Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

by William Hjortsberg

“Brautigan’s life unfolds as a tragicomedy, and the book vividly evokes the heady 1960s and 1970s, especially in the Bay Area.” ― The San Francisco Chronicle Confident and robust, Jubilee Hitchhiker is an comprehensive biography of late novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, author of Trout Fishing in America and A Confederate General from Big Sur, among many others. When Brautigan took his own life in September of 1984, his close friends and network of artists and writers were devastated though not entirely surprised. To many, Brautigan was shrouded in enigma, erratic and unpredictable in his habits and presentation. But his career was formidable, an inspiration to young writers like Hjortsberg trying to get their start. As Hjortsberg guides us through his search to uncover Brautigan as a man, the reader is pulled deeply into the writer’s world. Ultimately this is a work that seeks to connect the Brautigan known to his fans with the man who ended his life so abruptly in 1984, while revealing the close ties between his writing and the actual events of his life. Part history, part biography, and part memoir, this etches the portrait of a man destroyed by his genius. “It’s Hjortsberg’s ability to work like a novelist―to shape his mountain of material, the enormous chaos of Brautigan’s life, into a narrative―that makes Jubilee Hitchhiker most remarkable.” ― Harper’s Magazine “One of the merits of Jubilee Hitchhiker is that it not only tracks Brautigan’s life but also deftly flips open any number of worlds, from the Beat and counterculture scenes in San Francisco to gonzo times in Montana.” ― The New York Times

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Poetry, Literature

880 pages, Hardcover

First published January 10, 2012

About the author

William Hjortsberg was an acclaimed author of novels and screenplays. Born in New York City, he attended college at Dartmouth and spent a year at the Yale School of Drama before leaving to become a writer. For the next few years he lived in the Caribbean and Europe, writing two unpublished novels, the second of which earned him a creative writing fellowship at Stanford University.

When his fellowship ended in 1968, Hjortsberg was discouraged, still unpublished, and making ends meet as a grocery store stock boy. No longer believing he could make a living as a novelist, he began writing strictly for his own amusement. The result was Alp (1969), an absurd story of an Alpine skiing village which Hjortsberg’s friend Thomas McGuane called, “quite possibly the finest comic novel written in America.”

In the 1970s, Hjortsberg wrote two science fiction works: Gray Matters (1971) and Symbiography (1973). The first, a novel about human brains kept alive by science, was inspired by an off-the-cuff remark Hjortsberg made at a cocktail party. The second, a post-apocalyptic tale of a man who creates dreams, was later published in condensed form in Penthouse.

After publishing Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974), a comic jab at the macho world of bullfighting, Hjortsberg wrote his best-known novel, Falling Angel (1978). This hard-boiled detective story with an occult twist was adapted for the screen as Angel Heart (1987), starring Robert De Niro. Hjortsberg also wrote the screenplay for Legend (1986), a dark fairy tale directed by Ridley Scott. In addition to being nominated for an Edgar Award for Falling Angel, Hjortsberg has won two Playboy Editorial Awards, for which he beat out Graham Greene and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. His most recent work is Jubilee Hitchhiker (2012), a biography of author Richard Brautigan. Hjortsberg lives with his family in Montana.

Learn more at: http://www.openroadmedia.com/authors/...

Reviews

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/1007565...

Though not a big fan of William Hjortsberg it must be said that his work was diligent and most likely as honest as could be. But I am convinced in my own mind that a large part of the reason for his writing this biography was to insure his own place in a writer's history as a close friend of Richard Brautigan. A good portion of this mammoth book was to report on the writing life of Gatz and his wife and their life as neighbors of RB in Montana. But I also give Gatz a pass as the amount of time and hard work that went into compiling and recording this valuable information for Brautigan fans such as myself is appreciated. It is my opinion that the mammoth size of this undertaking is as daunting to the reader as it was for the person writing it.

