Jubilee Hitchhiker (60 page)

A day or so later, Robin Blaser hosted a memorial evening for Spicer at his Allen Street apartment. Over two hundred people, including Jack's mother and brother, showed up for this “little wake.” Many brought bits of memorabilia, gifts, drawings, and flowers: “Roses just lined the hallway.” Larry Kearney remembered the evening as “an extremely drunken event.” Robert Duncan came without Jess and proceeded to make out with a stranger in the kitchen. Blaser ignored such excesses, preferring to think of the event as “quite magical.”

Richard Brautigan had not been “specifically invited” to Spicer's wake. Don Allen called Joanne Kyger about it, and she in turn phoned Richard. Brautigan told her “he had been thinking about life and death.” He had gone down into his backyard and picked “a perfect rose.” Richard asked Joanne if she would deliver the flower to Mrs. Spicer if he brought it over in an envelope. Kyger refused. “If you want to do this,” she said, “you have to do it yourself.” Brautigan never took the rose to Spicer's mother, nor did he put in an appearance at his mentor's memorial.

Brautigan had published a book with a respected New York firm, something Jack Spicer had never attempted and might well have disdained, but it did almost nothing to improve his financial situation. During the five years Richard worked as a part-time laboratory assistant for Pacific Chemical, his income averaged $1,400 per year. Since quitting to devote all his energies to writing, he suffered a pay cut. By the end of August, his income for 1965 totaled only $637.

At the urging of his friends, Richard decided to apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship. In August he wrote to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, requesting application forms. Knowing he would need four references who could offer “expert judgment” about his “abilities,” he wrote the next day to novelist William Eastlake and to John Ciardi, asking for their help. The connection to Eastlake, whose singular modern-day “cowboy and Indian” novels set in the desert Southwest (
Go in Beauty
,
The Bronc People
, and
Portrait of an Artist with 26 Horses
) earned him a unique place among contemporary authors, came through Donald Allen. Eastlake had published several pieces of short fiction in
Evergreen Review
.

Shortly after William Eastlake returned from Hollywood, where he'd been working on a screenplay based on his latest novel,
Castle Keep
, Brautigan's letter reached him at his remote New Mexico ranch, near the tiny town of Cuba on the edge of the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. Asking for the older writer's assistance, Richard mentioned a “lack of security” in his life. Agreeing to help with the Guggenheim, Eastlake offered a few words of advice on the subject of security. “Certainly you must realize you are born with all you'll ever get. Money won't help. Success won't help. Red Lewis and Ernie [Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway] were about the most insecure people who ever lived.”

Soon after this, Brautigan got in touch with Michael McClure and wrote to Tom Parkinson (currently living in Paris) to solicit their assistance with his application. McClure was teaching English at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Ironically, this academic position gave his judgment more implied weight with the fellowship committee than his reputation as a poet. Michael immediately agreed to do anything he possibly could to help.

Late in August 26, Richard wrote Bob Sherrill, asking if
Esquire
had come to any decision on his submissions. Four days later, the editor returned “Homage to Rudi Gernreich,” with regrets, continuing to dangle the golden carrot. “Close but not quite. Keep trying.” About the same time, Tom Parkinson wrote from London (with a Paris return address) saying he'd be happy to write something in support of Richard's Guggenheim application. “I've had some luck in writing for people, but not so much as I'll hope.” Both letters arrived at California Street when Richard was down in Monterey staying with Price Dunn. His old buddy operated a hauling business called Blue Whale Movers with his brother Bruce, and Brautigan needed a job. Anything to help pay the bills. As usual, Richard and Price spent their first night together getting drunk.

Brautigan returned to San Francisco in mid-September, having earned a few bucks helping Price with manual labor. He'd managed to get some writing done, continuing to work on the short
stories he hoped would develop into a novel. He missed Janice and had written her three letters while he was away, including one just after arriving that he never mailed, perhaps because he'd made a joke out of tying one on with Price. A letter from John Ciardi came during his absence, apologizing for the delay (“I have been off on a ‘round-the-world trip'”). He said he'd be happy to provide some words of support on the Guggenheim form.

