Pastoral as Commodity: Brautigan's Reinscription of Hemingway's Trout Fishing

Abstract

This paper compares pastoralism in Big Two-Hearted River and Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America . Considering the difference between what might be called modernist pastoral and postmodernist pastoral, I argue for an understanding that goes a step beyond a conventional nature/culture dichotomy. Although a germ of consumer culture exists in Hemingway's story, the relationship between Nick and Hopkins embodies a concept of romantic pastoral based on dualism. On the other hand, Brautigan, detecting the seeds of consumer culture in Hemingway's pastoral, suggests that pastoral itself has become a commodity in the 1960s. Postmodernist pastoral not only adopts modernist pastoral but also reinscribes it with the prospect of disturbing the nature/culture dichotomy.