This is a very sad tale. The actual life of Richard Brautigan is nothing anyone would aspire to unless one wants to rub elbows with the likes of Jeff Bridges, Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, Russell Chatham, Harry Dean Stanton, and I could go on and on just as William Hjortsberg did, but I won't. But it is amazing to me that Brautigan accomplished what he did coming from his family of origin. A very sick and dysfunctional crowd of misfits and losers. Though Brautigan did finish high school, the fact of his further lack of formal education was a detriment to him and ultimately contributed perhaps to his undoing. Richard Brautigan was a practicing alcoholic to the last day of his life and that is what may have kept him alive as long as it did. He never sought help for his addiction and to my knowledge never dealt at all with the underlying sickness enveloping his body and mind due to his environment growing up and the lack of any suitable adult in which to guide him.

Richard Brautigan accomplished much in his short life and I am not certain he could have done much more with it given his history. William Hjortsberg can be proud of his own accomplishment here as well, even though at times his writing and syrupy self-love was a bit too much for me to handle. This was a three star book but I gave it four stars as I was extremely interested in the life of Richard Brautigan and Gatz gave me much more than just the information I craved. And I feel I know Richard Brautigan better now because of reading this book. William Hjortsberg at least did not attempt to deconstruct the Brautigan texts and allowed the writer's life and behavior to show us who he really was. This book does not glorify Richard Brautigan at all, but demonstrates instead what a person can do. And in the case of RB that meant: a lot.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Granted, at 812 pages (and it does need more careful editing), this is probably more than most folks want to know about Richard Brautigan. Not so I. The whole period of American letters from the late 50s through the 70s is a rich topic, and this gargantuan history relates it all. What a grand achievement! I moved in with all my packed bags and furniture and I didn’t want to move out. It’s positively Tolstoyan in its scale and sense of tragedy.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jubilee Hitchhiker opens with the absolute horror show of Richard Brautigan’s suicide, an event made all the more horrific because it went undiscovered for six weeks. Beginning at this gruesome ending allows Hjortsberg to lead off with a riveting, can’t look away event, necessary perhaps to hook the reader into an over eight hundred page journey through Brautigan’s complicated and fascinating life.

Brautigan lived much of his life in the vortex of several different creative scenes. As such, his life story also serves as a fascinating glimpse into the creative life of Beat San Francisco, Psychedelic San Francisco, and the macho, artistic community in 1970s Montana. Diggers, Hell’s Angels, famous musicians and actors, and a who’s who of West Coast Literati were all part of Brautigan’s intensely lived life, and all are captured in these pages.

William Hjortsberg was a talented novelist, and brought a storytellers flare to this bio. He knew Brautigan as a friend and as his neighbor for many years, and his chronicle of Brautigan’s complicated life is both sympathetic and painfully honest. His book is massive enough to be comprehensive, and written with a skill to keep it consistently interesting throughout. If you are a fan of Brautigan’s unique writing, this is the biography that you must read.

[Ed Eleazer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a long hard slog, but a rewarding one for Brautigan fans. The result of over two decades of research on Hjortsberg's part, the book presents Brautigan's life in minute detail over the course of some 812 pages. It does seem slightly ironic that Hjortsberg goes to such lengths and covers so much detail in discussing the life of an author who valued smallness, brevity, and the beauty of the mundane.

The book's strengths are manifold. We are given insight into Brautigan's writing methods, everything he wrote whether published or unpublished, how he developed those beautiful book covers for his works pre-Hawkline Monster, and how his art developed over the course of his career. For Brautigan scholars there is more than enough detail about Brautigan's thinking and his relationships with other people, but most importantly to this reader, Hjortsberg uses his own novelistic skills to provide a visceral understanding of Brautigan's motives for committing suicide. The book's conclusion is heart-rendingly perfect.

