<b>"Blown away like apples by the fickle wind of the Twentieth Century”: Counterculture Resistance and the Wilderness Condition in Richard Brautigan’s <i>Trout Fishing in America</i></b> // Resistencia contracultural en <i>Trout Fishing in America</i>

Authors

  • Jill E Anderson Tennessee State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2013.4.1.498

Keywords:

1960s, Richard Brautigan, ecocriticism, años 60, ecocrítica

Abstract

Abstract

Many critics consider Richard Brautigan’s 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America a coming-of-age account of a wayward, outsider narrator discovering that the pastoral mode is no longer viable in mid-century America.  However, these readings often ignore Brautigan’s explicit political affinity and his conscious engagement with a specific setting—southern California in the mid- to late-60s.  This paper explores Brautigan’s Counterculture ethic, which critiques the mindless prevalence of mainstream, middle-class America’s habit of consumption, production, and destruction of the natural world.  Linking the lack of individual free will with the postwar technology boom, Brautigan engages with the natural landscape and in communities of one’s own making.  As a result, the novel is peopled with alienated drop-outs, the victims of America’s technocracy.  The “trout fishing in America” refrain, with its many incarnations, is one of the modes through which these characters’ operate within Counterculture principles, namely through their self-imposed poverty and criticism of the way America uses and abuses its citizens and the natural world.

 

Resumen

Muchos críticos consideran la novela de Richard Brautigan Trout Fishing in America (1967) un relato iniciático de un narrador forastero y obstinado  que descubre que el modo pastoril ya no es viable en los Estados Unidos de mediados de siglo. Sin embargo, estas lecturas a menudo ignoran la afinidad política explícita de Brautigan y su compromiso consciente con un escenario específico - la California sureña de los últimos años de los años 60. Este ensayo explora la ética contracultural de Brautigan, que critica la preponderancia ciega de la clase media de los Estados Unidos y su hábito de consumo, producción y la destrucción del mundo natural. Conectando la falta de voluntad propia con el "boom" tecnológico posterior a la segunda guerra mundial, Brautigan se implica con el paisaje natural y en las comunidades de creación propia. Como resultado, la novela está llena de  bohemios alienados, las víctimas de la tecnocracia estadounidense. El refrán "trout fishing in America," con sus muchas encarnaciones, es una de las formas en las que estos personajes actúan dentro de los principios contraculturales, concretamente  a través de su pobreza auto-impuesta y del criticismo de la manera en que los Estados Unidos usan y abusan de sus ciudadanos y del mundo natural.

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Author Biography

Jill E Anderson, Tennessee State University

Tennessee State University, United States

drjillelizabeth@gmail.com

Jill E. Anderson earned her PhD from The University of Mississippi in 2011. She is currently an assistant professor of English at Tennessee State University and is working on a book project focusing on queer ecology and literature of the American Cold War.

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Published

2013-04-25

Issue

Section

Green Countercultures