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In all of the obituaries and writing about Richard Brautigan that appeared after his suicide, none revealed to Ianthe Brautigan the father she knew. Through it took all of her courage, she delved into her memories, good and bad, to retrieve him, and began to write. You Can't Catch Death is a frank, courageous, heartbreaking reflection on both a remarkable man and the child he left behind.
Anonymous
Posted January 14, 2006
You Can¿t Catch Death is a memoir of a dynamic father/daughter relationship and of a daughter coming to grips with a parent¿s suicide as much as it is a memoir of her famous father, Richard Brautigan. For the fan of Richard Brautigan there are many insights into the enigmatic character whose gentle, sadly humorous, but generally positive writing made his readers feel like he was a friend. In 1984, when he committed suicide, that friend raised many questions about the life behind the writing, and the one question everyone has in the aftermath of such a tragedy: why? Ianthe follows that question in the sort of personal way only a daughter can, with a sense of purpose an outsider could never muster. As his ¿protector,¿ she worries that she failed him. As his daughter, she worries she has inherited the death seed that finally grew too large within him. She describes their bohemian lifestyle, their famous friends, the beauty of their surroundings when they lived in Montana, the observant and infectiously playful man her father could be, and the distant and frightening man her father could be when he was drunk (more and more as the years progressed). In the end, having exhausted her own memory, she follows the past he hid, going to his childhood home in Washington and speaking to the grandmother she had never met. What she learns contradicts much of her father¿s version of his youth, leaving her and the reader still wondering, but with an odd sense of closure. It is a thought-provoking memoir as much as it is an emotional one. It is entertaining as much as it is informative. She uses her dreams as well as her memories to tell the story. I read it because of Richard Brautigan, but enjoyed it because of Ianthe Brautigan. It is clear she has inherited more than his height. Her prose contains the honest observant magic of her father¿s but has a voice all her own.
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Posted February 20, 2012
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Overview
In all of the obituaries and writing about Richard Brautigan that appeared after his suicide, none revealed to Ianthe Brautigan the father she knew. Through it took all of her courage, she delved into her memories, good and bad, to retrieve him, and began to write. You Can't Catch Death is a frank, courageous, heartbreaking reflection on both a remarkable man and the child he left behind.