Gurney: The other day when the review copy of Richard Brautigan's new volume of stories [Revenge of the Lawn: Stories: 1962–70] came in the mail, Ed and I got into a discussion about whether or not Brautígan's stories belong to the literary genre formally known as "the short story." I said I thought they probably didn't, that they seemed to me too short to be short stories….

Ed's reply to that was something like: bullshit, Brautigan's stories are prime short stories, absolutely within the tradition of the modern epiphany as perfected in this century by writers like Joyce and Hemingway….

Ed: [The] thematic similarities between "Forgiven" and [Ernest Hemingway's] "Big Two-Hearted River" are as real as they are apparent: both are about solitary young men trout-fishing in streams in which they recognize some dark, mysterious power that fills them with a nameless dread when they feel it tugging...