Richard wasted no time in replying. He wrote three quick letters on the same day. One to Ciardi, thanking him for his offer of help; another went off to Barney Rosset at Grove; and the third, to
Esquire
, nudged Bob Sherrill to make a decision about the Christmas tree story. The next day, he sent several short stories to his old friend Jory Sherman, now an editor at
Broadside
, a men's magazine published out of North Hollywood, California. Sherman read the work immediately and wrote back the next day to say he was sorry he had to turn them down. He enjoyed “The Wild Birds of Heaven,” but it and the others weren't right for his publication, “which is pretty much sex-oriented.” Sherman asked to see “anything else on hand that might come closer to the mark.”

Having received the rejection letter from
Broadside
the day before, Brautigan quickly mailed another new short story to Jory Sherman (“The Rug,” based on a Bill Brown anecdote). Brautigan's next order of business was getting his Guggenheim application form in the mail. His responses on the questionnaire were as concise as his poetry. Asked for a statement of his project, Richard replied, “I would like to write a novel dealing with the legend of America and its influence upon myself and these times.”

Brautigan's other answers were equally terse. Under marital status, he listed “Divorced” although he and Ginny had not yet filed any paperwork and were not even legally separated. Asked about previous grants and fellowships, Brautigan replied: “I have never received any outside help in my writing.” Under educational background, Richard wrote: “I have no education that can be listed here. My ‘education' has been obtained by other means.” Asked about foreign language proficiency, he replied, “English is the only language I know.” His answer to the query “List the learned, scientific or artistic societies of which you are a member” was brief: “I have never been a member of any organization.”

Brautigan's paragraph-long project statement concluded: “I would like to write another novel about the fiber and mythology of this country. The locale of the novel would be the Pacific Northwest.” Richard's career statement ran somewhat longer, filling an entire page. “I was a little disappointed over a critical reaction that tended to associate [
Confederate General
] with the work of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, etc. I did not write my novel in an effort to imitate those writers. Their values and goals are of course valid and have illuminated areas of the Twentieth Century experience, but they are not my values and goals [. . .] As a novelist I am deeply interested in achieving a maximum amount of effect using a minimum of space, and I am also very interested in structure and language.” As required, Richard made twelve copies of the three supplementary statements and mailed off his completed application.

Things were not turning out the way Brautigan had hoped when his novel was published at the start of the year. Two months after submitting
In Watermelon Sugar
to Grove, he had not heard back from them. Nor had his publisher come to any decision regarding
Trout Fishing in America
. Adding to his woes, Jory Sherman wrote back from
Broadside
rejecting “The Rug” (later published as “Winter Rug” in
Revenge of the Lawn
). “As it stands, then, there is no way in hell I can buy this,” Sherman wrote. “What you have here is more of a slice of life with very little point as it turns
out.” A letter from Lew Ellingham in New York six days later, soliciting work for a new magazine (eponymously named
Magazine
) didn't do much to help. The little publication was distributed for free (“the two San Francisco outlets are City Lights and Gino & Carlo's.”), which meant no payment. Richard sent off a card promising to contribute something.

Seeking serious representation, Brautigan wrote to Elizabeth McKee, a celebrated New York literary agent (her clients included William Styron, John Irving [at the beginning of his career], Charles Webb [McKee had recently sold his first novel,
The Graduate
, to Hollywood], and Flannery O'Connor). Her firm, McIntosh, McKee & Dodds, had been acquired that August by the Harold Matson Company. Richard mentioned his confused relationship with Grove Press, stressing his chief complaint: “Unfortunately, [
Confederate General
] was falsely labeled as a “Beat” novel which is about as good for one as a ten-mile wide hole in the head.”

On the day Elizabeth McKee received Brautigan's letter, she wrote him back, expressing interest. McKee requested a copy of
In Watermelon Sugar
with the understanding that Richard wanted her firm to negotiate the contract with Grove. She also asked to see the
Trout Fishing
contract to check the option clause. Brautigan responded immediately. He enclosed copies of his book and contract, saying he had “plus and minus feelings about Grove,” again stressing his unhappiness with being classified as a “Beat” writer.

