Trout Fishing in Aerica

The title of the novella that heads this three-part work also becomes a mysterious and undefined character who is known more by his effect on events than by direct sensory evidence. Whether Trout Fishing in America is a code word for some higher deity is a tantalizing possibility never made explicit by the author, but suggested in the text and difficult to refute altogether. In any event, the character Trout Fishing in America affords Brautigan a convenient device to personify the irony that runs like a steady current through his poetry and prose. Trout Fishing in America is alternately a person, a hotel, a philosophy, a magazine, a trout, and a fishing lure.

Margaret

Margaret is a young woman in whom the narrator of In Watermelon Sugar has lost interest. However, she continues to pursue him, banging on his door all hours of the day...