The Abortion

by Richard Brautigan

A reclusive young man works in a San Francisco library for unpublishable books. Life's losers, an astonishing number of whom seem to be writers, can bring their manuscripts to the library, where they will be welcomed, registered and shelved. They will not be read, but they will be cherished. In comes Vida, with her manuscript. Her book is about her gorgeous body, in which she feels uncomfortable. The librarian makes her feel comfortable, and together they live in the back of the library until the trip to Tijuana changes them in ways neither of them had ever expected.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Romance, Literature, The United States Of America, Classics, American

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Richard Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short-story writer. Born in Tacoma, Washington, he moved to San Francisco in the 1950s and began publishing poetry in 1957. He started writing novels in 1961 and is probably best known for his early work Trout Fishing in America. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1984.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Abortion: An Historical Romance is extremely lyrical and it is also one of the best novels by one of the most original writers of his generation.

‘Where do you live?’ I said. ‘The Kit Carson Hotel,’ she said. ‘And I’ve written a book,’ Then she handed it proudly to me as if it were the most precious thing in the world. And it was. It was a loose-leaf notebook of the type that you find everywhere in America. There is no place that does not have them. There was a heavy label pasted on the cover and written in broad green crayon across the label was the title: Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms.

A library full of the unpublished books written by hopeless writers, a library where the lost souls of the losers abide in abandonment – that is the place. But it is also a place full of unmatched romance and full of human hopes.
Flowers mustn’t lose hopes even in candlelight.

[Charlotte Dann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't like it when a man writes a story from a man's perspective about a woman's body, especially when it includes many passages like "The author was a girl about twelve years old, just entering into puberty. She had lemon-sized breasts against a green sweater. She was awakening to adolescence in a delightful way". Pervy and patriarchal, not to mention extremely mundane.

[Stefanie Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I did not finish this book. I wanted to love it after hearing an NPR This American Life episode titled "Room of Requirement," which focused on libraries (I'm a library nerd). The writer who narrates part of the episode talks at length about how he reads this book every year and how creative and intersting it is. Yes, the concept is most fabulous, the creativity and sense of humor are clear ... But then it hits this part that I Could. Not. Get. Past. It's this drawn-out, absurdly written sex scene between two people who just met (though the woman involved reportedly despises her body and the fact that men fawn over it) that reads like an embarrassingly hormonal 14-year-old boy wrote it. The cringeworthy phrases "fully developed" and "her breasts were so large/perfect/developed" were repeated so often I couldn't get through the passage. I had a different opinion of the writer on NPR afterward. You read this ... every. year?? Annnnd talk about it on NPR? Um, OK.

[Maria Bikaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Λοιπόν κοίτα να δεις τι έπαθα με αυτό το βιβλίο. Με δυο γραμμές μπορώ να σου πω ότι ανάθεμα και κατάλαβα ποιο ήταν το βαθύτερο νόημα που ήθελε να περάσει ο συγγραφέας αλλά από την άλλη ήταν αρκετά τρελούτσικο για να μου αφήσει μια ιδιαίτερα ευχάριστη γεύση τελειώνοντας το.
Απλό, χωρίς κουραστική φλυαρία διαβάζεται αμέσως, το χιούμορ του συγγραφέα μπορώ να πω ότι μου ταίριαξε και κυρίως ήταν ένα ανάγνωσμα που ακριβώς επειδή δεν έχει κάποια ουσιαστική ιστορία και πλοκή να σου διηγηθεί , χρησιμεύει για εκείνες τις αναγνωστικές περιόδους που αποζητάς κάτι πολύ εύπεπτο για να περάσεις ευχάριστα την ώρα σου. Αν και ο τίτλος μπορεί να είναι βαρύγδουπος και να παραπέμπει σε ίσως πιο δύσκολες καταστάσεις, ή έκτρωση είναι ένα τέτοιο βιβλίο. Υποθέτω ότι αν πρέπει να πιέσω τον εαυτό μου να βρει ένα βαθύτερο νόημα μπαίνοντας στη θέση του κεντρικού ήρωα είναι ότι κάποιες φορές είναι πάρα πολύ ωραία να ζούμε στο δικό μας φανταστικό κόσμο ή ακόμα καλύτερα να ζούμε μέσα από τις ζωές των άλλων, όμως πάντα μα πάντα έρχεται η στιγμή που το μαξιλαράκι ασφαλείας δε λειτουργεί και θα πρέπει να ζήσεις γιατί η ζωή πάντα θα είναι εκεί έξω και δε θα σε περιμένει. Ο κεντρικός ήρωας του βιβλίου είχε επιλέξει έναν πολύ ιδιαίτερο τρόπο ζωής. Χωμένος μέσα στο μαγικό κόσμο μιας εναλλακτικής βιβλιοθήκης ζούσε για να υποδέχεται τις ιστορίες των άλλων μέχρι που χρειάστηκε να ζήσει τη δική του ιστορία για να καταλάβει ότι δεν πρέπει ν’ αφήνουμε τη ζωή να μας προσπερνά. Αυτό το κομμάτι νομίζω είναι το σημείο κλειδί για το αν θ’ αρέσει αυτό το βιβλίο σε όλους. Πολλές φορές όταν διαβάζουμε καλώς ή κακώς θες να μείνεις με τη μαγεία, προτιμάς την ιδέα του φανταστικού, του ονειρεμένου, θες να μπορείς να ζήσεις για λίγο 100 διαφορετικές ζωές για να μην χρειαστείς να ζήσεις τη μία τη δική σου. Εσείς αποφασίζετε. 3,5*
Βαζω 4 στη βαθμολογία μου υπερ του μαθητή αλλά ειλικρινα goodreads τι θα γινει με αυτό το μισό αστεράκι. Δε θέλω να βάλω ούτε 3 ούτε 4 τι θα γίνει. Θελω 3,5 το κέρατο μου.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful library, timed perfectly, lush and American.

