I had just finished this and was looking for places to take part in a discussion and so glad I found this video! Thank you especially for the context of other authors who share themes and styles. Found it very useful! A couple of things I got from the novel: 1) I find it so interesting that it gets described by so many as a utopian novel. I find the gentleness actually very jarring with what happens in the story. The recounting of the Tigers killing his parents, the inboil and Margaret deaths were so vivid, that the detached reactions that the ideath characters seemed almost horrifying to me. I would argue this is dystopian rather than utopian. I almost wanted to shake Margaret's brother and tell him to feel something. I feel like ideaths metaphor of the loss of the ego also warns us of the detriment this has to interpersonal relationships. 2) I couldn't help but in 2022 see the parallels of inboil with Trump. The nostalgia for a time that was actually full of exploitation and toxicity for most and the rallying of people to support actions that damage them both felt very Trumpian. However I feel like we are warned that the disassociated bliss of people from ideath is not a sufficient answer to that poison. I think those two readings are kind of downers, but I still adored this novel. I'm dyslexic and struggle to read especially long writings, and this pushed all of my buttons while also being accessible for me. Thanks again for the video!
HELL YES. This is the exact type of comment i wanted from the video. I totally see you on the first point. The idea that this is a utopia is blown apart in the scene with the bat under the plank press and the ruminating margaret chapters (these are the key evidence chapters that the book is about the rot at the core of nostalgia and the ideath community, the novel's world). Your point about trump is interesting, too. On thinking about it a bit more, i completely agree. It's awesome that you extended the thought out to include that phrase, "dissociated bliss." That's bang on. If i had heard it before this video, it would have 19473930% made it in here. This is a truly sad novel imo, and it would be a large task to prove that the character (and community) is/are billed as a constructive response to the problems of the book, though there is a sort of mundane salvation in small community banter that chapters like Meat Loaf portray. So glad you got something useful out of the video and that you're reading brautigan. Let me know about anything else you've been reading - especially brautigan: he's a favourite author of mine. Thanks - your comment made my fucking day!
I very much appreciate your video. Thank you for sharing your insights. In my opinion the novel „In Watermelon Sugar“ is about Richard Brautigan’s early time in the writers and artists community of San Francisco. The protagonist does not have a proper name because he is a unpublished writer and has not yet made a name for himself. In a social group that is defined by fame he is still a nobody. Basically, all characters and settings in the story are either allusions to real artists and writers or to styles and feats of art. The tigers are a symbol of the great artists of the past who are still valued in a certain way in the present, but since the new can only come when the old goes, they ultimately became extinct and rejected. The conflict between Charley and inBoil is probably a conflict between different styles of writing and what literature should be. A battle between schools of thought, so to speak. But why watermelon sugar you may ask? It’s actually pretty sad. The solution is in the term itself. When we are talking about watermelon sugar we are not talking about the real thing, which would be sugar in this case, we are talking about a substitute. It’s not sugar, it’s watermelon sugar, the thing you get because you cannot afford what you really want. The majority of the artists in San Francisco of the 60s were incredibly poor. A watermelon could be easily shared among a group of people and it was probably more than once that Richard was in a situation where he really wanted a hamburger or a meat loaf but what he had instead was a slice of watermelon. So the slice of watermelon was a substitute for a real meal. In a literary sense, the watermelon sugar became a raw material that is the substitute for anything that you can't afford or that simply doesn't fit in your life due to lack of money, whether it's a leaky roof or a broken window - you can fix everything with the sugar from watermelons. When in fact you are using newspaper to „repair“ the broken window and put a bowl under the leak so the water does not flow everywhere. „In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.“ This was Richard Brautigan’s way to express that it is hard to be poor and that poverty affects his life very deeply as he repeatedly has to struggle with the effects of his situation. After all poverty is a vicious circle. Like I said, it's only my personal interpretation of the novel. :)
Holy shit! This is a fantastic interpretation, Mr(s?). Shooky! It would explain so much about the book, and I can see how my angle of rumination would fit into this. The book is basically rumination, and would become a useless literary navel-gazing session. It would be really cool to check out your ideas about inBOIL and Charley, as well as the ideas about fame and the protagonist's friends. For some reason I'm not recalling the friends as particularly famous. I'm loving the amount of readings that this thing generates!
