So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away
Encyclopedia
So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away is a novel written by Richard Brautigan
, published in 1982.
The story is about a narrator in 1979 remembering the events that happened when he was 13 in 1948. The young narrator lives in a lower class suburban Oregon neighborhood and collects beer bottles or does favors for neighbors to earn money. He also spends time alone fishing in a pond on the outskirts of town.
Instead of buying a hamburger at a local diner, he buys bullets from the gunshop across the street. The book starts with this, and then hovers and builds around this event until the end. While shooting rotten apples at an abandoned orchard with a friend, the narrator accidentally shoots and kills him. Because the shooting was an accident he is acquitted, but because of his ruined reputation, his waitress mother doesn't get tips anymore, he is severely bullied at school, and they're forced to move. The book ends with a return to an observation of two obese people fishing in a temporarily set up "living room" by the pond. Most of the book is made up of observations of the different strange characters that surrounded the narrator when he was a child.
The novel presents a wistful, poetic and many times sad perspective on a life. In this case, some of it on Brautigan's own. The tone can be described as being saturated with feeling and sublime in its bittersweetness - demonstrated in this quote from the end of the novel:
"I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there. I sat there watching their living room shining out of the dark beside the pond. It looked like a fairy-tale functioning happily in the post-World War II gothic of America before television crippled the imagination and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity. Anyway, I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then."
Each chapter of the novel begins with the words "so the wind won't blow it all away...Dust...American...Dust".
According to the Brautigan archival website, this is a semi-autobiographical novel based on two separate incidents which took place in and around Eugene
, Oregon
in Brautigan's early teens. Brautigan had shot and slightly injured a friend during a duck hunt in Fern Ridge
. At around the same time, the 14-year-old son of a well-known attorney in the Eugene area was shot and killed, also in a hunting accident. Some of the events in the novel are mentioned in Brautigan's biography You Can't Catch Death written by his daughter Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan
.
in June 2000 and the Los Angeles Film Festival
in October 2000. The screenplay was written by Robert Duxbury.
Richard Brautigan
Richard Gary Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. His work often employs black comedy, parody, and satire. He is best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America.- Early life :...
, published in 1982.
The story is about a narrator in 1979 remembering the events that happened when he was 13 in 1948. The young narrator lives in a lower class suburban Oregon neighborhood and collects beer bottles or does favors for neighbors to earn money. He also spends time alone fishing in a pond on the outskirts of town.
Instead of buying a hamburger at a local diner, he buys bullets from the gunshop across the street. The book starts with this, and then hovers and builds around this event until the end. While shooting rotten apples at an abandoned orchard with a friend, the narrator accidentally shoots and kills him. Because the shooting was an accident he is acquitted, but because of his ruined reputation, his waitress mother doesn't get tips anymore, he is severely bullied at school, and they're forced to move. The book ends with a return to an observation of two obese people fishing in a temporarily set up "living room" by the pond. Most of the book is made up of observations of the different strange characters that surrounded the narrator when he was a child.
The novel presents a wistful, poetic and many times sad perspective on a life. In this case, some of it on Brautigan's own. The tone can be described as being saturated with feeling and sublime in its bittersweetness - demonstrated in this quote from the end of the novel:
"I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there. I sat there watching their living room shining out of the dark beside the pond. It looked like a fairy-tale functioning happily in the post-World War II gothic of America before television crippled the imagination and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity. Anyway, I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then."
Each chapter of the novel begins with the words "so the wind won't blow it all away...Dust...American...Dust".
According to the Brautigan archival website, this is a semi-autobiographical novel based on two separate incidents which took place in and around Eugene
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
in Brautigan's early teens. Brautigan had shot and slightly injured a friend during a duck hunt in Fern Ridge
Fern Ridge Wildlife Area
The Fern Ridge Wildlife Area is a wildlife management area located west of Eugene, Oregon, in the United States. It is named for the Fern Ridge Reservoir which it partially surrounds.- References :...
. At around the same time, the 14-year-old son of a well-known attorney in the Eugene area was shot and killed, also in a hunting accident. Some of the events in the novel are mentioned in Brautigan's biography You Can't Catch Death written by his daughter Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan
Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan
Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan is an American writer and daughter of late author Richard Brautigan.She was born in San Francisco, California to Richard Brautigan and Virginia Dionne Alder. Her parents separated when she was two and she spent most of her young life with her father. Her first book You...
.
Film adaptation
A thirty-minute film based on this novel was produced by Swensen Productions (Ianthe Brautigan and husband Paul Swensen) and shown at the New York Film FestivalNew York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
in June 2000 and the Los Angeles Film Festival
Los Angeles Film Festival
The Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by the Los Angeles Times is an event held annually in June in downtown Los Angeles, California. The Los Angeles Film Festival began as the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in 1995. The first LAIFF took place over the course of five days in a single...
in October 2000. The screenplay was written by Robert Duxbury.