≫ Download Free Following Richard Brautigan Corey Mesler 9781604890471 Books

Following Richard Brautigan Corey Mesler 9781604890471 Books

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Following Richard Brautigan Corey Mesler 9781604890471 Books

Like a knight setting off on a quest, a young poet named Jack takes to the road in search of Richard Brautigan. This, simply put, is the premise of Corey Mesler's touching and whimsical novel. But this bare statement of the plot does not begin to convey the uniqueness of this paean to the lovesickness, horniness and poetry of youth. Following Richard Brautigan might be described as the literary equivalent of a buddy film - except that the narrator is a prose poet of the first order and the buddy is the ghost of Richard Brautigan who, like Vergil's ghost in Dante's poem, is a mentor both in the mysteries of the afterlife and of the poetic vocation. This is a magical book. I love it not only for the glories of the language, but above all because it so forcefully reminds me of the rhapsody and the pain of young manhood. I can think of no other book - except maybe the final chapters of Joyce's Portrait - that so poignantly evokes the coming of age of a poet.


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Following Richard Brautigan Corey Mesler 9781604890471 Books Reviews

I genuinely adored this poignant and creatively dazzling novel by Corey Mesler who takes head-on a major narrative challenge and elegantly succeeds with it. This novel is a paen to youth. This particular young peripatetic writer, Jack, is haunted by the ghost of San Francisco poet and novelist, Richard Brautigan, and the story line develops around this intriguing conceit. In a sense the creativity of Jack is inspired by his creative mentor and ultimately symbolizes the victory of creativity over death in Brautigan and the young man. They both are deeply engaged in an existential pursuit -- how can one live amid so much futility, inauthenticity and the mindblowing endgame of death? What is the meaning of life and wherein does its value reside? For them the pursuit involves immersion into the experience of life itself -- not merely surviving, but living life fully. The young man's earnest and possibly quixotic striving leads him from woman to woman in a quest for real love. For how can life be lived fully without earth shattering love? The existential quest also takes them on the road and readers will sense the literary connection to Kerouac as well as to Ferlinghetti and Farina in "FRB." Jack's Big Idea is simply to live and to avoid or trade-off inauthentic life, as much as possible, for living with meager pecuniary means in the Now. I admire the young man's sincerity and integrity in his dogged, imaginative pursuit of a meaningful existence. It's clealry not all fun and games and the ending is also poignant it left me wondering where other travels would lead Jack down the Great American Highway of Existence. The comedy in the narrative, especially the Lone Ranger joke, by his well-named brother, Lark, left me laughing out loud repeatedly. Initially, as the story is narrated in the first-person singular, I was concerned that the narrative would become overly self-indulgent. But wisely the author backs away from the creative dangers manifest in a first-person narrative style and focused on his ghostly foil, a daunting proposition which the author manages to pull off authentically. I was much impressed by Mesler's way with words and his daunting vocabulary amid a highly accessible, narrative structure. I enjoyed the realism of the dialogue and the round nuances of the primary characters. I had to laugh as Jack tried so valiantly and dutifully to steer customers in his bookstore away from pervasive, best-selling, commercial pap into the truly great books by the geniuses whom he respected. One can sense the sentiment of the author for each of the women with whom Jack and Richard tarry. I felt as if I had received intellectually well beyond my investment in reading this pithy, wise and profound novel. I sincerely entreat you to read "Following Richard Brautigan" as the odds are high that you will see yourself as a youth in your personal existential quest on every page of this great, dense, big-hearted and welcoming novel.
Let me just lay it out there for you Corey Mesler’s Following Richard Brautigan is not a masterpiece, but it’s close. No, I don’t mean Masterpiece, capital M—it’s not War and Peace, not Kind of Blue, not Don Giovanni. What it is is a close masterpiece of language and sensibility. And if that isn’t a description of poetry—albeit an unimaginative and pedestrian one—then I don’t know what is. Yes, it’s poetry—which is fitting considering the ghost that haunts this novel and its protagonist. And since we’re talking about what this novel is, let me add a few more isisms. It’s a road movie, sans the movie part. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a bromance novel. But perhaps more than anything else it’s a modern day Odysseus. A few other GR reviewers have also alluded to the Greek Masterpiece, capital M. and the novel itself drops the O-bomb. But I would also add to that the Inferno. After all, who is the ghost of Richard Brautigan if not Virgil, the good poet and guide of Dante through the underworld of America?
The plot of the novel is unremarkable. In fact it is more of a skeletal framework onto which Mr. Mesler hangs his vignettes—some long, some short, but all delightful. And with gem-like headings such as Hot as Monkeys, and The Telephone Is Like a Two-Hour Old Streetcar Transfer Or Ten Bergs A-Calving. In the novel, our protagonist Jack is haunted by ghosts yes, by Richard Brautigan; but other ghosts, too. By Sharilyn, the proverbial one-that-got-away. By his brother, who regularly calls from Ithaca to tell him that suitors are everywhere storming the walls. By Vita, the woman who cannot (and does not live without him). But in the end, Jack does not follow Richard Brautigan, as his time is not yet. Nor does he follow Sharilyn or Vita. He returns to Ithaca as all adventurers eventually must.
Mesler is clearly a poet, and it shows. Not surprisingly, then, it is easy to take pleasure in passages like this salient, stream-of-consciousness rendering of the hippie generation (and I must include it in its entirety, for to not do so would be an abomination of sorts)

