An Unfortunate Woman
(click on thumbnails)
I heard someone say that there is nothing like reading Brautigan with a glass of wine. Today, I decided to take Brautigan’s “An Unfortunate Woman” from our shelf to read the opening letter which was from Brautigan himself, addressed to a friend.
Brautigan’s words fall to silence between the lament for one, “N”, whom he dedicates the book to. His grief for this woman can have no excess. How can words express the loss of someone very close? There is a different kind of emotion involved for a different kind of loss.
“I just sat beside the telephone for a few moments, staring at it”, Brautigan explains, “and then I called a close neighbor M and asked her if she wanted some watermelon”. Brautigan seems to look at death with lightness. But the lightness – the watermelon, the interruption of lovemaking – veils his grief.
“The watermelon was just some kind of funny excuse to talk about my grief and to try to get some perspective on the fact that I can never call you again on the telephone and tell you something like I’ve just done that basically only your sense of humor could appreciate”.
Without the veil of lightness, there is only loss and pain. And I find that the lightness should never be taken for granted or else there would only be the silence, as Brautigan stares at his telephone, or bitterness of being unable to share the sweetness of a watermelon. I read Brautigan’s letter four times without the wine, the moment as bitter as it is sweet.
Tags: Richard Brautigan, Richard Brautigan An Unfortunate Woman