As detailed as this tome is, I found it did not do a very good job of some basic things most of us Brautignists want to see, such as showing just how witty and jovial Brautigan could be. To get that, one must read Greg Keeler's Waltzing with the Captain or even Keith Abbott's Downstream from Trout Fishing in America (though it is less well written than is either Keeler's or Hjortsberg's works). Further, Hjortsberg does very little to explain or even to dramatize how such a humane writer, such a searcher for TRUTH as Brautigan was could be such a womanizer and then be so devastated when either first wife Ginny or second wife Akiko strayed off the reservation. Even worse, perhaps, we are given no hint of an explanation as to why Brautigan's star faded in the early eighties. What caused the voice of the generation to lose his audience?

These concerns aside, this book is major work showing great dedication and devotion to its subject. If it had only been edited more closely. There are numerous dittographies, missing words, dangling modifiers,and misspellings that indicate that the book was edited on screen, perhaps even scanned from typed pages (see Becky Forida for Becky Fonda on p. 708).

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Brautigan's work. I saw him in person once and found him disgustingly, sloppily drunk but still a genius. His In Watermelon Sugar is one of my favorite books ever, and some of his poetry goes with me every step of the way. This book, however, is way too much. Way, way too much. The minutiae of his life; just not that interesting. The opening chapter is horrific, detailing as it does his suicide and how his body decays, visited by flies and maggots, over the next several weeks. I will be a long, long time getting those images out of my head.

Only for the devoted, die-hard, obsessive fan.

[Cory B · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Jubliee Hitchhiker” is one of those big, sprawling books that takes on the whirlwind of the American 1950s and 60s, while never losing sight of the eye of the storm—in this case the life of poet, novelist, and all-around bad-ass Richard Brautigan, whose suicide in 1984 should be added to the devastating list of great American writers that we’ve lost too soon. Hjortsberg, who counts himself amongst Brautigan’s acolytes, writes in a clear, comprehensive voice that keeps you turning the pages. Not only did I feel that by the time I finished, I had an infinitely deeper sense of the enigmatic man behind “Trout Finishing in America” (which you should also check out if you haven’t), I was still in the book, tramping around with Brautigan and Co. long after I put it down.

[Mat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. One of the top 5 biographies I have read in my life so far.
It is my hope that this book, although it came out more than a decade ago will help re-establish Brautigan's rightful place as one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century.

Burroughs' reputation seems to have steadily grown since his death. This is partly due to the large number of Burroughs scholars in the world. I'm not saying that Burroughs doesn't deserve it, but I personally find Brautigan AT LEAST as important a writer as Burroughs, if not more.

Of course, it is always difficult, for me at least, to read a biography which you know will end with someone committing suicide. This book begins with Brautigan's suicide, starts from the end, and comes full circle.

In this spectacular biography, which is properly called Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and TIMES of Richard Brautigan you will be transported not only into Brautigan's wild imaginative world but a world that no longer exists - America of the 1950s, and 1960s and 1970s. Because Brautigan's most famous work, Trout Fishing in America came out in the late 1960s, at the height of the Hippie movement and the Summer of Love, Brautigan is often lumped together with people like Ken Kesey as a 'hippie writer'. Brautigan did not like any labels such as 'Beat poet' or 'hippie poet' (even though the way he dressed did help reinforce the image that he was a hippie). The only label or group that he seemed comfortable being affiliated with in any way was the Diggers, and if you don't know who the Diggers were, it's worth your time reading up on them, because they are quite interesting. Peter Berg and Emmett Grogan were Diggers. Brautigan hung around with them. Beat poet (and friend of Brautigan's) Lew Welch also hung out with them.

Brautigan's crazy ranch lifestyle in Montana was quite revealing as well. Too many fellow writers, too much whiskey, too many guns, in short, too much testosterone. I know what you're thinking - I say that like it's a bad thing, but in same ways it is, especially for the patient women who had to put up with these guys.

This book made me want to read the works of other famous writers Brautigan knew and befriended such as Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane, among others.

Finally, I loved some of the stories about Brautigan's trip to Japan. As someone who has been living in Japan for more than 20 years now, I could relate to some of his experiences.