Most of the poets, writers, dreamers we encountered had already survived and witnessed Hendrix chopping downa mountain with the edge of his hand, Miles running the voodoo down, Mailer and Ginsberg and Cal and Abbie levitating the Pentagon, children with their souls tattooed with tie-dye bring the president to his knees and embarrassing him into ending a dishonorable war. They got hooked at the Hooker’s Ball. They were liberated by Art by the Artist’s Liberation Front. They’d seen fire and they’d seen rain. They’d seen the bomerdeathplanes turning into butterflies above the Woodstock Nation. They’d been lost in the rain in Juarez, reposed down on Rue Morgue Avenue, heard the electric violin on Desolation Row. They’d played the game of existence to the end. They had arrived without traveling. They had slouched toward Bethlehem. They’d turned on, tuned in and dropped OUT. They’d put flowers in gun barrels and seen those barrels curl back in humility. They had taken the acid test and passed. They’d seen Haight turned into Love. They’d freed Huey, eschewed Dewey and sang Louie, Louie. They’d fought in the Battle of People Park. They’d dug the diggers, paid their dues at the Free , Been at the Be-In. They had gone, ah, FURTHER. And the final sumup was “Let it go. Whatever you do is Beautiful!”

Reading this slight, inspired, and thoroughly delightful novel, you will find yourself lost in milieu of language and sensibility. You will ponder the many allusions and tie them back to the page like ship lines to a pier. You will tell yourself to make sense of these later, as now you simply want to ride the tide further out (or is it in?). Reading Following Richard Brautigan is worth the time and effort, if effort is the right word (which it is not). It is more a labor of love than anything else. A peaceful sit-down.
A brilliantly conceived narrative that amazes with its quirky and inventive rhetoric and out of cosmos humor that regales both belly and mind. Brautigan could not have done better himself.
Like a knight setting off on a quest, a young poet named Jack takes to the road in search of Richard Brautigan. This, simply put, is the premise of Corey Mesler's touching and whimsical novel. But this bare statement of the plot does not begin to convey the uniqueness of this paean to the lovesickness, horniness and poetry of youth. Following Richard Brautigan might be described as the literary equivalent of a buddy film - except that the narrator is a prose poet of the first order and the buddy is the ghost of Richard Brautigan who, like Vergil's ghost in Dante's poem, is a mentor both in the mysteries of the afterlife and of the poetic vocation. This is a magical book. I love it not only for the glories of the language, but above all because it so forcefully reminds me of the rhapsody and the pain of young manhood. I can think of no other book - except maybe the final chapters of Joyce's Portrait - that so poignantly evokes the coming of age of a poet.