Instead of focusing on nature as the victim in this piece, the speaker takes a deep look at one particular human-created structure that is overtaking nature: the American home. The speaker personifies the house and its desires in the poem. The house wants to fall apart and befriend nature, as opposed to destroying it, which is so obviously portrayed in 'Trout Fishing'. The poem is presented in a list pattern. By creating a repetitive list of parts of the house that want to be free, Brautigan suggests that the list could keep going on and on because he only mentions five parts of the house in the poem. This is both hopeful and saddening because on one hand, it shows readers a different side of human-created structures. The personification of the different parts of the house make the structure seem as if it wants to be something better or something more than a human tool to destroy nature. However, it is saddening because doors will never "fly with perfect clouds", and floors will never "digest/their furniture into/flowers and trees". the house is stuck in a transition between wanting to be something better than what it is and being imprisoned by the desires of humans, Americans specifically. While human industry continues to destroy nature, it is also imprisoning the structures themselves.
Question:
Trout Fishing in America: What do you think came first? The novel or the cover?
4 comments:
I've gotta say I think the cover came first, just because Brautigan seems like that kind of progression-oriented thinker.
You make some really interesting points. This particular piece, seems to really embody what he stands for in terms of land degradation and the preservation of nature, but like you said the poem seems to be written by the perspective of the house. I think by doing this Brautigan is able to draw a parallel between the "American house" and the average American.
Hanna...you've got a fresh take on RB's vision of nature and manmade structures. It's no longer a question of nature = good, man = bad, so down with man. Instead, we have a more entangled and complicated relationship. The idea of the house as "transitional", as you say, is really compelling and right on, I think. It's as if RB's speaker is sympathetic to certain aspects of humanity - building homes, for instance. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the "frames" and "hinges" which are keeping the doors and windows from blending with nature. Are these symbolic of the the physical restrictions that keep man from going into nature? And what about the title... what IS the "new American house"? Is it imaginary? Is it nature? If it's nature, why is it American?
I think it is valuable not to think of nature and civilization in dichotomous terms. Rather than simply nature-good, civilization-bad, I think Brauitgan is speaking to a fusion of the organic and the inorganic. Brautigan celebrates the experience of nature despite the presence of civilization that almost always accompanies it: the phone booths, the Cleveland wrecking yard. Nature is repeatedly described in capitalist terms, but is enjoined by Brautigan all the same. It resonates with my reading of Brautigan when you say that the house is 'stuck in transition.' I think all of Trout Fishing is stuck in this transition.
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