An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey

by Richard Brautigan

Book Overview

Richard Brautigan's last novel, published in the U.S. for the first time

Richard Brautigan was an original--brilliant and wickedly funny, his books resonated with the sixties, making him an overnight counterculture hero. Taken in its entirety, his body of work reveals an artistry that outreaches the literary fads that so quickly swept him up.

Dark, funny, and exquisitely haunting, his final book-length fiction explores the fragile,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312277105
• ISBN13: 9780312277109
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Pure Brautigan

Maybe I just prefer candid spontaneous writing, but I thought this was a great book -- right up there with Brautigan's best. I don't think of it as "posthumous" in the sense of being inferior to his other work, but in the sense that we are lucky to have it at all.This book made me laugh out loud 3 or 4 times. Very few books have made me laugh out loud even once. Brautigan's "Confederate General From Big Sur" is the only other book I can think of that's made me laugh. So I'd say this is a very funny book, and at the same time a book about death, disease, suicide, depression. It is, as Brautigan says, "a freefall calendar map." I feel that the theme of the book was stated in the section about the Japanese cemetery -- he felt like the exhumed dead people: he was just being moved around by life without much say in the matter. This book is a prolonged meditation on the aimless, meaningless nature of life that throws us from one predicament into the next. It is a book about traveling by a man who does not like to travel. It is a book about things that happen to you that no one else cares about. It is a book about all of the little daily events that happen regardless of great personal tragedies, death and dying. I would not emphasize the fact that this book was written "shortly before his death." This was finished, if we are to believe his dates, in summer of 1982, and he committed suicide in 1984. So at the very least a year and a half had passed (I don't know the exact date of his death). This is a must-read for all Brautigan fans and for anyone who appreciates autobiographical, non-linear novels. We are very lucky to have this book.

Overwhelming Sadness--A Must Read

As a novelist with my debut novel in its initial release, I am fascinated by this glimpse of one of my all-time favorite authors nearing the end of his career. Richard Brautigan's suicide nearly two decades ago haunts American literature almost as darkly as Hemingway's does from four decades ago. In AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN, the reader can see where its author is heading. I'm glad this book has finally found print, but I'm sad knowing full well how the life of one of my literary heroes will soon end. Brautigan's final work tells, in journal form, of a man's journey following the hanging death of a friend. In some ways, it's a typical, rambling, fun Brautigan book. At certain points the man shines like he did at his best. It's the Sixties and Seventies all over again. At other points, sadness takes over, as one can see a magnificent talent fading. AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN is a book I'm glad I read, and I would freely recommend it to everyone.

A cake-mix spoon book

As a rule, I always avoid the flyleaf of a book. Lots of different reasons (sometimes the flyleaf gives away some of the story; sometimes the flyleaf puts me off a book I would otherwise enjoy - that's happened a few times now, it takes a reliable friend's recommendation to send me back; sometimes the flyleaf peddles a kind of tired apocrypha - stories about the author's life, stories about the author's stories; and, sometimes, you get force-fed a whole lot of corn - odd sentences extracted from reviews, comments from people who think they know stuff, all that guff telling you why this is the greatest book ever yada yada yada).For this book, though, for Richard Brautigan's "An Unfortunate Woman", the flyleaf rule goes out the window. I read the flyleaf the way a kid licks a cake-mix spoon. Now, this could all get a bit AA but, yes, hand on heart, I am a devoted fan of the late and great Mister Richard Brautigan. I've read pretty much everything I could get my hands on (which is most of the novels and some of the poetry) and avoided all of the biographies (with the exception of his daughter Ianthe's sweet-sad book, "You Can't Catch Death"). I - uhm - eagerly anticipated this book (in the same way that I eagerly anticipated, say, Jeff Buckley's "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk") because it is one more thing snatched from the jaws of an undeserved end. Same thing with John Kennedy Toole's "The Neon Bible". I mentioned Jeff Buckley and that's useful to bear in mind if you're thinking of licking the cake-mix spoon. You know that CD right? "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk"? You know that was released after his death. You know it would not have been released - at least in that state - if Jeff Buckley had not disappeared beneath the Mississippi waves. Same here. "An Unfortunate Woman" was a 160 page notebook filled with reminiscences. In lots of ways, we're doing something bad reading this. Maybe. It's sort of like reading over a corpse's shoulder. And yet, and yet. Peter Fonda said "How fortunate we are to have another book by our friend Richard Brautigan . . ." A sentence into the book and that's how you feel. A book by a friend. Brautigan books fall into two camps (I've always felt). You get the comedy, the silly (I'm thinking of, say, "The Hawkline Monster" or "The Abortion"), and you get the sweet-sad (say, "In Watermelon Sugar" and "So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away"). "An Unfortunate Woman" falls into the second camp. The messier more grown-up second camp. In lots of ways, "An Unfortunate Woman" reads like the wreck of "In Watermelon Sugar" and "So the Wind . . ." Margaret - the woman who hangs herself at the climax of "...Watermelon" - haunts "An Unfortunate Woman". The narrator is fleeing the memory of the unnamed woman who hung herself in his apartment. He wanders around and thinks about stuff. He wanders around a whole lot of different places, the intention being to write some kind of mind-map. He comes home. That's about that. Your

Brautigan's final book is a true treasure

With 'An Unfortunate Woman,' Richard Brautigan's many fans are given a final taste of the writing style that earned him such initial, well-deserved success. Brautigan here demonstrates his great talent at capturing the essence of a situation (in this case a friend's death from cancer) by writing around it, not addressing it up-front and straight-on. By using this technique, one is still able to gain a sense of Brautigan's profound feelings of loss, and his heartbreaking attempts to come to terms with it. The letter to his departed friend at the beginning of the work is a beautiful piece of writing by itself, and I doubt anyone could read it without wanting to read everything that comes after. Thanks to Ianthe Brautigan for publishing this last book of her father's, along with her memoir, thus giving the public a final look into the workings of a truly unique mind.

Thanks to Ianthe Brautigan for this book...

The world has become more bearable with the publishing of An Unfortunate Woman.Old Brautigan is like a good friend, dependable, reliable and just good fun. An Unfortunate Woman is like breathing fresh oxygen into the fire of an old and dear friendship. This book is just plain fantastic; right from the get go. And it never lets up. It is Richard Brautigan at his clearest, wittiest and possibly most revealing. A true treasure. Thank god Brautigan had a child who saw this book as something to share with the world.