The last 100 pages of the book were hard to read. It was so sad to read about a great but tortured artist slowly come apart at the seams. Brautigan slowly went around and gave his respective goodbyes to people. His final goodbye to Masako Kano (one of his great loves) and his goodbye to Don Carpenter just before he shot himself were extremely sad and poignant.

As someone who has lost dear ones to suicide, I could really relate to Ianthe Brautigan's pain (his daughter). I hope she has learned to forgive him and focus on the good memories (which is what I had to do myself).

This book also contains some literary criticism and quotes from reviews that either praised or condemned each of Brautigan's publications at the time. I was amazed to see how much of his own life is actually right there, under a different guise, or disguise, within the lines of his fiction. Also, there seem to be quite a few unpublished Brautigan manuscripts still around. Let's hope they are finally published.

One reviewer once said that Brautigan was "streets ahead of Kerouac and Burroughs." I agree with the comparison to Burroughs and would say he is as important a writer as Kerouac. Perhaps the final word should go to his close friend and fellow poet, Ishmael Reed, who once called Brautigan "the Picasso of literature." HIs style, his humor, his 'whimsy' (I know this was a word he actually hated to describe his work, but I think it is accurate) all point to a highly original and iconoclastic genius.

To be honest, I wanted to give this 4.5 stars as I did notice a few parts which I think are inaccurate - the description of Cassady's death, saying that Corso was at the Six Gallery reading when he wasn't, calling Gifu a "suburb" of Osaka, when in fact it's a whole other prefecture / state etc. - minor gripes that should be rectified if this is republished in future. However, putting these minor gripes and spelling errors aside (there are many in the chapters on Japan), this biography is a real labor of love and therefore I must say hats off to Hjortsberg for this loving and beautiful homage to a former friend and writer whom he greatly admired. Thanks to this wonderful book, I am also now able to fully appreciate what a great writer Brautigan was. He is now one of my all-time favorites.

Clocking in at 800+ pages, this biography is not for the faint of heart but it's riveting. The only time I could put it down was when I had to attend to chores or work or go to the restroom. And if it had been even another 200-300 pages longer than this, I could have easily kept reading. Upon finishing this book, a small 'poem' (for lack of a better word) came into my mind and it goes like this.

Richard Brautigan

How messed up his life was; How greater a writer he was.

[Richard Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard or read most of this book in manuscript, and was greatly impressed. William Hjortsberg has done a masterful job of depicting the life of Richard Brautigan, the iconic counterculture poet.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings on Hjortsberg's Brautigan biography. Some of the general consensus appears to be that it's far too exhaustive in its detail, noting things like how much Brautigan paid for a room at a hotel or meal in a restaurant. Such detail brings the book to 800+ pages, a seeming irony, given the short, somewhat minimalist nature of Brautigan's work.

Delving into the biography, however, one learns of Brautigan's own obsession with details (he constantly kept written lists and records of his career, personal life, etc.), and in that regard, Hjortsberg's inclusion of a similar detailed record makes sense. The first chapter alone, which recounts the story of Brautigan's suicide, is shocking because of the detail provided. What follows it is a winding journey through the writer's hits and misses, loves and losses, and high and low points. As a writer, I specifically appreciated a lot of the details of Brautigan's early efforts to get published, though I can see how that might bore someone who doesn't write.

This was, overall, an enjoyable read for me. I held off on giving it five stars, however, because I found myself getting hung up on the more technical elements of the book. Hjortsberg doesn't cite anything internally, and there were a handful of stories that had me wondering how he obtained them - anecdotes that involved only Brautigan or Brautigan and a random passerby, stories Hjortsberg would only know if he'd heard them from Brautigan himself. Instead of stating that somehow in the book, we're supposed to just believe what Hjortsberg says to be truth. There's an extensive (and impressive) works cited list in the back of the book, but footnotes in the text would have been nice, for the several times where I wondered how the author got his information.

