A Confederate General from Big Sur
RICHARD BRAUTIGAN was born in Tacoma, Washington where he spent much of his youth, before moving to San Francisco where he became involved with other writers in the Beat Movement. During the Sixties he became one of the most prolific and prominent members of the counter-culture, and wrote some of his most famous novels including Trout Fishing in America, Sombrero Fallout and A Confederate General from Big Sur. He was found dead in 1984, aged 49, beside a bottle of alcohol and a .44 calibre gun. His daughter, Ianthe Brautigan, has written a biography of her father, You Can’t Catch Death.
www.canongate.tv/richardbrautigan
Praise for Richard Brautigan:
‘Delicate, fantastic and very funny’ Malcolm Bradbury
‘A master of American black absurdism’ Financial Times
‘By opening yourself to [Brautigan’s books], you can get all the old fictional good things. Right there in your own imaginable home you can laugh, tingle, cry and admire’
New York Times Book Review
Also by Richard Brautigan
NOVELS AND NOVELLAS
Trout Fishing in America (1967)
In Watermelon Sugar (1968)
The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 (1971)
The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (1974)
Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery (1975)
Sombrero Fallout (1976)
Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 (1977)
The Tokyo-Montana Express (1980)
So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away (1982)
An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey (1982, but first published in 1994)
POETRY
The Return of the Rivers (1958)
The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958)
Lay the Marble Tea (1959)
The Octopus Frontier (1960)
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1963)
Please Plant This Book (1968)
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1969)
Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt (1970)
Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork (1971)
June 30, June 30 (1978)
SHORT STORIES
Revenge of the Lawn (1971)
A Confederate Generalfrom Big Sur
Richard Brautigan
Introduced by Black Francis
This digital edition first published in 2013 by Canongate Books
This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain in 1999 by
Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
Copyright © Richard Brautigan, 1964
Copyright renewed 1992 by Ianthe Brautigan Swensen
Introduction © Charles Thompson, known as Black Francis, 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 379 9
eISBN: 978 1 78211 382 9
to my daughter Ianthe
Contents
PART ONE: A Confederate General from Big Sur
A Confederate General from Big Sur
The First Time I Met Lee Mellon
A Daring Cavalry Attack on PG&E
PART TWO: Campaigning with Lee Mellon at Big Sur
The Letters of Arrival and Reply
Breaking Bread at Big Sur
Preparing for Ecclesiastes
The Rivets in Ecclesiastes
Begging for Their Lives
The Truck
In the Midst of Life
The Extremity of $6.72
To Gettysburg! To Gettysburg!