It’s Mr. Hooky. I left iDeath many years ago. A few words about fame and names When we talk about fame in the context of Richard Brautigan's friends in San Francisco, we're talking about people who wanted to make a living through their writing. Of course, this is far from being Hollywood famous or anything like that. In this group, your reputation improves by winning literary awards, publishing short stories or poems in literary magazines, getting reviews in newspapers, securing paid reading assignments, and so on - basically anything that makes you money and gets your name out there. And if you are an unpublished writer and can’t get your name out, then you don’t have a name to speak of. Charley and inBoil I don't want to dwell too much on this conflict of supposed schools of thought, but I think it's a conflict between style and content. Charley perhaps represents a certain harmonic stylistic approach and a clear melodic choice of words. InBoil, on the other hand, is the rough and ugly face of what life is really about, and the notion that ultimately art can only have value if it shows the real world with a complete disregard for style and order. inBoil and his gang finds their end in the hatchery (bookstore) because no one wants to read this kind of literature. Their refusal to put on or held on to a pretty face is their ultimate demise. Why do you think the tigers in the story eat the narrator's parents? @@idgitreadsandrambles7090
@@hookybrickshooky9529 Again with the awesome analysis, Mr. Hooky. Fair point about the names - the fact that they even have names signals some degree of notoriety and individuality. The hatchery would make allegorical sense as a bookstore, too. What you say is becoming more and more valid. Next time I reread it, I'll read with the literary perspective in mind. The tigers are surely Blake's tigers, no? So in that reading of the book, it would be another instance of past art snuffing out the present's, leaving the narrator's unpublished pursuits aimless and wandering. There's only one part of the book I never really parsed out - why help with arithmetic? Not sure.
I really like the idea that it's actually Blake's tigers. For me it's canon now. Also my take on why they eat his parents is kind of similar I think. Since Richard was estranged from his mother at a very early age and he did not even know his father, we can assume that he had no significant parental ties as a young adult. So who was actually eaten by the tigers if not his parents? Since I have reason to believe that "In Watermelon Sugar" is a book about literature and art, I assume that the tigers as a symbol of real literature eclipsed his early reading experiences in a way that only the memory remained. Once you’ve read Vladimir Nabokov you probably will see Mickey Spillane in a different light. So young Richard went from Comics and Detective Novels on to Literature. Literature helped him to get educated but he also felt intimidated - how could he compare himself to these giants? But then comes Charley, someone who encourages him and becomes his mentor. Someone he could identify with and who showed him that the tigers are beautiful, but we can get along without them. But why arithmetic? This is a very good question. I mean, it's still Richard, someone who wrote about counting punctuation marks in "Ecclesiastes" - that's a kind of connection between words and numbers. So I wouldn't rule out the possibility that literature actually helped him with math, but I think we have a case of the "unreliable narrator" here. My time for today is running out, but I will come back another day for the narrator in the story. Next time I read “In Watermelon Sugar,” I’ll pay attention to nostalgia. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the book with me, I very much appreciate it.@@idgitreadsandrambles7090
Stop it! You're too kind. Comments like these keep me going, though :^) I'll get something out there tonight and think about some more videos. Thanks a million for the comment!
Just about to start my first Brautigan: Trout Fishing In America. Got In Watermelon Sugar coming in soon as well. Sounds absolutely trippy. Great Video, keep them coming man 👍
I read all the Braugtigan I could get my hands on in the late 70s. In Watermelon Sugar still lingers in my memory as a beautiful and unique book. What struck me as you were describing the book was that it reminded me of a novel I just read; Three To See The King, by Magnus Mills. The structure and repetition is almost a homage, but instead of watermelon sugar the metaphor is living alone in a tin house on the plain. Its a good book and you might enjoy it.
