaggerated statement, it certainly has some factual basis.Whyisthat so? Thatis what I will trytoexplain in this thesis, which will include a description of the hippie counterculture, an indepth analysis of In Watermelon Sugar and parallel relations between the two, and thus will answer the question whythe novel became sopopular with the young generationandwhat were the featureswhichthehippiesfoundthe mostappealing. 7 PART ONE: A CULTURE COUNTER MAINSTREAM: Explaining the counterculture Before I start accountingthe storyof whatever one understands under the term “counterculture,” I wouldlike tomake a distinctionbetween a counterculture and the counterculture. For the former,I will use the definition from The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak, for whom a counterculture means “a culture so radically disaffiliated from the mainstream assumptions of our society that it scarcely looks to manyas a culture at all” (42),which is a general explanation that fits any time andany place. Throughout the historythere have been manyinstances of smaller or larger social or cultural movements that were in oppositiontothe prevailingvalues established by the ruling classes, and that either lead to a kind of social revolution or at least introduced some new trends in arts, or they did not achieve much and ended up forgotten.However,we canbe sure that these undercurrents hiddenunder the surface of the mainstream societyare essential for any kindof development,and that they are very oftenthe first impulses for a change.Development andchange are Just other synonyms for evolution, and thus, without what goes counter to the official culture, no society couldmove furtherfromadeadpointtowardsnovelty. By the word “ the counterculture,” I mean, in terms of time, the 1960s counterculture and, in terms of space,the Americancounterculture.Furthermore,I have to point out that neither does this time and space narrowing bring any clear specification, because the counterculture is a puzzle with many pieces, as Roszak suggests: To one side, there is the mindblown bohemianism of the beats andhippies; tothe other, the hardheadedpolitical activism of the student NewLeft.[…] The tension one senses between these two movements is real enough.But […] there exists,at a deeper level,a theme that unites these variations andwhichaccounts for the fact that hippyandstudent activist continue torecognize eachother asallies.(56) Roszak thus divides the counterculture into two big groups, the idle hippies and the politicallyactive New Left.But there were alsoother groupings that couldbe labeled withthe term counterculture,such as the Black Panthers, whowere involvedinthe fight for the rights of black Americans, or even the motorcycle gang The Hell’s Angels. Althoughthe range is therefore quite wide,it is onlythe hippie whobecame one of the most glittering icons of the sixties, it is the icon of a counterculture that eventually became “mass” culture.The hippies were a subculture with specific values,goals and style; and that is what will be the subject of the first part of this thesis,where I will use theterm“counterculture”asasynonymfor “hippiesubculture.” 9 Chapter I: Origins If we are lookingfor the roots of the sixties counterculture,we have toexamine closelythe previous decades andtheir social evolution.Asthemakingof a cultureis not a matter of a single year,we cannot saythat the counterculture was bornexactlyinthe year XY or that on1 January1960we enteredthe sixties,andsosuddenlythe hippie- boom beganandthousands of barefoot childrencrowdedthe UnitedStates.It is rather a series of,at first invisible,developments andevents that cumulate ontoeachother until theybecomestrongenoughtoproducewhatwecalla counterculture. Naturally,whenever there is a debate about the sixties andtheir importance,one cannot forget tomention the fifties,andanytime anybodytalks about the hippies they donot omit the beats andtheir stays inSanFranciscoduringthe fifties.Some people evenprovidedates–allthat pre-hippiethingstartedin1955whenthefamousreadingat the SixGallerytookplace,or it wasin1956whenGinsberg’s “Howl” was published,or it could also have been in 1957 when On the Road was released. But I say No. Of course,in nowaydoI meantodenythese facts whichare true,I onlywant tostress that these were all merelythe individual andveryspecific events that made the public notice whathadbeenhappeninglongtime before. If I say we must look back in time, it is not to the fifties, it is to the forties. Moreover,we must alsoleave SanFranciscoandmove eastwards,toNew York.Does

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