I think it was right after reading Brautigan's A Confederate General From Big Sur that I learned of his project to start a library for all those unpublished books, written by amateurs and professionals alike, and in Brautigan's own words: "the unwanted, the lyrical and haunted volumes of American writing". This was a very real and passionate undertaking - after his death this collection (known now as The Brautigan Library) was moved to Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington. It might be the most lovingly curated collection of works that nobody other than Brautigan ever wanted. This is the type of story that I love, a commitment to the written word for its own sake, not for the sake of commercial viability.

The Abortion is a fictional telling of this true story. The protagonist is the sole librarian of a place dedicated in fiction to what Brautigan would do in real life. It is a wonderful love story - love of the written word and between two people trying to make sense of this world - and it is filled with Brautigan's poetic writing. The mood of the story is airy and light, even though the subject matter is weighty. The author is telling us not to let the world take us down. What could be maudlin and overly sentimental, isn't. He makes it work.

The library is old in the San Francisco post earthquake Yellow Brick style and is located at 3150 Sacramento Street San Francisco California 94115

I live but a few blocks from this address. Is this a real place? If so, what exists there? I refuse to look it up on Google Maps. It's a beautiful sunny day in San Francisco, I walk to the location on a literary treasure hunt. Brautigan is a master of making life imitate art, art imitate life.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so damn charming and lovable. Imagine this: a 31 year old hippie operates a library in San Fransisco, where anyone can be an author - just bring in your manuscript and put it up on the shelves. He doesn't get paid, he works because he thinks the work is important. One day, a woman comes in, a woman who is not simply beautiful, but whose beauty is so transcendent that it prevents her from leading a normal life. She moves in, gets pregnant, and the two take a leisurely trek down to TJ to get an abortion. What a fantasy, huh?

Even when dealing with a subject as fraught as abortion, the novel maintains its innocence and optimism. More than anything, the novel is a treatise on a state of mind, a kind of carefree naivety. The lives and attitudes of the characters seem so remote from the frustrations and complexities of the modern world. Brautigan wrote The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 in 1974, and it seems to be an ode to something that by that time was already slipping away. Or maybe that memory of the 1960s was just wishful nostalgia. Was there ever really a time and place that was so free and innocent?

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Κάπου εκεί έξω που βρίσκεται η αλήθεια ή λίγο πιο μακριά και περισσότερο κοντά στον σουρεαλισμό και τους συμβολισμούς υπάρχει ένα βιβλιοπωλείο μοναδικό και αναντικατάστατο στον κόσμο όλο.
Σε αυτό το μπαρόκ πέρασμα όλων των ειδών τα πλάσματα που ανήκουν στην ανθρώπινη ράτσα και που η ιδιοτροπία τους ξεπερνά κατά πολύ το λόγο του γραπτού κειμένου στο οποίο αναφέρονται ως χαρακτήρες, δικαιώνονται.

Τα αδημοσίευτα, αδιάβαστα βιβλία που γράφονται
απο κάθε άσημη, ιδιότροπη, μοναχική, σοφή, τρελή, παρακατιανή, υπερήλικη ή ανήλικη συγγραφική δεινότητα ψυχής και πνεύματος φυλάσσονται - προστατεύονται και καταχωρίζονται σε ατέλειωτες λίστες λογοτεχνικού πρωτόκολλου με ζήλο,
24 ώρες την ημέρα,
7 μέρες την εβδομάδα,
από έναν θεματοφύλακα που τα θεωρεί θησαυρό.

Είναι το δικό του κρυμμένο απο την λογική παλάτι, απομονωμένο, παράδοξο, μοναχικό και αντικοινωνικό, σαν φρούριο γραπτής φαντασίας που πλήττει την φωτιά της πραγματικότητας και της αλήθειας ενός ανελέητου, πληγωμένου και εμπόλεμου σύμπαντος γνώριμο σε σκλαβωμένους υλιστές και τρελούς ονειροπόλους.

Σε αυτό το ανέκδοτο και αόρατο για τους ορθολογιστές κτήριο των πεθαμένων βιβλίων, δεν απαιτείται σκέψη ή ανάλυση.
Νέες δυνατότητες εισβάλουν πάνω σε σελίδες βιβλίων που αλλάζουν με κάθε φύσημα που ελευθερώνει αναζωογονημένες σκέψεις και φαντασιακές πράξεις, μέσα σε αυτόν τον κόσμο που τον αναζητούμε αναβαθμισμένο και καλύτερο αλλά δυστυχώς δεν τον αλλάζουμε ποτέ.