A frequent point of confusion is Hjortsberg's use of first and last names when referring to a character in the story. The cast is large, many showing up sporadically, and when he uses a person's first name in one sentence and their last name in the next, I sometimes had to pause and retrace the paragraph to clarify who he was talking about. Last name only would have been a lot clearer, with so many people appearing in minor roles.

Other technical hangups are minor - the book is littered with typos, and the author tends to switch back and forth between writing about himself in first and third person (I can't imagine how odd it must be to insert yourself into a biography in third person, but when he does it, he does it objectively well). These are things I can get past, and things I want to get past, because really, this is a work of magnificent scope, covering the life of a man and his impression on American literature (there's a lot of great writing about the rise of the Beat and hippie movements, as well).

I have a lot of appreciation for a writer who does extensive research. Hjortsberg spent twenty years researching Brautigan, and the result is an impressive journey of a book that will keep most readers' attention. Aside from the lack of citing from the research (and maybe others can get past that), this is a great ride for Brautigan fans and for writers in general.

[Kristi]

Yikes. 880 pages of depressingness, many of which I had to skim. Smart, sensitive boy abandoned by kooky family. Struggles with OCD, anxiety, shock treatment, and a bunch of other stuff. Discovers soulmates in the Beats of San Francisco and hones his craft as well as his love of booze. Apparently doesn't feel the sense of Peace and Love that his hippie peers are preaching in the '60's and seems looped in emotional turbulence and misogynistic relationships until his suicide in 1984. Sad.

[Lee Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

My high school librarian/quiz team advisor turned me on to Richard Brautigan. I think of him as an author made for readers in their teens and twenties, when you are first discovering writers who do wild things with style and form and language, and you're easily impressed by that kind of thing. Whenever I've tried to re-read him as an adult, I've thought it didn't age well, it's very "of its time," etc., but I still loved it with that romantic fondness of the teenager for her first love. So while I wanted to read everything he wrote and everything about him, the 812-page length and my evolving tastes caused me to leave this book languishing on my to-read pile for ten long years, according to the receipt I found tucked into the inside cover when I finally picked it up. I like to read a big book in the summer, and I thought this would be a good time to get deeply reacquainted with this tragic hippie writer I loved so much as a weirdo teenager.

Never meet your heroes, I guess.

All credit to author/Brautigan neighbor and friend William Hjortsberg, because when I want to read a biography of someone, I want to know EVERYTHING, and this book tells you EVERYTHING. Other reviewers on here who are blanching at chapter one, which goes into gory detail of Brautigan's suicide and the roughly six-weeks-later-discovery of the body: you're a bunch of fucking lightweights and you need to toughen up. Give me EVERYTHING--I want to know about his herpes-gnarled dick, I want to know it all!

But I digress.

First, to clarify: he's not a hippie, he's not a Beat (although he's sometimes called "the last of the Beats"). He's too old for the former, too young for the latter, a Silent Generation member, born the same month as Elvis, the same year as my dad. A horrible childhood, shitty mom, abject poverty, series of stepfathers, possible learning disability.

The best part of his life (and this book) is in the early days of his success in San Francisco, palling around with The Diggers (Peter Coyote!), and self-printing and selling his poetry in little booklets. Never a drug user, he is however an alcoholic, and as time goes on and his fun carousing turns sour, as these things must, all the things that were maybe charming in small doses become insufferable, and I realized I would have just hated this guy. Let's run it down: drunk, childish, petty, envious, woman-hating, woman chasing, Asian fetishizing, grudge holding, gun obsessed, quick to cut friends over tiny perceived slights, doesn't like dogs, moocher, party ruiner, and worst of all: he bows when he meets you. As the seventies rolled into the eighties and his drinking worsened and his popularity dwindled, the money dried up and yet he still made frequent trips to Japan. A bitter (more on his end) divorce from his second, Japanese wife only exacerbated his issues. Finally, in 1984, in debt and depressed, he ended it a few months before his 50th birthday, and I admit to feeling sad for him, wretched and annoying though he'd become. Hjortsberg covers this in exhaustive detail--and there is no doubt he focuses on the wrong things often: I'm sure I'm not alone when I wish there had been more detail about what the writing process had been for say, The Hawkline Monster and less detail on the flight itinerary for the book tour for The Tokyo-Montana Express. On the whole, though, I'm not complaining, because as I said, I wish all biographies of the weird people and things I'm into had this much information. Otherwise, why bother?

