Tue 13 Jun 2017
A 1001 Midnights Review: RICHARD BRAUTIGAN – Dreaming of Babylon.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[10] Comments
by Newell Dunlap
RICHARD BRAUTIGAN – Dreaming of Babylon. Delacorte, hardcover/softcover, 1977. Dell, paperback, 1980.
The time is 1942, the place is San Francisco, and a private detective named C. Card is down on his luck. He already has sold everything of value he owns. He owes rent to his landlady, money to all his friends, and various domestic items to all his fellow tenants. Then, amazingly, his luck begins to change with two fortuitous events: (1) His landlady dies, and (2) he gets a client. The trouble is, he has no bullets for his gun and must find some before he meets his client. (What kind of detective goes around with an unloaded gun?)
The search for bullets takes him to the Hall of Justice and to the city morgue, and many a mysterious stranger he meets along the way — a beautiful, crying blonde; a tough, smiling chauffeur; and a lovely, but dead, prostitute, to name but a few. Of course, the bullet search is not aided any by the fact that he keeps slipping into a daydream about ancient Babylon.
This is Richard Brautigan’s only criminous novel and, to the average mystery aficionado, the story will seem rambling and plotless, having emerged as it did through the old, capricious byways of the author’s mind. It is a story not so much for fans of detective fiction but for fans of Brautigan fiction, for this is the popular poet/novelist who first came to us out of the hippie generation and is responsible for such works of gentle whimsy as Trout Fishing in America.
Inexplicably, his later novels took on more violent themes. This would include Dreaming of Babylon, although, by the standards of modern detective fiction, the book is relatively nonviolent and the author’s fanciful comic inventiveness shines through.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
Bibliographic Note: Al Hubin includes two earlierr books by Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) in his Crime Fiction IV, those being The Hawkline Monster (1974) and Willard and His Bowling Trophies (1975).
June 13th, 2017 at 6:26 pm
I read a lot of Brautigan books in the ’70s, including this one. I haven’t revisited any of them, and while I’m tempted to do so, I’m not sure it would be a good idea.
June 13th, 2017 at 8:54 pm
I was a child of the Sixties (born in 1948) but Brautigan was always too “twee” for me, as our British cousins would say.
June 13th, 2017 at 9:55 pm
A confession. At one time I had as a goal to amass a collection of every Private Eye novel ever written. This is one of the books that convinced me that maybe I really didn’t have to do that.
I should hasten to add, however, that there were others that were even more convincing.
June 13th, 2017 at 11:05 pm
I read all the Brautigan I could get hold of when I was in college during the Seventies. But I haven’t reread any of it and probably won’t. Like Bill, I’m not sure it would be a good idea. As the saying goes, I guess you just had to be there. (And where else but this blog could a guy comment on Cliff Farrell and Richard Brautigan, one right after the other?)
June 14th, 2017 at 12:02 pm
It just goes to show the wide range of interests of people who come to this blog, James, such as yourself.
June 14th, 2017 at 10:07 pm
I thought Thomas Berger did it better frankly.
June 16th, 2017 at 7:15 am
Steve, I admire your grand scheme of collecting every private eye novel. I admire you even more for dropping the idea!
June 16th, 2017 at 7:40 am
My blog also aspires to be a Cliff Farrell/Richard Brautigan commentary haven, but I don’t think I’ve managed more than passing reference to either yet…
June 16th, 2017 at 7:42 am
It didn’t occur to me, when I wrote a 7th grade English book report on THE ABORTION: AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE 1966 by Brautigan, in 1977, that I was doing anything remotely controversial. I found out otherwise.
June 16th, 2017 at 12:52 pm
It’s been ages since I’ve read Brautigan, and I had no idea he wrote a crime novel–such as one likely would be from him. Now I must find a copy!