Richard Brautigan's novels have taken their place among the standard extra-curricular reading of college students. Their special appeal to the young may lie in Brautigan's capacity to make a myth that satisfies the demands of recent American experience, for he writes refreshing comedy that happens to accommodate a growing sense of disaster. A young man in his latest novel says, "I think we have the power to transform our lives into brand-new instantaneous rituals that we calmly act out when something hard comes up that we must do. We become like theatres." Hard times are with us, and Richard Brautigan provides readers with the ritualistic and theatrical equipment appropriate for survival.

In The Abortion the question of survival is raised by a girl cursed with beauty. (p. 52)

The trails of Vida form an implicit critique of our culture: The physical beauty, bombs, industrial proliferation, and commercial techniques we...