The Endless Walk Of Richard Brautigan

Agamemnon: Now stop---it's not right For a girl to know all of these things.

Iphigenia: Father, over there when you have done All things well, hurry back to me from Troy !

Euripedes Iphigenia in Aulis." (4)

As scholars read this work, it becomes increasingly clear that there was a great deal more going on with Brautigan's emotional state than many of his close friends may have realized. On visiting Haight Ashberry, I met an old aquaitance of the now famous but long deceased poet and prose writer, novelist.

"He was a beautiful man who had warm intellect and a wonderful sense of humor. Everyone in Haight Ashberry was shocked when we had learned that this wonderful man had ended his life."

Comments such as the one above are frequent around San Francisco, and lead one to ponder the complexities of Brautigan's emotional state. Like many writers, the clues may be found hidden in the pages of his works. In an, "Unfortunate Woman", his proccupation of death may have masked the horrors that a literary mind might encounter when dealing with the last ultimate mystery. Sometimes as has been said the lines between genius and madness are often skewed. Obviously, Brautigan was not mad, but when a writer walks in the shadows for too long, the end results may prove tragic, for even poets need their sunlight. Brautigan's fate may have been sealed from standing in the shaded places that inhabit the secret places of the mind for too long.

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