Οι άνθρωποι μπορούν να έρθουν να δώσουν προσωπικά δεδομένα στον υπάλληλο και να τοποθετήσουν οι ίδιοι τα βιβλία τους στο ράφι και στη συνέχεια να καθίσουν για ώρες διαβάζοντας άλλα μη εκτιμημένα βιβλία.

Μια βιβλιοθήκη που δεν έχει ώρες, ποτέ δεν κλείνει
τις πόρτες του και ο θεματοφύλακας δεν αφήνει ποτέ
τη θέση του, ανοιχτό το μαγαζάκι των αποτυχημένων της τέχνης, ή των μοναδικών δημιουργών, μέρα και νύχτα, μέσα σε μια σπάνια ανία προβλέψιμης φαντασιακής πραγματικότητας σε περίπτωση που κάποια φτωχή ψυχή θέλει να φέρει το βιβλίο της εκεί, στις παρακαταθήκες των ατομικών λησμονημένων ιδεών της συλλογικότητας.

Αυτή είναι η εναρκτήρια διάθεση που δημιουργεί το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο όταν πραγματεύεται το βιβλιόραμα της βιβλιοθήκης των δωρητών και τον απεγνωσμένα βολεμένο υπάλληλο της.

Στη συνέχεια όμως αυτό το πειραματικό πόνημα αντικουλτούρας προσπαθεί με ζέση να γραφτεί αστραφτερά, χιουμοριστικά και μεγαλόπρεπα απο τον δημιουργό του μα δεν τα καταφέρνει.
Πέφτει σε ιδεοληπτικές επαναλήψεις μονοδιάστατων και ψυχρών ιδεών, όπως η ακαταμάχητη θηλυκότητα της ηρωίδας μας, πολλές σεξιστικές αποχρώσεις περί ομορφιάς και ηδονικών αναλογιών στο γυναικείο σώμα, όπως και σοβαρές εκκλήσεις για σθεναρή σεξουαλικότητα τους αναγνώστες.
Ακόμα και αν ήταν εν είδει αστεϊσμού, παραμένουν αποτυχημένες διαφημίσεις για αστραφτερά χαμόγελα και άτοπο χιούμορ πάνω σε ενοχλητικές καταστάσεις που ως βιωματικές θα απέρριπταν κάθε ικμάδα για καλόπιστα χαχανητά ευτυχίας και τακτοποιημένης κατάληξης στις ζωές και τις ψευδαισθήσεις των χαρακτήρων.

😉
2.5⭐️

Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς και σεμνούς ασπασμούς.

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a closer walk with thee

Somewhere out there maybe there's a library for all the books never published, by people who weren't authors, for readers who weren't interested. Maybe my reviews should be sent there ! Richard Brautigan imagined himself working in such a place, where the overflow was stored in caves (but what about seepage? Whoa, man, what a bummer !) He no doubt thought melancholy thoughts about how his own writings would wind up just in such a place. But I'm sure that's not going to happen. He captured so much about his times, about human nature, about life itself in those minimalist little chapters of his. THE ABORTION is more lineal than his other works-it has a plot that he sticks to, a plot that even got me feeling tense as with some kind of pop thriller. He meets a most beautiful girl who is disgusted with her own beauty, doesn't feel it becomes her true soul. She settles down with the author in his weird library, a place where he has been hiding away from the "real world" for three years. But one thing leads to another, and an abortion becomes necessary. Given the way our great nation is going, someday soon this book is going to be burned; read it while you can. The couple fly down to San Diego, cross over to Tijuana, and find the abortionist. What happens ? Meatball doesn't reveal endings. Sorry.

The Brautigan humor, the whimsical observations plunked down in the middle of a totally different conversation. I like non-sequiturs. Perhaps enlightenment is found in such bouncing, scintillating simplicity. In any case, if you liked any others of Brautigan's work, you'll like this one for sure. Read the rest of them too. Richard Brautigan is gone. We will not see his like again, more's the pity.
And yes, the moose is a very large animal.

[George K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πέμπτο βιβλίο του συγγραφέα που περνάει στη λίστα με τα διαβασμένα, μου φάνηκε με τη σειρά του εξίσου κουφό και ό,τι να'ναι με προηγούμενα τέσσερα, κάτι που σημαίνει ότι μου άρεσε. Ας πούμε ότι πρόκειται για ένα ιδιότυπο και κουλό ρομάντζο, όπως θα το έγραφε ο Ρίτσαρντ Μπρότιγκαν. Όσοι έχουν διαβάσει βιβλία του, καταλαβαίνουν τι τρέλα κουβαλάει σαν συγγραφέας, τι είδους χιούμορ διαθέτει και τι σόι ρομάντζο μπορεί να γράψει. Από τη μια δεν μπορώ να πω ότι κατάλαβα το γενικότερο νόημα του βιβλίου (αν υπάρχει τέτοιο), από την άλλη όμως πέρασα πολύ όμορφα και ευχάριστα την ώρα μου, η αλήθεια είναι ότι τέτοιες κουλές ιστορίες με κάνουν να ξεχνιέμαι για τα καλά. "Σε αφήνει με το χαμόγελο εκείνο που ζωγραφίζεται στο πρόσωπό σου όταν έχεις φάει μπόλικο παγωτό μία πολύ ζεστή μέρα", έγραψε για το βιβλίο το περιοδικό Rolling Stone, και νομίζω ότι πέτυχε διάνα: Ακριβώς αυτό ένιωσα. Περιττό να πω ότι δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα, έτσι; (7.5/10)

