In Search of Basho: the introduction

Basho and Brautigan

Before I get too heavily into the particulars of this project and where I was at the onset and where I am now, I should begin with the two events which lead up to it.

The first event happened nearly ten years ago, when I was first introduced to Richard Brautigan. I tend to mention Brautigan often and for no particular reason other than my fascination with both his work and his life.  I suppose the real fascination with his work is only due to the place I was in my life when I was introduced to him.

Brautigan is an obscure writer. His work is not anything so widespread or revolutionary to add to the greater progress of American Letters. Truth be known, he's special, but not an overtly clever writer. He wrote ten novels, ten collections of poetry and one collection of short stories. He began in the late 1950s and in the early 1980s he died at his own hand.

As far as we go, Brautigan and me, I was introduced to him one morning in Idaho Springs, Colorado in January of 2003.

I don't remember much of 2003, or the years on either end of it, to be truthful. I was in my early thirties then. I tended bar for a living and indulged in a party lifestyle which was a steady stream of grappa and four course meals and women and marijuana. I would like to say that my life had been clean and chaste and that I've spent my time on Earth in a pious way, but that's just not true.

On that particular morning, I had been holed up for some days with friends drinking Spanish brandy and an attitude that life was about to change. My friend, Carrie, pulling sleep from her eyes donned her glasses, lit a cigarette and said, “You have to hear this.” She read a “chapter” from Trout Fishing in America called “Sea Sea Rider.” It was riveting. I became instantly hooked. About a year and a half later while enjoying the quiet of Gavdos Island in the Greek archipelago with my soon to be married ex-wife, I read the last of Brautigan's novels. In that year and a half, I read everything I could find and that means everything save for the all but vanished poetry collections. I still get the appeal that I had on that first Idaho Springs morning hazy with Spanish brandy hangover and lazy from the ennui of life.

Brautigan still holds a special place in my mind and in my imagination. As a writer, I don't aspire to his style, but I do aspire to his number of published work.

Moving forward a few years, the second inspiration of this project hit me in a similar way. Again, it was a January morning, January of 2007. Again I was holed up with friends. This time, however, I was in Plainfield, Vermont. It was very different in that I was sober and I was engaged in my graduate schools studies. It was different because I had lost the malaise of the previous years and I was doing something positive and growth worthy.

Rebecca Brown introduced me to Matsuo Basho, the Japanese poet whose name and work is the very inspiration for this project.

We credit Basho with the haibun: a short prose passage followed up with a haiku. His work, juxtaposed with that of Brautigan is a funny if not absurd proposition. But that's life.

As I completed Sand and Asbestos, the serialized novel for the Sophia Ballou site, I felt tired. I thought that I should branch out from my normal habits and my normal medium. Suddenly, and I mean in one instant, I thought I might like to try writing the haibun. As I considered it, I came to no real destination. Destination is a proper thought since so much of Basho's work has travel involved.

One afternoon in early March 2011, my partner, my lover, my accomplice in this thing called life, Janice and I went to a coffeehouse in northeast Portland to visit with friends. The visit was fun, I suppose, but what took me was the view out the window. There were two young people panhandling on the corner. Their actions and motions lead me to understand what their lives must be like: homeless, alone; drug fueled, scary; uncertain, sordid and unsavory. I watched the young woman and from her my Darcy was born. Darcy was where In Search of Basho would go. I loved Darcy from the onset, and the woman outside on the street is who I thank.

I found the In Search of Basho piece though to write and nearly impossible to pursue. The piece took months to write. What about it? Well, I don't like to set my goals low. As the story of Darcy and her search came to an end, I decided that I wanted to form it into a chapbook. From the notion of the chapbook, I just had to push the envelope even more.

I set my goal to ten such pieces. The number is fitting because of Brautigan who had published ten poetry collections. Like Brautigan, I have written ten novels. The endeavor to write these ten smaller chapbook manuscripts like Brautigan's poetry became a slight obsession. As I said in the Introduction to Cocktails and Consequences, I'm not bragging, I'm Brautiganing.

So ten chapbooks it was.
Ten became fifteen.
Fifteen became twenty.
And now, one year after the first pen strokes of In Search of Basho, I have assembled twenty-five such chapbooks.

But, it took months to write this first one. Then, they became easier to write.  It's a testament of practice, habit and discipline as a writer. Coming from the position of a novelist where I think and act in terms of 50,000 words (250 pages), the chapbook is a different discipline and aesthetic.

I'm proud of these chapbooks.  I'm excited about the products as much as I was gleeful about the process.  And In Search of Basho is where it all began. I hope that should Basho and Brautigan read these, they both would enjoy them and hold a certain level of pride for their inspiration.