Richard wanted to write another novel “dealing with the legend of America and its influence upon myself and these times [. . .] my trouble so far has not been with writing, but with publishing. That's why I need an agent.” Brautigan's outline description of
In Watermelon Sugar
bled away all the magic of his book. Reducing the simple story to its bare bones made it sound banal. (“Previous inhabitants include tigers that can talk, but which have been killed off because the people got tired of being eaten by the tigers.”)

1965 became a dress rehearsal for the big Frisco party still to come. Many seminal moments occurred that spring and summer. In April, the first Owsley acid hit the street. This extremely potent LSD was the product of Augustus Owsley Stanley III, a former radar technician and amateur chemist whose ubiquitous aspirin-sized tablets changed colors from batch to batch, keeping one jump ahead of the rip-off artists. High in Comstock Lode country in the Sierras, the Red Dog Saloon opened its swinging doors in Virginia City, Nevada, at the end of July. The house band was an oddball San Francisco outfit called the Charlatans, sporting thrift shop Edwardian clothing and hair so long they made the Beatles look like bankers. The Charlatans became the first psychedelic band, offering a pulsating light show (designed by painter Bill Ham) throbbing across the bar walls in time to the music.

Two other important music venues started up in Frisco soon after. On the Fourth of July, four-hundred-pound Falstaffian local DJ “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue (who ruled the local rock scene) opened a club called Mothers. It took off after he booked a New York band, the Lovin' Spoonful, in August. A little more than a month later, a former pizzeria was transformed by Marty Balin (née Martin Buchwald) into a nightclub he named the Matrix. Balin, an actor/singer living in the Haight, performed with a rock group that became the house band. Their peculiar name, Jefferson Airplane, was an abbreviation of Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane, a Berkeley gag skewering the pretensions of folk music buffs with mock invented names for “legendary” bluesmen.

Over on 1836 Pine Street, a boardinghouse for wandering musicians managed by Bill Ham, “the light show man,” a poet named Chet Helms got involved in a “dope marketing enterprise”
called the Family Dog. Helms had talked Janis Joplin into dropping out of summer school at the University of Texas in 1963 and hitchhiking with him to San Francisco. Joplin lasted for a year in the city on her first trip before returning to Austin. Chet's group soon transmuted into a production company. The Family Dog rented Longshoreman's Hall for two weekends in October and put on dances. They called the first one “A Tribute to Dr. Strange,” in honor of the Marvel Comics superhero. The second was dubbed “A Tribute to Sparkle Plenty,” after a character from
Dick Tracy
.

Bill Ham set up his light equipment at one end of the cavernous hall. The Dog hired the Charlatans, Jefferson Airplane, and the Great Society to supply the music. Several hundred people showed up on both occasions, clad in all manner of mod finery and thrift shop Edwardian castoffs. They danced under the pulsing amorphous light show to the electric blast of rock and roll, forming impromptu weaving conga lines with happy strangers. Something bold and new had come to town. It was time to party.

By the end of October, Richard Brautigan was in no mood for a party. Bob Sherrill had turned down the Christmas tree story (“Too much, too little, for us. Very funny idea, though. Keep trying.”), effectively closing the door at
Esquire
. Richard had no other viable notions for magazine articles at the moment. He wrote to Donald Hutter at Scribner's, asking if he'd be interested in reading
Trout Fishing
. Brautigan said he'd been “doing a lot of writing [. . .] I'm trying to give the short story a little workout before I start another novel.” Hutter answered a week later, saying he'd be happy to read the book. Richard shipped him a copy the very next day.

That same afternoon brought a curt note from Sallie Ellsworth at the
Partisan Review
. After sitting on the
Trout Fishing
chapters for nearly six months, the magazine informed him that the material had finally been given to Richard Poirier, one of the three editors. “Your story will have to be passed through all three, which will take several months.” Ellsworth requested that Richard submit something else should he be rejected. “I found the stories exhilarating,” she concluded.