Уиллард и его кегельбанные призы

Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) was an American writer and poet, an iconic figure in the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. The author of 11 novels, 10 collections of poetry and 2 collections of short stories, although the division into types of literature in his case is rather arbitrary. With all his rich imagination, humor (sometimes considered "black") and fantasy, Brautigan worked in a syncretic genre - it is not for nothing that his novels are called "brautigan novels"; in general, "wrote as it is written." His style is musical, as there is little in world literature, and for his translators this is just the case when one wrongly chosen or placed word in a phrase can kill the whole spirit of the work. His novel Fishing in America (1961) brought the writer worldwide fame, he is considered part of the treasury of American literature of the second half of the 20th century. Popular writers (from well-known in Russia) Haruki Murakami and Erlend Lou call Brautigan their teacher. Vasily Aksenov also acknowledged the influence of Brautigan on his work, but this is an open question. Russian Wikipedia believes that Brautigan's work is little known in Russia, but we do not know where they got such data from: almost all of his prose was published in Russian, although his poems were less fortunate, but they are always unlucky.

“Willard and his bowling prizes. Perverted Detective ”-“ Brotigan ”of 1975, by a whim of fate, remained unreleased in the 00s, when there was a natural surge of interest in Brotigan in Russia. In the author's creative biography, he was the sixth published and the second in a series of novels parodying entire literary genres (fantasy, western, detective, etc.). In this case, Brautigan played with sadomasochistic literature, but in fact it is, as usual, about the disunity of people and the inability to understand each other. Its main character is a papier-mâché bird (real, 3 feet tall - it was made by Brautigan's friend Stanley Fullerton, and it is still kept at the home of actor Terry McGovern), living in one San Francisco living room on the same shelf with bowling alley prizes, stolen three years ago from the Logan brothers. John and Pat also live in the house - they have just returned from the cinema, where they watched a film with Greta Garbo. Their neighbors are Bob and Constance, a married couple who are going through a difficult time in their marriage, which is why Bob has irreparable depression. Meanwhile, the Logan brothers are looking for their prizes, and revenge becomes the goal of their whole life (and by no means skittles, as before). The comic, absurd and sad interactions of all these characters make up the fabric of the novel, unsteady and poignant, like black and white French cinema.