[John Bunyan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This American Life recently had a story about a man who loved this book so much he started a library like the one featured in this book. I read the book at some point in the 70s when I read everything by Bautigan. All I remembered was the fascinating idea of the library where people bring a book they have written and no one ever checks anything out. But the library is only a small part of the book - that's why it's not called "The Library". The story of the trip to get the abortion is not memorable. The repetitive incidents of men reacting lustily and women reacting jealously to Vida is amatuerish and sexist. The plot, if there is one, is about the librarian's journey to becoming a real person in the real world, but I didn't really care about him or any of the other two-dimensional characters in the book. The library is the only interesting character. Brautigan is best left as just part of my memories of the 70s.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

So ends the Great Brautigan Reread. I shall skip the collection of shorts as it’s, well, terrible.

There are two chapters in here where Brautigan ably captures the opposing dynamics of being a ‘partner’ in abortion; that is, the significant other of the woman that is actually having the abortion. I say opposing because, as the passive participant, we partners experience a very different—absolutely not equal, of course—tableau in which the artifice of the procedure, its heightened air of clinicality, is rendered patently absurd. Without our bodies under attention, our selves, and whatever we are emotionally processing, are flooded with the sensorial data flying around in near pantomime.

In no other experience with the larger medical aparati, the totality of means by which a designated function is performed or a specific task executed, is the feeling of a conspiracy so fundamentally implicit between caregiver and receiver as in abortion. This is only my personal experience and observation. But: Concomitant with that is a palpable strata of guilt as cannot help but naturally occur as a by-product of said conspiracy. This is only channeled to the receiver, of course. Conspiracy, even by pact not consciously agreed to, breeds guilt. And: I’ve been in more than my needed share of encounters with the larger medical aparati—only one made patients abscond out of back doors to waiting cars with running engines. Nuthouse? Nope. Hell: I walked out of the front door of the fucking county jail (this a repository of several thousand inmates at any given time). Just this particular exchange arranges that parade of duplicity.

What this says about us as people, as a country, whatever you will, I do not know. But it is a cruelty to inflict upon the patient—no one needs any psychic harangue; the D-and-C does a good enough job without your piety. Look the patients in their eyes and gird them with respect. Anything less is the true barbarism.

Pages 171-195 are Brautigan’s most compelling, sustained accomplishment. I’ll let you read it for yourself. I’ll say only this, and with a lifetime of thanks to Richard behind it: he looks you in the eyes. That was Brautigan at his best and, by extension, the complexities of we humans reified in a language as clear as moving water.

[Ailsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

So whimsical. I love it.

"This is a beautiful library, timed perfectly, lush and American. The hour is midnight and the library is deep and carried like a dreaming child into the darkness of these pages. Though the library is 'closed' I don't have to go home because this is my home and has been for years, and besides, I have to be here all the time. That's part of my position. I don't want to sound like a petty official, but I am afraid to think what would happen if somebody came and I wasn't there.
I have been sitting at the desk for hours, staring into the darkened shelves of books. I love their presence, the way they honour the wood they rest upon.
I know it's going to rain. " 11

"MOOSE by Richard Brautigan. The author was tall and blond and had a long yellow moustache that gave him an anachronistic appearance. He looked as if he would be more at home in another era. This was the third or fourth book he had brought to the library. Every time he brought in a new book he looked a little older, a little more tired. He looked quite young when he brought in his first book. I can't remember the title of it, but it seems to me the title had something to do with America.
'What's this one about?' I asked, because he looked as if he wanted me to ask him something.
'Just another book,' he said.
I guess I was wrong about him wanting me to ask him something." 23

"Their eyes were expressionless, but showed in this way that they knew we were abortionistas. " 131

[Quinn Slobodian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less charming the second time around. The rapturous description of the way his nineteen-year old girlfriend makes instant coffee, which stuck with me as secular prayer for years after reading it as a twenty-one year old, comes off now as leering (see jacket photo for male leer and female supplicant gaze). The author/protagonist's endless delectation of women's bodies writing in the mid-1960s only made me long for the arrival of the feminists with their long knives in the 1970s. Samson needed a haircut.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't believe how long it's taken me to discover and appreciate my fellow San Francisco writer, Richard Brautigan. I've even carted pocketbook copies of his various novels and his collection of stories around for years, always meaning to read them, never getting around to it.

