rivercrow

Some alcoholics self-medicate to kill emotional pain. I don’t know if that’s globally true. I’ve certainly observed it.

My own addictions–not chemical, really, but otherwise–are related to dulling emotional pain. I’ve never been seriously tempted by illicit drugs. It’s a passing fancy that I don’t pursue. Usually I have enough of a natural sideways spin to not want a more extreme version.

This picture of Brautigan at the end of his life haunts me.

From Downstream from Trout Fishing in America by Keith Abbot

…[T]hat fall his agent, Helen Brann, who was also representing me, courtesy of Richard’s recommendation, came into town. I was invited to meet her other West Coast clients in her suite at the Stanford Court hotel in San Francisco. When Lani and I arrived, Richard was there, something I wasn’t expecting. He had called and told me he would be meeting with her the day before, and didn’t think he would stick around. He was looking much like he did up in Montana: drunk, morose and harried. When he was drinking too much, his face tended to go white, even paler than it usually was, and that night he looked like a corpse.

There were a few other writers in the room, and after the introductions, Lani and I settled down to chat with them and find out what everyone was doing. One was the journalist John Grissam, who was working on a book on jealousy, in collaboration with Dr. Eugene Schoenfield, writer of the underground press medical advice column, Dr. Hip. Since the book was going to be an anthology of interviews, Grissam asked each of us about our experiences with jealousy.

During this discussion, Richard hovered around the edge of the group, disappearing from time to time into the other room of the suite to make phone calls. Apparently he was due somewhere else but had not made connections.

As the evening progressed, it was clear that Grissam admired Brautigan’s work. From his comments he seemed fascinated with what he imagined was the freedom of being a rich and famous writer. He made several remarks to Richard about this. Each time Richard deflected the inquiries with one of his usual oblique monotone replies.

But Grissam was so earnest about it all, Richard sat down on the carpet next to him and began to talk about the effect of fame on writers. It was not really a discussion, because no matter what Grissam asserted, Richard kept insisting that fame was in itself meaningless, that only the work mattered. If you continued to write good work, then fame was the kicker, sometimes good and sometimes bad. But it counted for nothing in relation to the real work of writing.

Grissam’s persistence in believing that fame was a boon for a writer soon exasperated Richard. By this time he had drunk too much whiskey, and I saw that he was about to explode. At one point, when the conversation turned to the money that fame could bestow, Richard erupted. He stood up in a rage, tore up some twenty dollar bills, and rained them down on Grissam. “This isn’t real. You think this is real?” Richard said. “This is nothing.”

Then in his rage he fell to his knees on the carpet and grabbed one of Grissam’s legs around the calf and pounded his foot on the floor. “This leg is more real than any of that,” Richard said.

He abruptly bolted into the next room, leaving everyone stunned. After conversations resumed and everyone regained their composure, including Grissam, Richard came back with a fresh tumbler of whiskey and stood in the hallway.

After Grissam checked to see if Richard was still manic, he began telling quietly why he was writing the book on jealousy. He had been very much in love with someone and had been treated badly. In his rage over this, something had gone haywire in his body. His leg had mysteriously atrophied. Unable to get help from any western medicine, he had gone to various other countries and tried different cures, paying for them by writing articles on each treatment. Pulling up his pants leg, he showed us the damage. It was the leg which Richard had pounded on the floor. Pointing to his leg, he said Richard was right, this is more real than any of that other stuff.

Brautigan was moved by this and became very contrite and solicitous of Grissam. He sat down on the carpet and apologized for his outburst. Shortly after that he got his phone call and left.

The look on his face as he heard about Grissam’s leg was heart-rending. Even though he was drunk, his face almost white from whiskey, Richard had gone intuitively to the source of another person’s pain.

That night Lani and I had a long discussion about the episode. Very depressed, I couldn’t help but think this instinct to be a curse. I knew Richard was lost in a way most people never understand. With his belief in intuition and emotion, Richard was doomed to return constantly to his own pain, and just as doomed to rehearse it without relief. He could not cure himself because his art could give him no relief and yet it would never let him be.

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