Richard Brautigan was a literary idol of the 1960s and 1970s whose comic genius and iconoclastic vision of American life caught the imagination of young people everywhere. He came of age during the Haight-Ashbury period and has been called "the last of the Beats." His early books became required reading for the hip generation, and Trout Fishing in America sold two million copies throughout the world. An indescribable romp, the novel is best summed up in one word, "mayonnaise."
Brautigan was a god of the counterculture, a phenomenon who saw his star rise to fame and fortune, only to plummet during the next decade. Driven to drink and despair, he committed suicide in Bolinas, California, at the age of forty-nine. This new edition, with an introduction by tk, will be published on the 75th anniversary of Brautigan's birth.