Oh, nice!!! Glad to check it out. And thanks for the comment! Have you read any of RB's later works, like Unfortunate Woman or So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away?
@@idgitreadsandrambles7090 I have not read any RB in 40 years. I bought the 3 omnibus volumes back in the 80s when they came out so I could reread him some day. I don't recall the titles you mention but I'm going to track them down and give them a look.
The tigers are a massive part of this book, and what they represent in the old world, and the symbolism they represent in the narrative flashbacks blew my mind 👌
Nice to hear what you're thinking! What do you imagine they represent, and how is it different in both instances? It's been a minute since I've read it. Thanks for the comment, Pat!
My thoughts are that they symbolise parental/maternal figures, in that they guide, nurture and devour … all at once. Then there is their killing. Which could possibly be an Oedipal type thing 🤷♂️
@@honestpat7789 that actually helps a lot. There is the problem that the tigers kill and eat his parents, though. The tigers could be parental figures to the society rather than him. That reading would help clarify my favourite chapter: the lamb at false dawn. The lamb would represent a defenseless child by contrast, right? Hence "false" dawn? And the people of iDEATH would all be kinds of lambs - lost children who want nothing else but to sit down in the proverbial flowers. The society as a whole here is also a kind of orphan, right? Reading more of Brautigan's biography, it seems quite obvious that Brautigan did intend to talk about the '60s, despite what I said about shying away from that interpretation, so that tigers/lambs dynamic is a pretty clear comment on real life. Fascinating to think about: hell yes!
I like that bind up. I have never read a Brautigan novel, though I used to own one. I appreciated your discussion of Brautigan's work at the end. Have you thought about doing a "Where to Start" with Richard Brautigan video? I would enjoy that and find it helpful. I wish had read the book so I could engage in a discussion about it and Brautigan. Great video.
Thanks a ton, Brian =^). I always appreciate your comments! He can be an abrasive authorial personality, i tell ya, but easily one of my favourite authors. I want to read the vast majority of his novels and stories before I do a larger perspective breakdown of his works. I'll get it done before the coming school year, though. Right now, i'd say if you're down with surrealism start here. If you're not down with surrealism, start with a confederate general from big sur. It really articulates the desire of the hippies and left-behinds to play a role in american history, though not one of my favourites of his.
Without wanting to state the obvious (but doing it anyway) it's about the failure of idealism and how ideals are great until people get their hands on them. Most of his books read like this. I first read his stuff as a teenager and in my early twenties. I am now 47 and began rereading his works a few months ago. Sometimes he's dismissed as whimsical, certainly by British critics, which I think does his work a disservice. He gets better with age. The sadness is there for sure. It's just the old classic comedy tragedy axis that undresses us all. I still think he is vastly underrated. A totally unique writer though.
Bang-on, James! It's pretty helpful to state the obvious, especially when talking about a book like this one. Sometimes I get caught up with things beyond the obvious and forget it's even there! Good to know you're rereading Brautigan. What works have you got to so far? Rereading his novels has really yielded a lot for me - his tendency to radically condense big ideas makes his works tough to make sense of on first read, yet it never really gets in the way of enjoying a book of his.
It's a strange book, pretty dissimilar to everything else going on later in his career. I wouldn't blame somebody if they hated it, lol. He generally gets less surreal after this book, but this is real dreamy.
After reading it I just kept thinking about the way death is handled by the people in iDEATH. The way their emotions around it seem to be so detached and numbed out. And inBOIL and his men kind of rediscovered the definitiveness of death and the ugliness of it and tried to display that.
