https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/sombrero-fallout-by-richard-brautigan #richardbrautigan #literary #fiction #writing

I experience myself as a unique individual rather than as a member of any abstract group.

I assume that most people also experience themselves this way even though I, like many people, do group others abstractly when it's useful to me.

While doing that, although it's not always easy, I try to stay conscious of the fact that such groupings don't reflect objective qualities of the people. That the grouped people are ultimately individuals rather than group representatives. This is a kind of grace, of forgiveness, that human beings owe one another reciprocally. The human world would dissolve without it.

I find that I can understand a lot of people's behavior towards me by remembering that, although they know that I'm an individual, they also need to see me as a whole range of group representatives in order to carry on, just as I have to do with them, and that it's not always easy for them to be mindful of both things, just as it's hard for me.

But this is primarily an interhuman matter. People don't think about fish as individuals when they drop a net in the water. Some kinds of fish are better to eat than others, and we make up groupings to reflect that fact, but hunting for a particular individual fish would be unusual. When picking fruit we just pick the best fruit for our purpose. The identity of the fruit as an individual being is irrelevant to our purposes and so is invisible to us. Sometimes the abstraction obscures the very existence of individual organisms. A jar of kim chee has zillions of bacteria in it, the very bacteria which created the food, and we eat them without even being conscious that they're there.

We harvest other living things en masse for our sustenance and we group them solely by their utility to us. But we interact, negotiate, cooperate, and quarrel with other humans as individuals or, when grouped, with the consciousness that they are individuals.. If people are acting on this principle then it's necessary to understand the principle to understand what they're doing. But what if they're not acting on this principle?

Here's a puzzle. An apartment complex has a thousand tenants and provides its owner with a large annual income. The owner realizes that he can illegally evict all the tenants, pay lawyers to minimize the consequences, level the buildings, build a fully automatic car wash with no employees , hire security to protect it from vengeful former tenants, many of whom have become homeless, and his income will increase by 4%. From the owner's point of view, how is this different from a person's deciding whether to eat another bite of kim chee?

#Anarchism
#Capitalism
#GoldenRule
#MobyDick
#RichardBrautigan
#TroutFishingInAmerica

THE SCARLATTI TILT
“It’s very hard to live in a studio apartment in San José with a man who’s learning to play the violin.” That’s what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.

(from Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 by Richard Brautigan, born #OTD in 1935) #RichardBrautigan #shortstory

THE SCARLATTI TILT
It’s very hard to live in a studio apartment in San José with a man who’s learning to play the violin.’ That’s what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.

(from Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 by Richard Brautigan, born #OTD in 1935) #RichardBrautigan #shortstory

Flicking through an anthology of Richard Brautigan's stories and once again found myself grinning at one of the finest ultra-short stories ever written...

The Scarlatti Tilt

“It’s very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who’s learning to play the violin.” That’s what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.

#RichardBrautigan #ScarlattiTilt #UltraShortStory

Had eyesight problems as a kid, so ran away from books like plague. What was the first novel that got me into reading ? At about age 17, it was Trout Fishing in America by #RichardBrautigan

#introduction Hi! I’m Kim—a #writer and #editor. I love helping authors of the marvelous, fantastical, and strange harness their literary magic. I also edit #BoneParade.

I love to write (#magicalrealism, #speculative), read (#RichardBrautigan, #CarsonMcCullers, #PhilipKDick, #GabrielGarcíaMárquez, #VirginiaWoolf, #MilanKundera, #RichardYates), listen to music (#TheReplacements, #TomWaits, #LeonardCohen, #VicChesnutt), play #DnD, and be with my partner, our cat, and my favorite humanoids.