As a writer, Richard Brautigan successfully created his own genre, what folks including W.P. Kinsella have called “Brautigans.” A Brautigan is a vignette, somewhere between a short story and a poem. He is a little kooky but not cheesy. Sometimes his writing is beautiful. He was a hippie, you could say. But he got an early start. His first novel, “A Confederate General in Big Sur,” came out in 1957. It’s about Brautigan living with a guy named Lee Mellon on the coast of California, living on little money but reaping experience despite. Reading it I am so envious. Can you imagine what it would be like to live on the California coast in 1957? To buy up a bunch of property back then in Big Sur?
These are the University of Texas library holdings on Richard Brautigan:
Brautigan in the UT library, a couple of which I’m about to go check out
The Writing of John B. Randall 