Absolutely. But, given inBOIL's obsession with iDEATH and how the community doesn't live up to the title, I'd say it's not just about death but about individualism. The community name seems to represent the death of the self, so that's where my interpretation that inBOIL and his gang have a destructive communal consciousness comes from. Thanks for the comment!!!! (A+ youtube name btw)
you were about to mention what you think the watermelon sugar might represent and then stopped. I’m really interested in what you think about that. i’m really not sure but i’d love to hear your take even if you think it might be wrong
Howdy Katie! Thanks for the comment. I was thinking it was something like nostalgia (it's been a minute since I've reread it), but there seems to be multiple things it could be depending on how you want to read it. If I was reading the book as a personal metaphor, nostalgia would be what I'd look at it for, but definitely not if I was reading it as a social commentary. What would you think?
@@idgitreadsandrambles7090 that’s very interesting to think about. I’ve been writing a research paper on this book and I found a source (someone on tumblr i think) saying it could represent “the ephemeral essence of pleasure and how it can be found in many things when you live in harmony with nature”, which I think it’s a great take. I think the use of watermelon sugar in everything really reinforces the idea of how this community lives so intertwined with nature like how they build ideath around it with hundreds of rivers all around, some even flowing through the living room.
@@katieflanagan3877 that's a pretty interesting point. I'll return to the book and mull it over. If you want to talk in-depth about the book, please email me. I'd love to hear how you interpret the bat under the plank press and the forgotten works. Or, given your go-ahead (which I'd completely understand if you refused), I'd love to read the paper once it's complete or hear out some ideas. Later on in my academic career I'd really like to write a thesis on Brautigan, particularly his late-70s/80s output. The channel email is idgitreadsandrambles@gmail.com Again, please don't feel undue pressure.
I had just finished this and was looking for places to take part in a discussion and so glad I found this video!
Thank you especially for the context of other authors who share themes and styles. Found it very useful!
A couple of things I got from the novel:
1) I find it so interesting that it gets described by so many as a utopian novel. I find the gentleness actually very jarring with what happens in the story. The recounting of the Tigers killing his parents, the inboil and Margaret deaths were so vivid, that the detached reactions that the ideath characters seemed almost horrifying to me. I would argue this is dystopian rather than utopian. I almost wanted to shake Margaret's brother and tell him to feel something. I feel like ideaths metaphor of the loss of the ego also warns us of the detriment this has to interpersonal relationships.
2) I couldn't help but in 2022 see the parallels of inboil with Trump. The nostalgia for a time that was actually full of exploitation and toxicity for most and the rallying of people to support actions that damage them both felt very Trumpian. However I feel like we are warned that the disassociated bliss of people from ideath is not a sufficient answer to that poison.
I think those two readings are kind of downers, but I still adored this novel. I'm dyslexic and struggle to read especially long writings, and this pushed all of my buttons while also being accessible for me.
Thanks again for the video!
HELL YES. This is the exact type of comment i wanted from the video.
I totally see you on the first point. The idea that this is a utopia is blown apart in the scene with the bat under the plank press and the ruminating margaret chapters (these are the key evidence chapters that the book is about the rot at the core of nostalgia and the ideath community, the novel's world).
Your point about trump is interesting, too. On thinking about it a bit more, i completely agree. It's awesome that you extended the thought out to include that phrase, "dissociated bliss." That's bang on. If i had heard it before this video, it would have 19473930% made it in here. This is a truly sad novel imo, and it would be a large task to prove that the character (and community) is/are billed as a constructive response to the problems of the book, though there is a sort of mundane salvation in small community banter that chapters like Meat Loaf portray.
So glad you got something useful out of the video and that you're reading brautigan. Let me know about anything else you've been reading - especially brautigan: he's a favourite author of mine.
Thanks - your comment made my fucking day!
@@idgitreadsandrambles7090 ah I'm so glad! I'll certainly keep my eye out for more of his novels and more of your videos. Cheers!
I very much appreciate your video. Thank you for sharing your insights.