[Andrei Mocuţa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jubilee Hitchhiker este un proiect monumental şi, în ciuda imperfecţiunilor sale, este probabil biografia cea mai completă, mai sinceră şi mai amplă a lui Richard Brautigan de până acum. William Hjortsberg şi-a asumat un risc: să fie atât de detaliat încât să piardă cititorii mai puțin dedicaţi, să fie implicat personal, să expună nu doar gloria, ci şi mizeria, nu doar inspiraţia, ci şi declinul. Rezultatul este un portret care lasă puține întrebări neadresate și oferă o hartă vie a urcușurilor și căderilor unui scriitor care a captat visurile unei generații, dar nu a reușit să se salveze pe sine însuși.
https://www.criticarad.ro/cartea-sapt...

[Scarlet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got halfway through this thing before I had to give it back to the library. I won't be checking it out again, but I don't necessarily think that should be a deciding factor in your choosing to read the book or not—it's just that personally, I've had my fill of Brautigan's life story. This bio is insanely detailed, perhaps too much so. You'll learn things about Brautigan that you'll wish you hadn't, but all in all it's a well researched book that's a pleasure to read if only for its exhaustive reportage of San Francisco/Bay Area history.

[Steve Hockensmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This starts off strong with an absorbing account of the discovery of and reaction to Brautigan's death. Unfortunately, after that it eventually wears out its welcome with page after page of unnecessary, unilluminating (and often extremely unflattering) detail. I started reading the book because I like Brautigan's writing. I ended it kind of hating him and wondering why I'd found him appealing in the first place. I did get a strong feeling for what he was like. Alas, I also came to realize that I didn't want to spend 800 pages in his company.

[Annie Carrott Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I swear I will finish this at some point! Half way through 880 pages! It's so heavy to read in bed!!!
***Update:
William Hjortsberg took 2 decades to write this book! It took me 4 years to read it - read sporadically between many other books. It was worth it in so many ways. I am so glad this book was written. As the cover says - "an enjoyable soak in American literary bohemia" - from SanFran to Montana to Japan - it followed Brautigan's sad journey from poetic hippie star to destitute alcoholic. It's a good thing there was an index as the roster of people in this biography boggled the mind. I could never keep everyone straight although it would have helped if I had read it straight through. If you're up for an 800+ book that takes you through the era of our (my) youth - I dare you to try it! It's a wild ride.
I'm also ready to read some of the other authors of this time - ie - McGuane and others.
(Sadly, the author - Gatz ( William H's nickname) passed away this year.)

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A much needed comprehensive biography of Richard Brautigan. However, it is TOO comprehensive. I don't really need to know about him remodeling his Montana home or that he spent $80 on a lobster dinner in New York in 1982. Details like this make the biography at times read like a ledger rather than the story of a complex man's life.

[Jane Vandenburgh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This contains the most gripping first chapter of a literary biography I have ever read, might put you in mind of the structure and exactitude of Jim Crace's lovely, heartbreaking Being Dead. Beautiful!

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally finished after 3 months, I think. Not an indicator of what I thought of it. It was fantastic if depressing.

