Hawkline Monster

A Gothic WesternAn imaginative novel about a mansion, a monster and a magic child

This cult classic from the author of Trout Fishing in America “reads like a spaghetti Western crossed with Frankenstein, viewed through an opium haze” (The Sunday Times). The celebrated poet, novelist, and guru of the 1960s San Francisco literary scene, Richard Brautigan brings his highly original Gonzo style to this surreal parody Western. The time is 1902, the setting eastern Oregon. In the ice caves underneath Professor Hawkline’s house, a deadly monster lurks. It’s already turned the professor into an elephant foot umbrella stand, and now his two beautiful daughters have hired a pair of gunslingers to put a stop to the mayhem. But Hawkline Manor is full of curiosities and secrets, like the professor’s underground laboratory where his work on The Chemicals remains unfinished. And as the gunslingers pursue their peculiar quarry, they encounter monstrous mischief, amorous advances, and evil that is all too human. “Bursting with colour, humour and imagery, Brautigan’s virtuoso prose is rooted in his rural past.” —The Guardian

Containing more than fifty essays by major literary scholars, International Postmodernism divides into four main sections. The volume starts off with a section of eight introductory studies dealing with the subject from different points of view followed by a section that deals with postmodernism in other arts than literature, while a third section discusses renovations of narrative genres and other strategies and devices in postmodernist writing. The final and fourth section deals with the reception and processing of postmodernism in different parts of the world. Three important aspects add to the special character of International Postmodernism: The consistent distinction between postmodernity and postmodernism; equal attention to the making and diffusion of postmodernism and the workings of literature in general; and the focus on the text and the reader (i.e., the reader's knowledge, experience, interests, and competence) as crucial factors in text interpretation. This comprehensive study does not expressly focus on American postmodernism, although American interpretations of postmodernism are a major point of reference. The recognition that varying literary and cultural conditions in this world are bound to produce endless varieties of postmodernism made the editors, Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema, opt for the title International Postmodernism.

Best known for his novel Trout Fishing in America, American writer Richard Gary Brautigan (1935–1984) published eleven novels, ten poetry collections, and two story collections, as well as five volumes of collected work, several nonfiction essays, and a record album of spoken voice recordings. Brautigan’s idiosyncratic style and humor caused him to be identified with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. The authors of many of these 32 essays knew Brautigan personally and professionally; others came to know and respect him through a cultivated connection with his writings. The essays—many of which are new, others of which were published in obscure journals—combine personal remembrance of the man and critical appraisal of his still-controversial works. Includes previously unpublished photographs and artworks.

A heartbroken American writer starts a story about an ice-cold sombrero that falls inexplicably from the sky and lands in the centre of a small Southwest town. Devastated by the departure of his gorgeous Japanese girlfriend, he cannot concentrate on his writing and in frustration he throws away his beginning. But as the man searches through his apartment for strands of his lost love's hair, the discarded story in the wastepaper basket - through some kind of elaborate origami - carries on without him. Arguments over the sombrero begin, one thing leads to another and before long all hell breaks loose in the normally sleep town. Brautigan's fertile imagination twists and pulls at the ensuing chaos to come up with a tender, moving, surreal and incredibly funny tale that is told by a writer at the very peak of his creative powers.

The year is 1902; the setting, Eastern Oregon. A 15-year-old Indian girl wanders into a whorehouse looking for men to kill the monster that lives in the ice caves under the basement of Miss Hawkline's house. Armed with a trunkful of guns, two men set off in search of the Hawkline Monster. What follows is a series of unusual and often comic encounters in this parody of two literary genres.

The great diversity of contexts in which the term Postmodernism is currently encountered reflects the remarkable success of a coinage that has been in circulation for only about forty years. It has been used by philosophers, sociologists, art critics and literary historians to become, finally, a household word in the language of advertising and politics. Before letting it fade to a derelict cliché, an attempt is made in this volume of essays to use its potential as a cultural concept for the analysis and understanding of contemporary literature and thought.