His daughter was 24 when quintessential '60s author Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing in America) killed himself in 1984, and the obituaries were almost as painful for her as his tragic act. "I did not recognize the dignified, brilliant, hysterically funny, and sometimes difficult man who was my father in anything they wrote," says Ianthe Brautigan, who makes it her business to capture those qualities in this poignant memoir. Her recollections of an unsettled childhood bouncing between two free-spirited parents' bohemian homes (in San Francisco, Montana, Hawaii, and Japan) are remarkably free from bitterness, even when she chronicles drunken phone calls from her suicidal father. Alcohol was Richard Brautigan's fatal weakness, prompted by severe depressions rooted in an impoverished, unhappy childhood. But Ianthe also depicts his tenderness and warmth, the magical sessions of impromptu storytelling with writer buddies like Tom McGuane and Jim Harrison, the glamour of meeting movie stars Peter Fonda and Margot Kidder. She comes to terms with the past that always haunted her father when she makes a trip to Oregon to see her grandmother, estranged from Richard for 25 years. Without presuming to solve the mystery of his death, the author reclaims the values of Brautigan's life and work in her touching, sensitively written book. --Wendy Smith


From Publishers Weekly
Richard Brautigan (1937-1984) made a big splash with Trout Fishing in America (1967), whose unbuttoned prose found a ready-made audience in the burgeoning counterculture. Brautigan completed 11 more books of fiction and nine of poetry before he took his own life; he is now remembered as a campus favorite, and a notorious drinker. His daughter Ianthe aims to supplant that portrait with a more complex and tender view; her raw, affecting and largely admiring memoir recalls "R.B." as a father and as a writer. Rather than follow his life, or her own, from the late '60s to the early '80s, Ianthe breaks her book up into short sectionsAsome narrative, some meditative, some impressionisticAin a manner mildly reminiscent of Trout Fishing itself. In one three-page segment, the adult Ianthe tells her own daughter about Richard's suicide. In the next two pages, Ianthe recalls the bike she got for her ninth birthday. The piece after that (one paragraph) is purely lyrical: "Sometimes the love I have for my father overtakes my whole being... " (A series of single paragraphs, scattered throughout, describe Ianthe's dreams.) The elder Brautigan comes off as energetic, affectionate, playful, outrageous and needyAincreasingly so as the '70s wore on. His death and Ianthe's progressive reactions to it dominate much of the book. Ianthe's memoir creates a vivid sense of her continuing loss and shows how she has come to terms with it. Her work should please "R.B."'s still-ardent fans, who will seek (and find) facts about a father, and leave with a new, moving knowledge of his daughter. Author tour. (June) FYI: Ianthe's memoir appears at the same time as her father's newly published novella, An Unfortunate Woman, a forgotten manuscript she discovered (see review in this issue's Fiction Forecasts). Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The author recalls her late father, whose last novel is also in Prepub Alert (p. 62). Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
A daughter remembers her father--the writer Richard Brautigan--and tells the story of the insuperably cruel legacy left her by his suicide when she was 24. Richard Brautigan's spectacular literary success took shape in the 1960s, when Ianthe was still a little girl, but even then the intensity of her love for her tall, gangly, eccentric, sensitive, and talented father was unbounded. Her earliest memories, in fact, can take on the tedium of excess as she recalls the tiniest details of childishly awed and timid visits to him (her parents were separated) in his writerly and half-shabby San Francisco apartments and houses. Once the facts of Brautigan's 1984 suicide are revealed, however, with all their pathetic and awful details, the horrible loss of a father and the gaping wounds it left in this intelligent daughter become understandable and the narrative's details take on a purposefulness that gains steadily in fascination. Ianthe's memoir itself is often poetic, told in memory-chapters sometimes only a few lines long, some of them piercingly lovely. There are gripping truth and pain, however, in Ianthe's recollections of life with her father on the Montana ranch he bought when she was a teen--and where his true suicidal alcoholism began inexorably revealing itself. Brautigan's childhood (he was born in 1935) was cruel, poor, and abusive, and he hid his past and family from Ianthe all but totally. Her own book takes wings near its end, though, when, a decade after his death, she goes back to see for herself, and to find his ancient mother, creating not only a superb early biography of her famous father but a wonderful story in and of itself. A moving and revealing portrait of a daughter's love and an important writer's life. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"An earnest harrowing memoir of her father." --Chicago Tribune

