In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan

 IN WATERMELON SUGAR - RICHARD BRAUTIGAN

Back to Idiosyncrasy Central with Richard Brautigan and his third novel, In Watermelon Sugar, written in 1964 and published four years later in 1968. Firstly, is there any point in even trying to understand what it's about? The answer is 'no' because it's either far too complicated or it's not actually about anything at all. What should be said about it, however, is that it's set in a place called iDEATH which may or may not be some kind of idyllic hippy commune.

The significance of the name iDEATH is that it pre-dates the use of the letter 'i' as a prefix for Apple products such as the iPod, the iMac and the iPhone, etc. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once famously stated that taking LSD was one of the most important things he did in his life. Raised in California, Jobs was very much involved with the counterculture of the early 1970s and without any doubt would have been aware of Richard Brautigan. So might this be the germ of the seed of the idea for the name of your favourite product?

Would smoking a copious amount of hashish whilst reading In Watermelon Sugar make it easier to understand, I wonder? Probably. Smoking hash certainly helps to decipher a lot of other things that don't make sense such as David Bowie song lyrics, for example. And therein lies the clue as to what In Watermelon Sugar is actually about. It's a hashish pipe dream. A reverie. It's a float down the river. It's a daydream where your mind wanders and for a moment you're suspended eight miles high above the earth and you don't even know it.

It's that moment when you step out in front of an approaching car because you're not thinking. It's that moment when you're looking out the train window and suddenly you're at your station without realising it. It's that moment when time has gone and you're suddenly late. It's where - according to Richard Brautigan - the sun is a different colour every day, where tigers can talk, where rivers are two inches wide, and where girls float across summer lawns at midnight.

Does anybody know why at the age of forty-nine Richard Brautigan took a .44 Magnum and blew his brains out? Does In Watermelon Sugar hold any clues? Again, it probably does. Particularly in regard to a character in the book by the name of inBOIL who taunts the inhabitants of iDEATH by accusing them of not knowing what iDEATH is really about.

'You people think you know about iDEATH. You don't know anything about iDEATH.' he says 'Not a damn thing. You're all at a masquerade party.'

The inhabitants take up his challenge. 'Come, then' they say 'Tell us. We're curious about what you've been saying for years about us not knowing about iDEATH, about you knowing all the answers. Let's hear some of those answers.' Whereupon inBOIL and his gang begin lopping off bits of their own bodies with jack-knives so that they literally bleed to death in front of the inhabitants.

Does it make any sense? Probably not. It must have all made sense to at least one person though, even if that was only Richard Brautigan himself. And tragically so.

John Serpico