In my opinion the novel „In Watermelon Sugar“ is about Richard Brautigan’s early time in the writers and artists community of San Francisco. The protagonist does not have a proper name because he is a unpublished writer and has not yet made a name for himself. In a social group that is defined by fame he is still a nobody. Basically, all characters and settings in the story are either allusions to real artists and writers or to styles and feats of art. The tigers are a symbol of the great artists of the past who are still valued in a certain way in the present, but since the new can only come when the old goes, they ultimately became extinct and rejected.
The conflict between Charley and inBoil is probably a conflict between different styles of writing and what literature should be. A battle between schools of thought, so to speak.
But why watermelon sugar you may ask? It’s actually pretty sad.
The solution is in the term itself. When we are talking about watermelon sugar we are not talking about the real thing, which would be sugar in this case, we are talking about a substitute. It’s not sugar, it’s watermelon sugar, the thing you get because you cannot afford what you really want.
The majority of the artists in San Francisco of the 60s were incredibly poor. A watermelon could be easily shared among a group of people and it was probably more than once that Richard was in a situation where he really wanted a hamburger or a meat loaf but what he had instead was a slice of watermelon.
So the slice of watermelon was a substitute for a real meal.
In a literary sense, the watermelon sugar became a raw material that is the substitute for anything that you can't afford or that simply doesn't fit in your life due to lack of money, whether it's a leaky roof or a broken window - you can fix everything with the sugar from watermelons. When in fact you are using newspaper to „repair“ the broken window and put a bowl under the leak so the water does not flow everywhere.
„In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.“
This was Richard Brautigan’s way to express that it is hard to be poor and that poverty affects his life very deeply as he repeatedly has to struggle with the effects of his situation. After all poverty is a vicious circle.
Like I said, it's only my personal interpretation of the novel.
:)
Holy shit! This is a fantastic interpretation, Mr(s?). Shooky! It would explain so much about the book, and I can see how my angle of rumination would fit into this. The book is basically rumination, and would become a useless literary navel-gazing session. It would be really cool to check out your ideas about inBOIL and Charley, as well as the ideas about fame and the protagonist's friends. For some reason I'm not recalling the friends as particularly famous.
I'm loving the amount of readings that this thing generates!
It’s Mr. Hooky. I left iDeath many years ago.
A few words about fame and names
When we talk about fame in the context of Richard Brautigan's friends in San Francisco, we're talking about people who wanted to make a living through their writing. Of course, this is far from being Hollywood famous or anything like that. In this group, your reputation improves by winning literary awards, publishing short stories or poems in literary magazines, getting reviews in newspapers, securing paid reading assignments, and so on - basically anything that makes you money and gets your name out there. And if you are an unpublished writer and can’t get your name out, then you don’t have a name to speak of.
Charley and inBoil
I don't want to dwell too much on this conflict of supposed schools of thought, but I think it's a conflict between style and content. Charley perhaps represents a certain harmonic stylistic approach and a clear melodic choice of words. InBoil, on the other hand, is the rough and ugly face of what life is really about, and the notion that ultimately art can only have value if it shows the real world with a complete disregard for style and order.
inBoil and his gang finds their end in the hatchery (bookstore) because no one wants to read this kind of literature. Their refusal to put on or held on to a pretty face is their ultimate demise.
Why do you think the tigers in the story eat the narrator's parents?
@@idgitreadsandrambles7090
@@hookybrickshooky9529 Again with the awesome analysis, Mr. Hooky. Fair point about the names - the fact that they even have names signals some degree of notoriety and individuality. The hatchery would make allegorical sense as a bookstore, too. What you say is becoming more and more valid. Next time I reread it, I'll read with the literary perspective in mind.
The tigers are surely Blake's tigers, no? So in that reading of the book, it would be another instance of past art snuffing out the present's, leaving the narrator's unpublished pursuits aimless and wandering. There's only one part of the book I never really parsed out - why help with arithmetic? Not sure.
