Richard Brautigan … the only writer of the sixties recommended to me by students whom I enjoyed, [is] author of the charming Trout Fishing in America, and author, alas, of The Hawkline Monster, which is decidedly uncharming and literary, obvious, empty, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid stuff…. There are maybe a hundred [edgeless and pointless] chapters in The Hawkline Monster…. When Brautigan tires of gunmen he writes about identical women named Miss Hawkline whose father made a monster, and when he tires of that he has the Miss Hawklines see the dead butler in the hall and say "I'd like to get fucked." It's a terrible book, deeply unfunny, in no need of having been written. (pp. 624-25)

Roger Sale, in The Hudson Review (copyright © 1974 by The Hudson Review, Inc.; reprinted by permission), Vol. XXVII, No. 4, Winter, 1974–75.