Delightfully narrated, beginning with a quirky narrator in a slightly surreal context (although the building described actually still exists https://www.google.com/maps/place/315...), this lovely little novel bops along until it becomes a romance and then turns more and more serious and even disturbing--also more real--as it goes on. The narrative is, for all of its absurdity and quirkiness, therefore quite true to life itself, by turns silly, romantic, and horrifying. At first mention of the event that the title promises--more than a third of the way through the book--I was thinking that in this review I would praise the novel for expressing pretty much my generation's view of the hot-potato topic. It is the reasoned, reasonable, functional situation of human beings residing in a post-industrial modern nation state in a scientific and a technological era of human society to take abortion as a viable medical option: the choice to opt out of unprepared-for or unwanted parenthood. This is why most of us gen-X-ers are shocked and dismayed by the contemporary so-called pro-life movement: as the first generation to be raised in a United States in which abortion was legal, we generally accepted it as a great improvement over the horrors of the period in which it was illegal. (Yes, this novel is a bit older than I am in its events and it shocks me to imagine an America that barbaric even though I was 4 years old in the year that the events of the novel takes place.) How this pseudo-religious So-called "movement" got started is beyond me. And this novel reminded me why that is so, as it depicts a real non-propagandistic actual experience of abortion in 1966. In the end it's charming, funny, then rather harrowing, and, ultimately, a lovely novel about two rather sweet, but also unique and quirky, baby boomers of the Hippie ilk falling in love and paying the consequences.

And, if you're interested in a modern take on the abortion debate, it made me think this: When you have disbanded the military, abolished capital punishment, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and sheltered the homeless; when you have stopped punishing the poor, the addicted, and the prostitute with for-profit prisons, the refugee with internment, and the non-white with humiliating racism; when you have stopped man-made climate change, taken away the gains of the shifty stock brokers, the multi-national corp.s stripping third world countries of their natural resources and selling them deadly goods, and the endless war profiteers--then we can sit down and have a debate about abortion. Until then, the words "sanctity of human life" are pure hypocrisy.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Η πρώτη μου επαφή με το έργο του Brautigan μου άφησε αρκετά καλές εντυπώσεις. Από τον τίτλο ο αναγνώστης περιμένει κάποια δυσάρεστη ιστορία για ένα από τα πιο ταμπού θέματα της ανθρωπότητας. Στην πραγματικότητα, φυσικά, η «Έκτρωση» είναι ένα γρηγόρο, ευχάριστο ανάγνωσμα. Η γραφή του Brautigan είναι όμορφη στην απλότητά της, άμεση και συνοπτική. Λείπουν οι φλυαρίες και οι ατελείωτες περιγραφές, αλλά καταφέρνει αβίαστα να μας μεταφέρει στον ανισόρροπο συναισθηματικό κόσμο του βιβλιοθηκάριου. Ο αφηγητής μάς χαρίζει αρκετές παραγράφους όπου μιλάει την εμφάνιση της Βάιντα, τόσο καλογραμμένες και ζωντανές που μου έδωσαν τ��ν εντύπωση ότι ο συγγραφέας είχε κάποιο πραγματικό πρόσωπο στο μυαλό του. Το χιούμορ του είναι επίσης κάτι που εκτίμησα και ξεχωρίζει από τις πρώτες σελίδες.

(περισσότερα για την «Έκτρωση» στον Βιβλιολόγο εδώ)

[Yigal Zur · Rating 4 out of 5]

great prose. leaves smile fine writer

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

It pretty much breaks my heart to knock this book down from five stars to four, but that's the chance you take when you re-read something that you loved many years ago. The book is still great, of course, with an outstandingly original premise (a library for books people write one copy of, that will never ever get published, let alone read by anyone else), and the characters are super... But it just wasn't as knock-out fantastic this time as it was when I was nineteen.

[Brendan Monroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most charming things I've read in a while. There's not an ounce of cynicism or cruelty in this. It feels pure, innocent, compassionate. You just cannot read this without smiling.

Though not published this year, it feels peak 2020 to say that a book titled "The Abortion" retains all of those characteristics when just picking up the paper these days is to jeopardize one's own mental health.

I mentioned in my recent review of the short story collection Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 that I had never heard of Richard Brautigan before, despite his name taking up a good deal of room on book spines throughout the bookshops of the Pacific Northwest. Apparently, Brautigan was something of a thing in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s. Afterward, it seems, his star fell.

In some sense, I understand that, because this feels almost too wholesome for the times. It seems that literature now is required to be heavy, weighty, self-serious.

"The Abortion" is 230 some odd pages but it reads like half of that. And yes, it's tentatively about an abortion but the subject is given so little thought that it really feels as though it's about something else entirely.

The male protagonist, who appears to be Brautigan himself, runs a library that holds books by unpublished writers. The writer brings their book in, our protagonist logs it, and then they're allowed to put it anywhere in the library they like. Richard Brautigan, an author long-forgotten, writing about a library of books no one has ever heard of seems somewhat fitting.

I especially enjoyed Brautigan's descriptions of the books that get brought in and their authors. This part would make a delightful short story on its own.

