Richard Brautigan
1968
Around 145 pages
Apparently, Harry Styles was inspired by this novel, but his Watermelon Sugar refers to the female orgasm, so I guess he just thought the title sounded cool. Based on the cold, dead-eyed creep on the cover, I thought we were in for another weird cult story where everybody is tripping balls. But I was pleasantly surprised.
The story focuses on a commune organized around a house called iDEATH. In this world, many things are built from watermelon sugar, pine wood, and trout oil. And everything is always in flux, even the sun. It sort of sounds like a Nintendo universe, but there are also talking tigers who eat parents in front of their kids.
Brautigan acknowledges that this world is a lot to swallow, so he writes in a minimalist way, with our narrator composing sparse journal entries on the events of the novel. Other writers might have overwhelmed us with heavy prose, but this was very digestible.
Weird that so many cult novels are coming out, before the most violent cult crimes have occurred. It's like the novelists are trying to warn everybody. But we never listen to them.
RATING: ****-
Interesting Facts:
Interesting Facts:
According to Michael Caines, the story that Brautigan left a suicide note that simply read: "Messy, isn't it?" is apocryphal.
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