2007 books

[peteryoung]

96) Richard Brautigan, The Abortion, 1971
Brautigan's idea of a San Francisco library of unpublished (and unpublishable) books is first rate, and the sense of unreality is heightened when the reclusive librarian acquires, as a girlfriend, Brautigan's notion of the most beautiful woman in the world. They later require a trip to Tijuana for an abortion and their return also means coming back to a more mundane reality; freed, as it were, from Brautigan's own imagination. Putting aside Brautigan's take on male inadequacies and his shallow view on women, creatively speaking The Abortion starts brilliantly but completely runs out of steam half way through, though this feels like a deliberate way of getting his free-wheeling characters to grow up, emerge from the enduring fantasies of teenage years and enter the real world. Two excellent things have come out of this book: the 'Brautigan Library' now actually exists, and Brautigan's very quotable observation that "If you get hung up on everybody else's hang-ups, then the whole world's going to be nothing more than one huge gallows."

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I like that observation you quoted -- yeah! Thanks!

[maryread.livejournal.com]

I am very happy to hear it is still in print! altho I still have the first paper edition on my shelf. And thanks for the critique, since I was entirely unable to formulate such an opinion when I first read it, although it is possible it did encourage me to "enter the real world". I read it at a formative age, and that bit about the library really stuck, which probably has something to do with my interests twenty and more years later both in manuscript books and in fanzines.