[Trout Fishing in America] has been around for a while, enjoying some underground success. It's really about trout fishing in America. There's something of Hemingway, but also of Izaak Walton in this small compendium of anecdotes, observations, a few recipes. Brautigan can write whimsy that, miraculously, is neither cute nor embrassing. Trout Fishing is a funny, delightful book that draws freely on American mythic attitudes, the tones and rhythms of drifting, searching out trout streams, thinking slow thoughts in wide country. (p. 601)

Pamela Ritterman, in Commonweal (copyright © 1969 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission of Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.), September 26, 1969.