I really like the idea that it's actually Blake's tigers. For me it's canon now.
Also my take on why they eat his parents is kind of similar I think.
Since Richard was estranged from his mother at a very early age and he did not even know his father, we can assume that he had no significant parental ties as a young adult. So who was actually eaten by the tigers if not his parents?
Since I have reason to believe that "In Watermelon Sugar" is a book about literature and art, I assume that the tigers as a symbol of real literature eclipsed his early reading experiences in a way that only the memory remained.
Once you’ve read Vladimir Nabokov you probably will see Mickey Spillane in a different light. So young Richard went from Comics and Detective Novels on to Literature. Literature helped him to get educated but he also felt intimidated - how could he compare himself to these giants? But then comes Charley, someone who encourages him and becomes his mentor. Someone he could identify with and who showed him that the tigers are beautiful, but we can get along without them.
But why arithmetic? This is a very good question. I mean, it's still Richard, someone who wrote about counting punctuation marks in "Ecclesiastes" - that's a kind of connection between words and numbers. So I wouldn't rule out the possibility that literature actually helped him with math, but I think we have a case of the "unreliable narrator" here.
My time for today is running out, but I will come back another day for the narrator in the story.
Next time I read “In Watermelon Sugar,” I’ll pay attention to nostalgia.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the book with me, I very much appreciate it.@@idgitreadsandrambles7090
Your channel is such a blessing. Keep going! I’ve added so many books to my reading list because of you
Stop it! You're too kind. Comments like these keep me going, though :^)
I'll get something out there tonight and think about some more videos. Thanks a million for the comment!
Just about to start my first Brautigan: Trout Fishing In America. Got In Watermelon Sugar coming in soon as well. Sounds absolutely trippy. Great Video, keep them coming man 👍
Hell yes, Russ! Update me on instagram about how it goes. I've been meaning to reread it anyways, and it would be a pleasure to discuss it!
I read all the Braugtigan I could get my hands on in the late 70s. In Watermelon Sugar still lingers in my memory as a beautiful and unique book. What struck me as you were describing the book was that it reminded me of a novel I just read; Three To See The King, by Magnus Mills. The structure and repetition is almost a homage, but instead of watermelon sugar the metaphor is living alone in a tin house on the plain. Its a good book and you might enjoy it.
Oh, nice!!! Glad to check it out. And thanks for the comment! Have you read any of RB's later works, like Unfortunate Woman or So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away?
@@idgitreadsandrambles7090 I have not read any RB in 40 years. I bought the 3 omnibus volumes back in the 80s when they came out so I could reread him some day. I don't recall the titles you mention but I'm going to track them down and give them a look.
@@leoden49 fantastic! Hope you dig them!
The tigers are a massive part of this book, and what they represent in the old world, and the symbolism they represent in the narrative flashbacks blew my mind 👌
Nice to hear what you're thinking! What do you imagine they represent, and how is it different in both instances? It's been a minute since I've read it.
Thanks for the comment, Pat!
My thoughts are that they symbolise parental/maternal figures, in that they guide, nurture and devour … all at once.
Then there is their killing. Which could possibly be an Oedipal type thing 🤷♂️
@@honestpat7789 that actually helps a lot. There is the problem that the tigers kill and eat his parents, though. The tigers could be parental figures to the society rather than him.
That reading would help clarify my favourite chapter: the lamb at false dawn. The lamb would represent a defenseless child by contrast, right? Hence "false" dawn? And the people of iDEATH would all be kinds of lambs - lost children who want nothing else but to sit down in the proverbial flowers.
The society as a whole here is also a kind of orphan, right? Reading more of Brautigan's biography, it seems quite obvious that Brautigan did intend to talk about the '60s, despite what I said about shying away from that interpretation, so that tigers/lambs dynamic is a pretty clear comment on real life.
Fascinating to think about: hell yes!
@@idgitreadsandrambles7090 definitely
I like that bind up. I have never read a Brautigan novel, though I used to own one.