One day a beautiful woman named Vida brings her book in, all about how much she hates her own body because of all the unwanted male attention and female vindictiveness it brings her.

Many of my fellow GRs find it controversial that Brautigan, a man, is writing about a woman with a body so seemingly perfect (to the male gaze) that she despises it. I'm not quite sure why ... I think he writes a female character better than a lot of other male authors do, and anyway, a writer should be able to write about whatever or whomever they want, regardless of race or gender. Whether or not they manage to do it well, of course, is another question entirely.

Of course, it wouldn't be the Trump era if we didn't get outraged when straight white men decide to write about those who aren't straight white men and get outraged all over again when a straight white man writes a book with only straight white men in it. It's hard to keep the list of offenses straight.

Maybe Brautigan's ignorant of the politics of gender, maybe he doesn't refrain from describing women's bodies as a politically correct man should, but nothing in "The Abortion" comes off as crude or sexist, at least not intentionally so.

You'd expect a book called "The Abortion" to perhaps be about the 1960s culture wars and the fight for legalized abortion. But the part of it that is about abortion is likely to enrage so-called pro-lifers even more as the decision to have an abortion is never in doubt.

"Vida and I talked it over. The decision to have the abortion was arrived at without bitterness and was calmly guided by gentle necessity.

"'I'm not ready to have a child yet,' Vida said, 'And neither are you, working at a kooky place like this. Maybe another time, perhaps for certain another time, but not now. I love children, but this isn't the time. If you can't give them the maximum of yourself, then it's best to wait. There are too many children in the world and not enough love. An abortion is the only answer.'

"'I think you're right,' I said. 'I don't know about this library being a kooky place, but we're not ready for a child yet. Perhaps in a few years. I think you should use the pill after we have the abortion.'

"'Yes,' she said. 'It's the pill from now on.'"

That's it. The second-guessing and heartwrenching back-and-forth one would expect in such a book were it written today is absent entirely. You have to respect the clearheadedness of it all, the lack of hand-wringing.

The two simply go down to Tijuana (this in the days before abortion was legal stateside) and that's pretty much that.

In writing about the titular abortion, I'm making it seem like a bigger deal than it is in the book. I write about it only because I've never read a novel where the topic is handled so well, so normally.

The truly lovely thing about "The Abortion," is that absolutely nothing in the novel, not even the abortion itself, is political. In 2020, in a country both figuratively and literally on fire and wrenched apart by social division, Brautigan's novel really does feel like something out of a bygone era.

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess, after a half century on this planet, it's about time that I would get around to reading something by Brautigan. I found this one in a used bookshop some time back, and remember someone once telling me about Trout Fishing in America. He didn't really sell Trout Fishing, nor Richard Brautigan, well enough to get my interest revved up. I was into the beats at the time and not really aware of hippie-lit as such. I was also going through a series of relationships with women who didn't know me beyond a surface level, which resulted in nothing except unread poetry.

So I read this one on Friday, and enjoyed it. Not really sure what the message is, or if there really is a message behind it.

Simply, it's about a librarian working in a library of "unwanted" books written by anyone with the desire to create such a thing. One day a girl shows up at the library with about about her book about hating her own body. She's the most beautiful girl in the world, with hair as black as a bat's. She stays with the librarian and the two of them make love. Eventually she is pregnant, and she and the librarian agree to go to Tijuana where she can get an abortion. They enlist the aid of the librarian's associate who provides them the name of a doctor to see. They go to Tijuana and...

The novel is delivered in simple prose with no fancy tricks, no self-aware indulgence that writers often go for in novels about nothing. So you have a novel about nothing, where there exists a place for books that will never be read and two lovers who share a relationship of uncertain prospects. And they're fulfilled.

[Jaclin · Rating 3 out of 5]

you know, the style of this book was great and the story was fantastic but i could've done with about 50% less physical descriptions of vida, whose beauty may have been arresting in person but could not carry the story.

[Oakley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic book by my fave writer. Whenever I'm reading him I start to notice an incredible amount of sychronicity between the things he's describing and the little things that are happening around me. For example, while reading this book my bus pulls into the Fresno greyhound depot right as the hero flies over Fresno and looks down from his plane window. May seem boring in type but it gets increasingly strange as they add up.

*spoiler (doesn't matter)

His style is so strange I think that many people don't take him seriously even if they love his books. This one is heavier than most and does center around an abortion. I'm still thinking of ways to interpret the surreal plot. The hero lives in a womb-like library unlike any other which he hasn't left for years. Becomes lovers with world's most beautiful woman and knocks her up. He must leave library for one day to take her down to TJ for the operation and comes back to find his position usurped. Has he aborted his dream life in the library or has the girl given birth to him by dragging him away from his womb?

[Hákon Gunnarsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The narrator is a librarian in a very unusual library which accepts books in any form and from anyone who wishes to drop one off. Books aren't checked out, just in. One day a woman, Vida, comes to drop off a book, and they fall for one another. She becomes pregnant, and decides that it would be best to get abortion, because neither of them are in a position to become parents at that time.

