Richard Brautigan

Death is a place where the sun shines a different colour every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. The author expresses the mood of a new generation.

In Watermelon Sugar

iDEATH is a place where the sun shines a different colour every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar. In this book, Richard Brautigan discovers and expresses the mood of a new generation.

Katerina

I can genuinely label this book as “the most stoned and trippy book I’ve ever read”. And I am labelling it as such not only because I think you shouldn’t be sober when you read this but also because the world in this one is so out of what we know. Some even call it “acid weird”. 

It’s a post-apocalyptic story about a place called iDEATH where the sun shines a different color everyday. Its people, a commune of sort, lead an extremely simple life “in watermelon sugar”. They grow and build their life around watermelon sugar. Everything they create is made out of pine wood, trout oil and watermelon sugar. And as the color of the sun changes every day, so does the color of the watermelons and so does iDEATH. 

“In watermelon sugar the deeds are done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.”

It is such a bizarre but yet such a gentle and brilliant story. I found myself enjoying how each chapter is named, the deeper meaning behind each and every one. I went through the pages again and again after I finished it, only to find more clues about the characters’ future, laying around for me right before my eyes the whole time. So many words in this story are not just casually put there. Everything has meaning, everything belongs, everything is there for a reason. 

This is my first encounter with Brautigan and I am both weirded out and amazed by his style. He transfers you to a completely different world (and when I say “completely”, I do mean it in its full connotation) with simplicity and minimalism… gently taking your hand and guiding you through the length of the characters’ dreams. 

Yet there is some kind of distortion in Brautigan’s society, represented by the Forgotten Works - a place where there is hate and violence, where everything that once was now is; gone and forgotten.

This is how, with the collision of the old and new, iDEATH and Forgotten Works, the book explores the whole mood of the counterculture generation. Needless to say, Brautigan wrote this in the 60s and Bohemianism is dripping off of every word in “In Watermelon Sugar”. The alternative hippie lifestyle and its exploration are fascinating when every word (absolutely every word) is fiction - nothing more, nothing less. 

Many of the book interpretations are that iDEATH is a new Eden in a post-apocalyptic world where nature and technology intersect - nature being represented by iDEATH and technology being represented by the Forgotten Works - the old and already destroyed world.

And however hard we try to escape our mechanistic, profit-seeking world, it always seeps itself into the dream of utopia. 

I took from this story something painfully cynical and yet hopeful — utopia is impossible but, as Brautigan implies, dreams are forever.

Isabella 

so strange. honestly not sure what i just read, but i couldn't put the book down?? it was interesting tho and i, somewhat, enjoyed reading it. just really bizarre. i feel like discussions about this book would be fun bc of the varying opinions and analysis on it!

Ceej Manaloto

(+.5 for the tigers who can do arithmetic)

Cody Degen

milly

“Perhaps you stared into a river. There was somebody near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened. 
That is my name.”

makenna!!! 

the emotions i felt during this book are what i would picture an acid trip feeling like.

Michael Springer

This was the first fiction I'd read by Brautigan, and as I read the beginning, I became quickly sure it was a total piece-o-shite. But, as I continued, I totally fell in love with it. It was like 48 Hours. I was Nick Nolte, and In Watermelon Sugar was Eddie Murphy. 

Very surreal, and surreal in a disorienting way at first. But, it grew in hilarity for me as I read further. Was there the point? I don't know. If I was supposed to get something deep out of this, I didn't. But it was quite entertaining and memorable. 

I'd like to revisit Brautigan soon; I devoured a lot of his cannon in my first couple years of college, and haven't looked back since.

Heather

It was fine, just very weird. I started it in January(?) and read 50 pages in one sitting, but didn’t pick it up again until today. 