I appreciated your discussion of Brautigan's work at the end. Have you thought about doing a "Where to Start" with Richard Brautigan video? I would enjoy that and find it helpful.
I wish had read the book so I could engage in a discussion about it and Brautigan.
Great video.
Thanks a ton, Brian =^). I always appreciate your comments!
He can be an abrasive authorial personality, i tell ya, but easily one of my favourite authors. I want to read the vast majority of his novels and stories before I do a larger perspective breakdown of his works. I'll get it done before the coming school year, though.
Right now, i'd say if you're down with surrealism start here. If you're not down with surrealism, start with a confederate general from big sur. It really articulates the desire of the hippies and left-behinds to play a role in american history, though not one of my favourites of his.
Without wanting to state the obvious (but doing it anyway) it's about the failure of idealism and how ideals are great until people get their hands on them. Most of his books read like this. I first read his stuff as a teenager and in my early twenties. I am now 47 and began rereading his works a few months ago. Sometimes he's dismissed as whimsical, certainly by British critics, which I think does his work a disservice. He gets better with age. The sadness is there for sure. It's just the old classic comedy tragedy axis that undresses us all. I still think he is vastly underrated. A totally unique writer though.
Bang-on, James! It's pretty helpful to state the obvious, especially when talking about a book like this one. Sometimes I get caught up with things beyond the obvious and forget it's even there!
Good to know you're rereading Brautigan. What works have you got to so far? Rereading his novels has really yielded a lot for me - his tendency to radically condense big ideas makes his works tough to make sense of on first read, yet it never really gets in the way of enjoying a book of his.
I do like all the metaphorical symbolism
It's a strange book, pretty dissimilar to everything else going on later in his career. I wouldn't blame somebody if they hated it, lol.
He generally gets less surreal after this book, but this is real dreamy.
After reading it I just kept thinking about the way death is handled by the people in iDEATH. The way their emotions around it seem to be so detached and numbed out. And inBOIL and his men kind of rediscovered the definitiveness of death and the ugliness of it and tried to display that.
Absolutely. But, given inBOIL's obsession with iDEATH and how the community doesn't live up to the title, I'd say it's not just about death but about individualism.
The community name seems to represent the death of the self, so that's where my interpretation that inBOIL and his gang have a destructive communal consciousness comes from.
Thanks for the comment!!!!
(A+ youtube name btw)
you were about to mention what you think the watermelon sugar might represent and then stopped. I’m really interested in what you think about that. i’m really not sure but i’d love to hear your take even if you think it might be wrong
Howdy Katie! Thanks for the comment. I was thinking it was something like nostalgia (it's been a minute since I've reread it), but there seems to be multiple things it could be depending on how you want to read it. If I was reading the book as a personal metaphor, nostalgia would be what I'd look at it for, but definitely not if I was reading it as a social commentary.
What would you think?
@@idgitreadsandrambles7090 that’s very interesting to think about. I’ve been writing a research paper on this book and I found a source (someone on tumblr i think) saying it could represent “the ephemeral essence of pleasure and how it can be found in many things when you live in harmony with nature”, which I think it’s a great take. I think the use of watermelon sugar in everything really reinforces the idea of how this community lives so intertwined with nature like how they build ideath around it with hundreds of rivers all around, some even flowing through the living room.
@@katieflanagan3877 that's a pretty interesting point. I'll return to the book and mull it over.
If you want to talk in-depth about the book, please email me. I'd love to hear how you interpret the bat under the plank press and the forgotten works. Or, given your go-ahead (which I'd completely understand if you refused), I'd love to read the paper once it's complete or hear out some ideas. Later on in my academic career I'd really like to write a thesis on Brautigan, particularly his late-70s/80s output.
The channel email is idgitreadsandrambles@gmail.com
Again, please don't feel undue pressure.
@@katieflanagan3877 did you finish the paper? I would love to have a read!