[Jim Krotzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life & Times of Richard Brautigan by William "Gatz"Hjortsberg is a fact-filled biography of 880 pages. Hjortsberg, who is also part of the story, blasts the reader with nuggets of data. I read 880 pages of which only half were necessary. For the most part the biography is a catalog of Richard's books, the size of his advances, which countries acquired rights of translation, how many copies were sold, etc. Much of the book is a list of the bars he goes to, the drunken stupors he is in, the writers and filmmakers he meets, and the women he has affairs with. Hjortsberg doesn't give many theories of what Brautigan believes or how he uses his amazing imagination. The reader does learn that Richard believes that a writer needs offbeat insights into human relationships and the nature of man,that he wasn't taken seriously as a writer until he started making money. He was thought to be a hippie writer because he lived in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. "The book functions like memory, in disconnected bits and pieces, where trivial moments take on the same emotional importance as powerful events.” Brautigan's mind worked that way, too.
This book doesn’t tell what he thought about his writing, his ascent, his decline or his life’s quest.
Hjortsberg introduces his own distortions; facts don’t contain a life any more than moral fables do. And sometimes more is less. At the end of this long book, the work of finding Richard Brautigan remains to be done. Life may be made up of details, but biography lies in managing and organizing them. The book can be boring, repetitive, and a long slog.

[Sharla · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing I would say is skip the first section, which is a graphic description of Brautigan’s suicide and the gruesome aftermath. You don’t need it or at least if you do it would be better placed at the end in my opinion.

I have no doubt this biography is accurate. It seems as if the author has talked to everyone who ever knew Brautigan or crossed his path. It is long and covers not only Brautigan but deep background, which can be illuminating but a bit overwhelming. The dizzying array of characters come in and out of focus so fast they are at times hard to keep up with.

This biography is not an examination of Brautigan’s work or in any sense a review of that work. It is about the man and only tangentially about his work. He was a fascinating person and in many ways his life is more interesting than his work. This biography illustrates how completely Brautigan’s writing was biographical in a mythical sort of way.

I give it four stars, rounding up. Three and a half would better describe my reaction. It is cumbersome but worth reading if you have an interest in Brautigan or even in the time period involved. He was born in 1935 and died in 1984 and you get a strong sense of what was going on, especially in the Bay area of California during the fifties and sixties.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jubilee Hitchhiker is a dense read -- not only the number of pages (some 800 of the actual biography) but layered with what was going on, Brautigan's attitudes and reflections, excerpts from his writing, what others were saying, thinking, and doing, and the intersection of these. The only problem with the length is there are moments when it is difficult to hold the book. The story as presented is engaging and gives a lot to think about including the broader context of the general times in the USA and the worlds of publication and of the authors -- how they do and present their work, how they teach writing, and how they are received in these activities as well as how their works are received.

I highly recommend the book, especially to fans of Brautigan, those interested in his writing, those interested in the times (post WWII to 1980s), those interested in tortured souls who choose suicide.

The book has 59 chapters divided into two parts, a Bibliography, an Index, and an Acknowledgements section. Some of the chapter are very lengthy -- 50 pages -- while others are quite short -- one page or two.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a behemoth of a biography. Sometimes it feels like Brautigan was closely followed as his friends would tell stories about what happened from this day to the next. There is a lot of what could be considered extraneous information about Brautigan's life, which makes the book a slog. And there are details which might be better left unmentioned.

When I got to the part about Trout Fishing in America, I began to have my doubts about what was written. In the book Trout Fishing in America, where they camped in Idaho, stuff somehow didn't jibe for me while reading the biography. That is probably a small detail, but leads me to believe that the author went to extensive pains to get information, and the spirit of the person he is writing about is often lost or misidentified.

Much of the biography would be hearsay, someone's story of their interaction with Brautigan, including with Hjortsberg, who was there as a friend/observer part of the time.

Was this biography to add to the hyperbole of Brautigan as a writer?

[James McCallister · Rating 5 out of 5]

A voluminous, exhaustive, warts-and-all biography of a significant, perhaps even unique, 20th century American writer by someone who knew him well, Jubilee Hitchhiker is essential reading for Brautigan fans. This by the numbers biography the size of an encyclopedia leaves both Brautigan's writing itself, as well as his inner life, about which we can only guess from his often troubled and outlandish behavior, for readers to discover and evaluate on their own terms. Aficionados of the San Francisco boho scene in the 1950s and 60s will find much to enjoy and appreciate in the book's first half, which bridges both beat and hippie eras, with Richard Brautigan somehow coming off as sui generis, an iconic, self-made literary figure belonging to no particular school except perhaps that of mythic and whimsical Americana. A worthy biography of a fascinating writer whose relevance seemed to wane as soon as it happened for him, bless his heart.