Megan Mathis

Augusta

Another book I read because of Mr. Harry Styles that just did not do it for me. I couldn’t finish it because it just…didn’t make any sense. And not in that “pretentious male writer” kind of way, it just did not make one ounce of sense. Word. Love you king but…

Omar AlHashmi

4.5/5

This was a strange one, which is not bad since I really enjoy these weird books. Throughout reading all I was thinking of was wow wow wow. Unfortunately right at the very end I was disappointed. The ending left me wanting a bit more which is why I gave it a 4.5 rather than a 5. However with all that being said I really liked this book. I finished it in 3 short sittings which can tell you how short this book is. Before reading it, I had zero expectations, all I knew was that I saw it on a list that I found on reddit and decided to buy it. That's it. But once I started reading I was thoroughly surprised by the imagination and creativity of this world that the author has presented. Its very simple yet complex at the same time. 

I hope I am able to find more of these gems that are hiding in the shadows of popular books.

Reading this book is like reading a poem. It is beautifully written and is funny and eccentric.  

Elizabeth Denny

Isabel Ortiz

This is such an odd little book that I truly don’t know how to describe it except that it has the same vibes and tone of Kurt Vonnegut and A Clockwork Orange. It is a short but effective trip to another universe in which everything in one’s life is made of watermelon sugar and iDeath holds mystery and intrigue in the form of the Forgotten Things. I think many readers will have the best experience reading this if they embrace the weirdness and fully immerse themselves in the strange world building. Overall a fun and quirky read!

Christine Joelle Valisno Manaloto

initially a 4 but...

(+.5 for the tigers who can do arithmetic)

Ioan Gabriel Juglea

annette 

So strangely written, but in the most enticing way possible? I loved the writing, the short chapters, the tone, the beauty of it all. I am left wanting more answers, but am happy to accept the book as a small slice of a life that I will never fully understand. 'In Watermelon Sugar' is the type of book that leaves me wanting to research it, to delve deep into the mind of Richard Brautigan as he wrote from the front room of his house in San Fransisco. Below are a few thoughts/descriptions of this marvellous world, they are random and sporadic thoughts, enjoy?

iDeath, a building in 'watermelon sugar' that feels like some sort of community home, where people live, where meals are served - a home with rivers and trees and trout hatcheries inside it.

Almost everything in the "town" of 'watermelon sugar' is made of, well, watermelon sugar. The people have devised materials like watermelontrout oil.

Lanterns are shaped like faces, there is one shaped like a human shadow.

And when people die, they are buried in a glass coffin at the bottom of a river, with lights around them so you can look at them (unless they were eaten by a tiger, in which case, there is no body to be buried)

So iDeath sort of feels like a commentary on communism, but the people don't seem to have any limitations to their freedom. They have shacks to retreat to if they don't feel like staying at iDeath.

Utopian visions in a way challenge me so much more than dystopian ones. They have a shimmer, an unsettling glisten. Everything seems simple, the system works - so why am I so unsettled?

Maybe the people of 'watermelon sugar' **are** limited, maybe the Forgotten Works is a place of the past, maybe it captures figments of OUR reality, our reality that this town, this group of people - are all cut off from. They are free to explore it, but by doing so you set yourself apart from the vast collective who live pleasantly and content in iDeath.

Sandaru Ravihari

I read this for the month of Watermelon:July. It imagery used was quite weird but very peculiar and eccentric. The story happens in a dystopian timeline in a place called iDeath. The sun rises as a different colour each day and everything is made out of Watermelon Sugar. As for the animals there are trouts in the rivers that are only inches wide. There were tigers who could talk. Most of them were hunted and were gone extinct as they were dangerous. The part where the protagonist's story when he was a kid, the two tigers who came up his shack and ate his parents and helped him with his artimatic was so weird and funny. Everything in iDeath is made out of Watermelon Sugar which seems to have the ability to be molded into literally anything--- watermelon seeds ink, watermelontrouts oil, watermelon window glasses, watermelon bridges and even the normal sugar. 

There is nothing particular for the readers to take from the book or to learn. I thoroughly enjoyed and relaxed listening to the audiobook since it was an interesting read with much hype built on around it. Even Harry Style's "Watermelon Sugar" was based on this novel. 

I loved the audiobook version. The narrator's voice was really soothing and interesting.

In Watermelon Sugar

Reviews

Highlights