"A sweetly beautiful, loving book. This is more than mere biography: It is a testament. it is an act of worship, of spiritual witness. It offers flashes of immense courage of character, and of great beauty." --The Baltimore Sun

"Ianthe Brautigan has written a lovely memoir of her father. Despite the melancholy and pain, it is an altogether admirable account of a daughter who has not only survived but prevailed." --Jim Harrison

"[Richard] Brautigan's spirit may be doing cartwheels. You Can't Catch Death recalls his gentleness and the darkness that led to his suicide." --People Magazine

"It's a celebration, Ianthe Brautigan. You send up sparks like the reflected roaring water did under the bridge to your father's cabin, illuminating the dark gaps in his wonderfully humorous, kind and argumentative, disciplined, creative life." --Dennis Hopper

"You Can't Catch Death not only avoids all the predictable pitfalls of blame and self-pity, it is written with a dignity. [It] fulfills Brautigan's original intent of creating a more complete picture of her famous father." --San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle



Review
"An earnest harrowing memoir of her father." --Chicago Tribune "A sweetly beautiful, loving book. This is more than mere biography: It is a testament. it is an act of worship, of spiritual witness. It offers flashes of immense courage of character, and of great beauty." --The Baltimore Sun "Ianthe Brautigan has written a lovely memoir of her father. Despite the melancholy and pain, it is an altogether admirable account of a daughter who has not only survived but prevailed." --Jim Harrison "[Richard] Brautigan's spirit may be doing cartwheels. You Can't Catch Death recalls his gentleness and the darkness that led to his suicide." --People Magazine "It's a celebration, Ianthe Brautigan. You send up sparks like the reflected roaring water did under the bridge to your father's cabin, illuminating the dark gaps in his wonderfully humorous, kind and argumentative, disciplined, creative life." --Dennis Hopper "You Can't Catch Death not only avoids all the predictable pitfalls of blame and self-pity, it is written with a dignity. [It] fulfills Brautigan's original intent of creating a more complete picture of her famous father." --San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle


Book Description
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.



About the Author
Ianthe Brautigan was twenty-four when her father committed suicide. Seven years in the making, You Can't Catch Death is her first book. She lives in Northern California, with her husband and fifteen-year-old daughter.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

The author recalls her late father, whose last novel is also in Prepub Alert (p. 62). Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Eve Claxton - Time Out New York

In a tribute to [Richard Brautigan's] playful style, [Ianthe Brautigan's] elegantly crafted memoir eschews a linear approach as it conjures a loving but difficult man...

Kirkus Reviews

A daughter remembers her father—the writer Richard Brautigan (, p. 733)—and tells the story of the insuperably cruel legacy left her by his suicide when she was 24. Richard Brautigan's spectacular literary success took shape in the 1960s, when Ianthe was still a little girl, but even then the intensity of her love for her tall, gangly, eccentric, sensitive, and talented father was unbounded. Her earliest memories, in fact, can take on the tedium of excess as she recalls the tiniest details of childishly awed and timid visits to him (her parents were separated) in his writerly and half-shabby San Francisco apartments and houses. Once the facts of Brautigan's 1984 suicide are revealed, however, with all their pathetic and awful details, the horrible loss of a father and the gaping wounds it left in this intelligent daughter become understandable and the narrative's details take on a purposefulness that gains steadily in fascination. Ianthe's memoir itself is often poetic, told in memory-chapters sometimes only a few lines long, some of them piercingly lovely. There are gripping truth and pain, however, in Ianthe's recollections of life with her father on the Montana ranch he bought when she was a teen—and where his true suicidal alcoholism began inexorably revealing itself. Brautigan's childhood (he was born in 1935) was cruel, poor, and abusive, and he hid his past and family from Ianthe all but totally. Her own book takes wings near its end, though, when, a decade after his death, she goes back to see for herself, and to find his ancient mother, creating not only a superb early biography of her famous father but a wonderful story in and of itself. A moving andrevealingportrait of a daughter's love and an important writer's life.