{"id":10087,"date":"2026-09-01T07:05:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T14:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=10087"},"modified":"2026-09-01T07:05:33","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T14:05:33","slug":"my-short-oregon-history-with-richard-brautigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/my-short-oregon-history-with-richard-brautigan\/","title":{"rendered":"My Short Oregon History with Richard Brautigan"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- wp:themify-builder\/canvas \/-->\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Revenge of the Lawn<\/em> on the free rack inside a Coos Bay community college library.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sandwiched between a mathematics textbook, <em>PowerPoint for Dummies <\/em>and dozens of useless studies of American literature.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Contains my favorite short story about Oregon, called \u201cA Short History of Oregon.\u201d It&#8217;s about hunting a deer in the rain. I illegally included it my book about rain. Sue me.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Later I wrote short stories called \u201cA Short History of an Oregon Prom Night, \u201cA Short History of an Oregon Seventh Grade Football Season,\u201d A Short History of Christmas in an Oregon Logging Camp,\u201d and \u201cA Short History of Love Inside a Culvert.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No one&#8217;s checked this book out since President Reagan began destroying the nation.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No one reads you anymore. Certainly not community college students in Coos Bay in 2026.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A collection of your short stories from 1962-72, published in <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>, <em>Esquire<\/em>, <em>Ramparts<\/em>, <em>Playboy<\/em> and <em>Mademoiselle<\/em>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It retailed for $1.95.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The extinction of the dinosaurs seems nearer than that era of American fiction.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The cover features a brunette sitting at a table smiling with a huge chocolate table in front of her. Why? Because you were fucking her and you always put the women you were fucking on the covers of your books.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How you sat at the counter of San Francisco bistros wearing fedora hats with feathers stuck in the bands and corduroy three-piece suits, drinking Dago red from glass goblets, trying to pick up women, reinventing a stereotype now sadly out of favor.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A book of your poetry given to me by a high school creative teacher in 1982. They&#8217;d incarcerate him for that today.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I am ashamed to say that I never introduced you to my creative writing students. Your short story form, terse, direct, one to three pages long, perfect for today&#8217;s attention span.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I&#8217;m taking you home. I can&#8217;t leave you on this Devil&#8217;s Island of a shelf, imprisoned, fading, forlorn, decomposing, soon out with the recycling, resurrected as playground balls.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I&#8217;m not ready to let you die yet.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","category-writing","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10090,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10087\/revisions\/10090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}