One of the doomed purposes of this book is an attempt to keep
the past and present functioning simultaneously.
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| Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) |
It is difficult to keep
the past and present
going on at the same time
because they cannot be
trusted to act out
their proper roles.
They suddenly can turn on you
and operate diametrically opposed
to your understanding and
the needs of reality.
If you return to a place, you've never really left that place
because in waiting to come back, part of you is still there.
If this were not true, then it would be a brand-new place,
not seen before, nothing to remember it by.
Also, I am always the last person to know
what's going on in my life, but I have a feeling that's
maybe how it is with everybody and belief
in self-understanding is only a delusion.
Written during the summer of 1982, AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN was published posthumously,
first in France in 1994 as Cahier d'un Retour de Troie (Diary of a Return from Troy)
then, in 2000, in the United States and the United Kingdom
by his daughter, Ianthe Brautigan.
The next Richard Brautigan page is here.
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