a writer is trying to get a story started but becomes obsessed with searching his apartment for one of his Japanese ex-lover’s hairs instead. The aborted story is thrown in the bin, where it writes itself whilst the writer works himself up into a jealous rage over whom his ex-girlfriend might be sleeping with. The bits we have been shown read like self-parody, but left to its own devices the abandoned story develops into an action-packed blockbuster. ‘Look,’ Brautigan seems to be saying, ‘the writing gets on better without my interference.’
Meanwhile, the imagination that seems to have deserted him – as far as his writing is concerned – proceeds to torture him with images of his ex-lover’s supposed infidelities. (She is, in fact, sleeping alone at home with her cat.) Sombrero Fallout is about an imagination in crisis. It is a ‘what am I doing with my life?’ book. It is full of doubt and self-loathing – and it is also incredibly funny. Yes, I am talking about that dread phrase laugh-out-loud funny. Brautigan describes himself as a ‘humourist without a sense of humour’ but somehow the fact that he’s not laughing at his own jokes just makes them funnier for us. I don’t want to spoil your impending enjoyment by quoting examples but look out for the stuff about the ghost – it’s a killer.
When I was invited on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2005, I chose Sombrero Fallout as the only book I was allowed to take along with me (the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare are provided as standard). A 187-page novel with very short chapters and lots of blank spaces, which can be read in a single sitting, may seem a strange choice, but I would probably stick with my decision if asked again today. It is Brautigan’s best book – precisely because of the way it allows glimpses of the writer in all his doubt and anxiety and then mixes them with moments of high comedy. It is simultaneously his silliest and most profound piece of work.
I imagine that the worst thing about being on a desert island is thinking about everything you’re missing out on, the whole world continuing without you. Sombrero Fallout – a treatise on the pitfalls of the imagination, on the ridiculous situations you can sometimes think yourself into – might be a very useful antidote to have around in your hour of need. To remind you that it’s all in your head: the good and the bad.
And, most of all, to remind you to laugh.
SOMBRERO
‘A Sombrero fell out of the sky and landed on the Main Street of town in front of the mayor, his cousin and a person out of work. The day was scrubbed clean by the desert air. The sky was blue. It was the blue of human eyes, waiting for something to happen. There was no reason for a sombrero to fall out of the sky. No airplane or helicopter was passing overhead and it was not a religious holiday.’
The first tear formed itself in his right eye. That was the eye that always started crying first. Then the left followed. He would have found it interesting if he had known that the right eye started crying first. The left eye started crying so close after the right eye that he didn’t know which eye started crying first, but it was always the right one.
He was very perceptive but he wasn’t perceptive enough to know which eye started crying first. That is, if one can use such a small piece of information as any kind of definition of perception.
‘Is that a sombrero?’ the mayor said. Mayors always speak first, especially if it is impossible for them to rise to any other political position than mayor of a small town.
‘Yes,’ said his cousin, who wanted to be mayor himself.
The man who had no job said nothing. He waited to see which way the wind was blowing. He didn’t want to rock the boat. Being out of work in America is no laughing matter.
‘It fell from the sky,’ said the mayor, looking up into the absolutely clear blue sky.
‘Yes,’ said his cousin.
The man who had no job said nothing because he wanted a job. He did not want to jeopardize whatever faint possibility he had of getting one. It was better for everybody if the big shots did all the talking.
The three men looked around for a reason for a sombrero to fall out of the sky but they couldn’t find one, including the man who had no job.
The sombrero looked brand-new.
It was lying in the street with its crown pointed toward the sky.
Size: 7¼.
‘Why are hats falling from the sky?’ said the mayor.
‘I don’t know,’ said his cousin.
The man who was without a job wondered if the hat would fit his head.
Now both eyes were crying.
Oh, God . . .
He reached into the typewriter as if he were an undertaker zipping up the fly of a dead man in his coffin and removed a piece of paper with everything that has been written here except for his crying, which he didn’t know he was doing because he had done it so often recently that it was like drinking a glass of water that you drink accidentally when you are not thirsty and do not remember it afterwards.
He tore up the piece of paper that had everything that you have read here about the sombrero. He tore it up very carefully into many pieces and threw them on the floor.
He would start over again the next morning writing about something else that would have nothing to do with a sombrero falling out of the sky.
His business was writing books. He was a very well-known American humorist. It was difficult to find a bookstore that did not carry at least one of his titles.
Why was he crying, then?
Isn’t fame enough?
The answer is quite simple.
His Japanese girlfriend was gone.
She had left him.
That was the reason for tears that started in eyes that he could no longer remember except for their crying which was now an everyday occurrence since the Japanese woman had left him.
Some days he cried so much that he thought that he was dreaming.
JAPANESE
As Yukiko slept, her hair slept long and Japanese about her. She didn’t know that her hair was sleeping. Protein needs its rest, too. She did not think like that. Her thoughts were basically very simple.
She combed her hair in the morning.
It was the first thing that she did when she woke up. She always combed it very carefully. Sometimes she would put it in a bun on top of her head in the classic Japanese manner. Sometimes she would let it hang long, reaching to her ass.
It was a little after ten in the evening in San Francisco. Drops of Pacific rain fell against the window beside her bed, but she didn’t hear them because she was sound asleep. She always slept very well and sometimes she would sleep for long periods of time: twelve hours or so, enjoying it as if she were actually doing something like going for a walk or cooking a good meal. She also liked to eat.
As he tore up the sheet of paper with words on it about a sombrero falling from the sky, she slept and her hair slept with her: long and dark next to her.
Her hair dreamt about being very carefully combed in the morning.
GHOST
He looked at the pieces of paper on the floor about a sombrero falling out of the sky for no apparent reason and somehow the sight of them increased his crying.
Who was she sleeping with? he thought, as his eyes raced with tears trying to get out, rushing all at once in front of one another, competing to get down his cheeks as if they were in an Olympiad of Crying with visions of gold medals in front of them.
He imagined her in bed with another man. The man he thought up to be her lover had no definite body or color of hair or even features.