[Richard Brautigan, in Trout Fishing in America, The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar] is funny but seldom satiric, sometimes bored but hardly ever angry, frequently happier than you but never holier than thou. One of his verses imagines "a cybernetic meadow/where mammals and computers/live together," a world of people "returned to our mammal/brothers and sisters,/and all watched over/by machines of loving grace"; and this gently witty reconciliation of disparate worlds is one of his repeated achievements. Another is acceptance. His existence is like ours, full of aggravations and failures, but without being at all Pollyanna-ish he manages to make the best—however mediocre it might be—of a seedy world….

Brautigan's heroes are generally himself, more or less costumed; but unlike the modern author-hero he doesn't come on as a ramrod, a love machine, a superstar; in sex...