RICHARD BRAUTIGAN KILLS HIMSELF
‘The .44 Magnum hollow point exploded up through the poet’s head, destroying his face and blasting off the back of his skull.’
BODY NOT FOUND FOR A MONTH
Richard Brautigan shot himself in the head with a .44 Magnum revolver on September 16, 1984, in his house in Bolinas, California. He was 49.
The body of the famous American writer and cult hero wasn’t discovered for a month, on October 15, badly decomposed.
The .44 Magnum is no longer, as Dirty Harry once said, “the most powerful handgun in the world, it’ll blow your head clean off;” — But it sure as hell did a number on Brautigan.
NEVER HEARD THE GUNSHOT
As William Hjortsberg writes in his 864-page biography of Brautigan ‘Jubilee Hitchhiker’:
COUNTERCULTURE VOICE
Brautigan achieved instant fame in 1967 with his ‘Trout Fishing in America’ and was hailed as the new and unique voice of the counterculture movement of the late 1960s.
Brautigan moved to Bolinas the year before he blew his brains out. He lived alone in a large old house that he had bought with his earnings years earlier.
His decomposed body was found by Robert Yench, a friend and private investigator, on the living room floor, in front of a large window that had a view through trees of the Pacific Ocean.
Due to the decomposition of the body it is speculated that Brautigan had shot himself over a month earlier. Neighbors reportedly heard a loud noise Sunday Sept. 16 while watching a National Football League game.
Richard Brautigan was an alcoholic for most of his adult life and suffered from deep depression. His daughter, Ianthe, said he frequently talked about suicide at least ten years before taking his own life.
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
[Excerpt]
Trout Fishing in America Shorty appeared suddenly last autumn in San Francisco, staggering around in a magnificent chrome-plated steel wheelchair.
He was a legless, screaming middle-aged wino.
He descended upon North Beach like a chapter from the Old Testament. He was the reason birds migrate in the autumn. They have to. He was the cold turning of the earth; the bad wind that blows off sugar.
.44 Magnum hollow point exploded up through the poet’s head, destroying his face, dislodging his wire-rimmed eyeglasses, blasting off the back of his skull.