I think this is my least favourite Brautigan novel so far. The humor is there, and the absurdity that Brautigan is so good at is there also to certain extent at least. The idea of the library for example is absolutely wonderful. I'm not the only one that thinks so. It has actually turned into reality, well, sort of, and can be found here: http://thebrautiganlibrary.org/index....

But the story is slower than most of his novels that I have read so far, and it doesn't reach quite the same hight. I even found it a little bit repetitive at times. Okay, Brautigan often plays with repetition, but here it felt repetitive, rather than interesting. Still, there were some laughs along the way, and I enjoyed parts of it very much. Just not as much as most of the Brautigan novels that I have read before.

[Lee Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't read this in about twenty years, I'm guessing, and I wondered how it would hold up. Richard Brautigan writes like no other, and I still love him to death, but reading him at 40 instead of 20 is a different experience. I used to recommend him to "young people" who read the usual counter-culture stuff (Bukowski, Burroughs, Thompson [that's Hunter S., not Jim, who's fallen back out of style it seems:] and Kerouac), but I'm not sure I would now. He's very of his time, and I hate to go so far as to say "dated," but, no, let's just leave it at of his time. Beautiful, gentle, poetic writing, funny, absurd, trippy. If someone like, say, Ryan Adams (who has a book of poetry out now) described a woman as having hair that hung like bat lightning around her face, I'd want to punch him. When Richard Brautigan says it, I go with it. But I don't know how many other people nowadays would.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book after hearing about it on the This American Life episode on libraries. The library described as being open 24 hours a day and allowing any submission of unpublished book being an interesting concept. However, this is a novel about an abortion from the perspective of a man where the female involved is so not flushed out that all we know about her is that she has a Barbie-esque body, with breasts that don't move. Her beauty is so great that there is risk of accident because people stare at her. This is like the fantasy of an adult male who lives in his mother's basement. No thank you.

[Maria Lianou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Διαβάστηκε απνευστί. Μου άρεσε πολύ η γραφή του. Λιτή και απέριττη. Το μόνο που μου χτύπησε άσχημα ήταν η συνεχής αναφορά στην «ομορφιά» της Βάιντα.

[Il Pech · Rating 2 out of 5]

C'è una biblioteca in cui chiunque può portare un libro scritto da sé affinché venga conservato.
Questi libri poi non li legge mai nessuno, ma poco importa.
L'idea della biblioteca è interessante, un po' come lo era la famiglia che porta il soggiorno in riva al lago in American Dust.
E potrei aver finito coi lati positivi di questo libro.

L'aborto è scritto come una favola breve, leggera e scanzonata. Ci sono 3 personaggi e i capitoli, lunghi due pagine ciascuno, sono perlopiù dialoghi strampalati e considerazioni sterili.
Vida, la ragazza del narratore, ha un corpo da bomba sexy in cui non si sente a suo agio. Le sue problematiche iniziano e si esauriscono in una manciata di pagine, inghiottite dalla banalità della narrazione.
Tutto è appoggiato al pavimento, nulla va in profondità, come negli altri libri di Brautigan, d'altronde.

Ho deciso definitivamente che Brautigan non mi piace.

"Il menù mi disse buongiorno, io dissi buongiorno al menù. Si potrebbe passare tutta la vita, in effetti, a parlare coi menù."

"Notavo intorno a me quelle persone di mezza età che si vedono sempre nelle stazioni affollate, mai in quelle semideserte. è gente che esiste solo in grandi quantità, e probabilmente vive nelle stazioni affollate."

Ci sono decine di frasi cosi, da idiot savant, che funzionano se sei Saint-Exupery, altrimenti risulti pacchiano, oltre che incapace di mettere trenta parole in fila.

Litigherò con la mia ragazza, che mi accusa di maltrattare i libri che lei mi consiglia, solamente per darmi un tono, perché i libri che scelgo io sono migliori, perché sono un bastardo spocchioso, etc. Di base ha ragione, ma oggi no. L'aborto è un libro mediocre.

Perlomeno si legge in poco tempo.

E probabilmente si dimentica altrettanto in fretta.

"Come ti senti?" Le chiesi
"Bene", disse. "Ma un po' debole".>

Quando leggo passaggi così penso che Brautigan abbia fatto bene a spararsi.

[Steve R]

With the full title of this 1971 novel being The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966, this is one of Brautigan’s more accessible works. As usually, its characters are highly idiosyncratic and the situation of the library which only accepts manuscripts from whoever drops them off and shelves them with no regard to the Dewey Decimal System is quite unusual, the love story between the narrator and the impossibly beautiful Vera is as straightforward as any which Brautigan came up with in his many strange books.

Their trip to Tijuana to procure the necessity of the title, the way in which Vera gradually becomes more accepting of her overwhelming beauty, how the narrator loses his job at the Library while taking her to Mexico and how Vera eventually ends up working in a topless bar all transpire with a relatively simple narrative logic and stress the charming manner in which society’s misfits, both in terms of character and of situations, can be seen to exist in an almost normal albeit counter-cultural milieu.

Like A Confederate General from Big Sur, there is a relaxed readability about The Abortion which has virtually none of the head-scratching wonderment of Trout Fishing in America or In Watermelon Sugar.

