Another oar in the water. 
on another day, at another time

Dear Ted,

When will I hear from you? Only after I have initiated, it seems.
     Your sister told you we were getting a cat (to share)! She is a small, orange — almost pumpkin-colored tabby. Potato! Moira probably told you all of that.
     She told me — or us — that you were reading Richard Brautigan, or you were reading some of him again. Her college friend Gretchen Moore (not to be confused with my college friend, Gretchen Monet) said something like, “How cute is that?” And Bucket* laughed, taking her side.
     But I have more sympathy with you! They understand why you would read him in the sixties and seventies, but now, in your sixties? But I get it, I think. There’s a strain of gentle and sweet (in the best sense of both words) in both Trout Fishing and The Abortion. Not quite as much in Confederate General at Big Sur, but it’s still there. The gentle-and-sweet come from the narrator’s modesty: he knows what he is talking about up to a point, but he won’t go beyond that point without admitting he is: “From here until I tell you otherwise I’m only telling you what I understand to be the case, but I’m not sure I trust my understanding, so you shouldn’t rely on it either.” And that’s good, that kind of modesty. There isn’t enough of it fifty years later.

I just buzzed through those books, the three I mentioned. They don’t take very long to read, do they? And I liked parts of all of them. I found Vida unbelievable, I’ll have to say. There must be women that turn men’s heads like that, but to that degree? Besides the young Elizabeth Taylor, who? And Elizabeth (in Confederate) is at least as unbelievable. But I did like Elaine, who became lovelier the longer Jesse looked at her.
     I liked Jesse, too, even if I didn’t quite “get” the hold Lee Mellon had over him. He’s almost what people mean now by “toxic masculinity,” Lee Mellon, if I understand the term correctly. (Do I?) And it’s not just Jesse! How does Elizabeth make love to a man with so few teeth? (She becomes only more unbelievable.) So, it’s the author that likes him so much; he sees something in Lee Mellon that he can’t explain. At least, not to me — I don’t see it.     
     Are you going to read In Watermelon Sugar, too? What about Revenge of the Lawn, Hawkline Monster — is that right? — the poems, etc.? Let me know. I mean: I’ve written, so you can write back.                                                                                                                                          Who used to be, Trudy 

 08.21.21

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 * Leslie Becket (one t). See here (also about the Gretchens). Illustration: “Richard Brautigan.” Cellphone drawing by mel ball.