OK, I did not read it all. It goes on and on feeling like cleaned up transcripts of god knows how many interviews, cut up, time-organized, but without ever getting at Brautigan. The book told stories about him, it did not try tell you who this guy really was. Not much psychology, here.

Everyone thought Brautigan unknowable, so maybe this proves it.

For me it was like rummaging through the life of someone who lived down the street many years ago, someone you did not know, but recognized every once in a while. And then you moved on and he did too.

In fact, Brautigan did live down the street from me in San Francisco and we overlapped in times there. So the stories are more interesting to me than you, I bet.

Also, the book documents (again) the beat and poetry scene in SF. It tells publishing stories too: agents, writers, back-bitings, readings, groupies, small presses,big ones, too.

OK to browse through for a day or two. ( )

Though not a big fan of William Hjortsberg it must be said that his work was diligent and most likely as honest as could be. But I am convinced in my own mind that a large part of the reason for his writing this biography was to insure his own place in a writer's history as a close friend of Richard Brautigan. A good portion of this mammoth book was to report on the writing life of Gatz and his wife and their life as neighbors of RB in Montana. But I also give Gatz a pass as the amount of time and hard work that went into compiling and recording this valuable information for Brautigan fans such as myself is appreciated. It is my opinion that the mammoth size of this undertaking is as daunting to the reader as it was for the person writing it.

This is a very sad tale. The actual life of Richard Brautigan is nothing anyone would aspire to unless one wants to rub elbows with the likes of Jeff Bridges, Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, Russell Chatham, Harry Dean Stanton, and I could go on and on just as William Hjortsberg did, but I won't. But it is amazing to me that Brautigan accomplished what he did coming from his family of origin. A very sick and dysfunctional crowd of misfits and losers. The fact that RB never finished high school is a testament to his genius on the page. But it is also apparent that his lack of formal education was a detriment to him and ultimately contributed perhaps to his undoing. Richard Brautigan was a practicing alcoholic to the last day of his life and that is what may have kept him alive as long as it did. He never sought help for his addiction and to my knowledge never dealt at all with the underlying sickness enveloping his body and mind due to his environment growing up and the lack of any suitable adult in which to guide him.

Richard Brautigan accomplished much in his short life and I am not certain he could have done much more with it given his history. William Hjortsberg can be proud of his own accomplishment here as well, even though at times his writing and syrupy self-love was a bit too much for me to handle. This was a three star book but I gave it four stars as I was extremely interested in the life of Richard Brautigan and Gatz gave me much more than just the information I craved. And I feel I know Richard Brautigan better now because of reading this book. William Hjortsberg at least did not attempt to deconstruct the Brautigan texts and allowed the writer's life and behavior to show us who he really was. This book does not glorify Richard Brautigan at all, but demonstrates instead what a person can do. And in the case of RB that meant: a lot. ( )

I love Brautigan's work. I saw him in person once and found him disgustingly, sloppily drunk but still a genius. His [b:In Watermelon Sugar|46182|In Watermelon Sugar|Richard Brautigan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170315302s/46182.jpg|1388157] is one of my favorite books ever, and some of his poetry goes with me every step of the way. This book, however, is way too much. Way, way too much. The minutiae of his life; just not that interesting. The opening chapter is horrific, detailing as it does his suicide and how his body decays, visited by flies and maggots, over the next several weeks. I will be a long, long time getting those images out of my head.

Only for the devoted, die-hard, obsessive fan. ( )