Now, more than forty years after I read it, I still remember the narrator’s again realizing just how stunningly beautiful Vera truly is when, while he visited a washroom at the bus depot, three men tried to pick her up. Brautigan had a real knack at these small, highly descriptive and memorable instances of plot and character.

Highly recommended.

[Sheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really two books (though Brautigan divides it into 6) The Library, and The Abortion. The Historical Romance subtitle could apply to either of them.
The Library is a beautiful dreamworld, where the librarian lives simply and with complete dedication to his mission of collecting the books which are the expression of lost and lonely souls, treating both the books and their authors with welcome and reverence. The fact that they will never actually be read, and will in fact eventually be hauled away to storage in caves susceptible to "seepage", is an uneasy horror to us as readers. But in the romantic world of the library, every book and every author is honored, and the librarian sees that as the most important part of the job of the library.
When Vida comes to the library with her book about her body, the dreamworld is disturbed. Brautigan writes their love story with such simple beauty, it's like a new dream, but one that eventually leads the librarian out into the real world again.
The story of the Abortion, as much about the journey as the actual event, is told in language at once Hemingway-plain and charmingly surreal, with characteristic bursts of gentle humor that keep it from getting too heavy. There is a somewhat uncharacteristic happy ending.
This book makes me love Brautigan in a whole new melancholy way. I will definitely read it again.

[Mat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a great novel.

Just when I think I have read the best Brautigan novel and he can't possibly get any better, then I read this and realise that, like William Burroughs, his writing got better and better with age.

Many people rave about Naked Lunch but really Burroughs's magnum opus is the incredibly wild and fantastic The Western Lands - a book he wrote towards the end of his life.
Similarly, with Richard Brautigan, many know him as the writer of Trout Fishing in America (which has sold around 2 million copies or more to date), which was and still is a great wet fish across the reader's face...in a pleasant way.
Really enjoyed it but it wasn't until I read The Hawkline Monster that I could fully grasp the greatness of his full potential as a writer.

Now I come to The Abortion - a book as well written as The Hawkline Monster but one which is much more serious in content.
Not that The Abortion is without funny moments of his renowned dry, droll and laconic Brautigan wit and humour. It has plenty of that but it also resounds with moments of poetic beauty (for example on page 107 - "It was hard for a minute and then we both smiled across the darkness at what we were doing. Though we could not see our smiles, we knew they were there and it comforted us as dark-night smiles have been doing for thousands of years for the problemed people of the earth") and towards the end of the novel gut-wrenching sadness. Brautigan is able to skilfully blend and weave all of these elements into the novel to deliver a powerful punch on the reader.

Without going into too much detail, the book is centred around a young man (whom we can fairly safely assume to be based on Brautigan himself) who has taken on the job of looking after a library. This is no ordinary library but one which welcomes all the previously unwelcome and unpublished books around the world by writers of any age. Once you take on the job though, you can never leave the library. As more and more people are coming in all the time. People come in and choose a shelf and have their book registered in the library ledgers. Foster is the narrator's friend who takes care of the books stored in the caves (I guess the library's actual capacity ran out long ago). Then there is the beautiful Vida, a woman so beautiful that she is haunted and chased by her own beauty with admirers here, there and everywhere. Vida gets pregnant to the librarian custodian and they head to Mexico for an abortion, arranged for them by Foster who knows a Mexican doctor who can do it for them.

I won't say any more but the book moves ahead at a perfectly timed pace with Brautigan's signature crisp and concise chapters, leading the reader gently towards an exciting finale that has you gripping on to the edge of your book for dear life. Well, kind of. Got a little bit carried away there. My keyboard has been drinking, not me. Anyway...
Thank you Richard for another great novel.
Brautigan should be compulsory reading in any modern literature class, in my humble opinion.

Thanks to the Rikkyo University Library for letting me rent out a copy of this great book.

[Ro · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book is rubbish! I wanted to read it because I'd heard about the concept of the library of unpublished manuscripts. Thought that was a pretty interesting idea and I enjoyed reading about the elderly woman who came into this library to submit the book she had written about growing flowers in a hotel room by candlelight.

The first few chapters talk about the idea of the library, and that's quite nice. Then you have to sift through page after page of very poor writing about how beautiful this man's girlfriend - Vera - is and how terribly confusing this is for men who encounter her... yawn. A stand out moment was the entire chapter dedicated to two men being surprised at Vera's ability to drive a vehicle.

The journey for Vera to get an abortion isn't written as if it has much emotional difference to any road trip to Mexico. There's no consideration of how Vera feels about any of this: just an emphasis on her attraction. I'd write here that this book would be more interesting if an effort had been made to enter into Vera's thoughts on this, but that would be a lie because on top of the narrative having no substance, it's also just awfully written. On top of this, Brautigan has written in repeated racist descriptions of people in the street who aren't linked to plot and I can't work out why he included them aside from a fancy for racial slurs.

I only finished it because it was so bad that I wanted to finish it, to understand its full badness. I think you can actually read him getting bored of himself as the book progresses. I am glad that it was short. Pure shite.