[MichaelRpdx · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a slog. What a mountain of ore to be mined. 812 pages of minutia, trivia, insight form this detailed narrative of Richard Brautigan's life.

If you're a scholar or fan of Richard Brautigan this is a book to read.
If you're a fan of the Beat Poets, there's a hundred page section or so of great interest.
Want another perspective on the San Francisco scene as the summer of love flowered and withered? Definitely read the central portion of the book that covers those years.
Curious about Tokyo in the 1970s? There are several passages here with unique bits of interest.
Ditto for the community of writers in Montana, bits of Hollywood and North Beach.

There are many great nuggets in this book, several gripping passages, and a lot of facts and minutia to dig through in finding them.

I'm glad I stuck it out to the end.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This bio definitely had the potential to be a masterwork of biography, but it is in need of an editor. It is hard to validate a Brautigan bio longer than that of Ellman's bio of Joyce, or for that matter many other bios of world leaders that had a major effect on the course of historical events. The book is a fascinating look at west coast bohemianism over a number of years & movements. The problem is that it becomes bogged down on unnecessary minutia; yearly taxes, which hotels stayed at, cost of room at hotel, the cost of specific meals, etc., etc. It takes away from the essence of the story by telling too many pointless stories or facts that have little relevance. If somewhere between 300-400 pages were cut this would be a fabulous bio. Brautigan was a writer of succinct, humorous brevity, oh, if only this bio were. Mayonaise.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Hjortsberg’s crowning achievement. Jubilee Hitchhiker is a chronicle of the life and times of Richard Brautigan. But in those 750+ pages, we also get the chronicle of the places and cultural upheavals happening in San Francisco, California, and Paradise Valley, Montana in the 1960’s/1970’s. Hjortsberg worked on the book for 20 years, crisscrossing the continent to interview friends and family. The writing is excellent, compelling, and once you’ve finished it, you’ll want to keep it close at hand as a reference.

[Louis Pepe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Richard Brautigan almost fifty years ago. His prose was an inspiration to me. His poetry helped galvanize my earliest poems and gave me a direction for my personal writing. From time to time there were sightings and news related to Brautigan, until he died, and my world shattered. This book is a glimpse of the world where Brautigan lived. He was far more fragile than I ever realized. I tread slowly as each foible was revealed. I dreaded the inevitable ending. The author has built a path for every reader to discover Brautigan the man.

[Tdterrilldee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel beat up after finishing this huge book. It tells everything and more than you want to hear.

Did Brautigan really pull these sick drunk stunts as described in the book? The same guy who wrote all the wonderful poems and stories? I’m shocked, and so disappointed in him. I’ll blame it on his alcohol consumption and, well, maybe it’s not all true.

I grew up on Brautigan and the whole time period and everybody and everything. That’s why I like reading all about it.

This big book is a major piece of work.

[Sal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally gave up 450 pages into this 812 page biography. It's well written and provides a nice outline of the northern California beats, but ultimately it relies on an exhausting level of personal detail with ZERO critical analysis. Seriously, the most we get is a cursory run through of the critical consensus at the time. Nothing about why the author thinks Brautigan is worthy of an 800 page bio. I dunno, maybe he gets there eventually but I'm not going to stick around to find out.

[Jack Bates · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this for Ollie for Christmas 2013 but I don't know if he's ever read it. I have though. It's probably the most detailed biography I've ever read and I can't imagine there's much more to learn about RB, seeing as he's not here to tell us anything himself. It's beautifully written and I really enjoyed it.

In no way did it change my mind on the thorny question of whether poets are 'fun to go out with'. The answer is no, even if they don't have STDs.