1095 Trout Fishing in America a novel, by Richard Brautigan (read 22 Nov 1970) My niece told me this was a favorite book of hers. It makes no sense at all. Dada is sense personified compared to this book. ( )

The book is made up of a series of short essays (for want of a better word) that are all vaguely around the idea of “Trout Fishing in America”. In some “Trout Fishing in America” is more or less what you would think it means, tales of fishing across the USA, but more often the phrase turns up to mean something completely different. It is often the name of a person, it is the name of hotel in one place and in my favourite story, it is a slogan written on school jackets.

There were parts of it that I enjoyed but other parts I found frustrating. Brautigan can obviously write and I would have liked to see his talent used in a sustained way rather than the fragmented style here. ( )

`Trout death by port wine' is surely up there among the best of short stories although it is a chapter rather than a story. ( )

Nope, I didn’t get it. Not one, single thing. And you might say that lately I don’t get much, but if you have time, you should read it (it’s very short) and explain it to me. Please. Show me the protest against the American myth (aside from things like America is a place that exists only in your imagination and a couple of other similar ideas). Show me why “Trout fishing in America” is, in turn, the name of a person, a hotel, the act of fishing, another person (Trout fishing in America Shorty) in a series of stories that are loosely (if at all) connected, and that don’t even make sense in themselves. Why is trout a symbol? Why mayonnaise? Why not apple pie? (apple pie seems to be very American in a lot of books). Why, why, why? It’s frustrating.

http://meerchant.wordpress.com/2008/0... ( )

A really bizarre bok that I did not particularly care for. I still have no idea what it was about ... I have yet to figure out if "Trout Fishing in America" is a real person or an activity. ( )