What intrigues us most about Richard Brautigan's novel, A Confederate General from Big Sur, is its strong resemblance to [Ernest Hemingway's] The Sun Also Rises and [F. Scott Fitzgerald's] The Great Gatsby, little as the comparison might be appreciated by the authors of those classic works. In narrative technique the novel most closely resembles Gatsby. Jesse, like Nick Carroway, is a first person peripheral narrator. The subject of his narration is a flamboyant, "romantic" character who, like Gatsby, reflects the materialistic values of the country. Gatsby and Lee Mellon decline in glamor in the course of the novels, but the former transcends his context and the latter does not. At the end of each novel the most prominent character is the narrator and both have witnessed the end of a dream.

This is the novel of a generation, The Sixties, which many would consider equally as "lost" or...