'.... a brilliantly inventive writer whose books fell into a category sometimes called “slipstream”, a creative mix of genres often characterised by darkness lightened with playful humour. His best-known novel, Falling Angel (1978), is a mix of hard-boiled detective fiction and horror, a metaphysical noir that became Alan Parker’s classic movie Angel Heart (1987). Two years earlier, Hjortsberg had written the screenplay for another dark fantasy by a British director, Ridley Scott’s cult movie Legend (1985).
'.... Hjortsberg was born in New York City, where his father, Helge, a Swedish merchant sailor who had jumped ship there, ran a successful Swedish restaurant. When he was 10, his father died, and the family lost everything. His Swiss-born mother, Ida, worked as a maid to support the family. Hjortsberg took a degree in English at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and worked nights in a pizza parlour.
'.....He wrote for magazines including Sports Illustrated and sold stories to Playboy, from which he won a “best new writer” prize.... His fourth novel, Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974), was a comic take on bullfighting.
'By now Hjortsberg had followed [his friend Tom] McGuane to live in Livingston, Montana, where he became the centre of the so-called Montana Gang, which included the writers Jim Harrison, Tim Cahill and Richard Brautigan, as well as the musician Jimmy Buffett and the actors Peter Fonda and Warren Oates. McGuane was by now an in-demand screenwriter, and advised Hjortsberg to try it.
'....[His success was sketchy and] Hjortsberg would not publish another novel for many years. His only film credits came on screenplays for the B-movie king Roger Corman, but when Ridley Scott had the idea for a movie version of Tristan and Isolde, which became Legend, and came across some of Hjortsberg’s unproduced low-budget fare, he sought him out for the job.
'In 1994 Hjortsberg published Nevermore, a mystery starring Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle and the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe. By then he had begun work on a biography of Brautigan, which would take 20 years to research and write... Jubilee Hitchhiker was finally published in 2012....'
'In 1994 Hjortsberg published Nevermore, a mystery starring Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle and the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe. By then he had begun work on a biography of Brautigan, which would take 20 years to research and write... Jubilee Hitchhiker was finally published in 2012....'
We find a cat reference in Hjortsberg's biography of Richard Brautigan, a section summarized below:
'Without the hippies [approbation], Brautigan struggled to accomplish “the dewhimsicalizing of his literary reputation”. An attempt to write five genre novels in five years didn’t help, generating only his laziest books, which even Hjortsberg quickly passes over. “Students, always his fan base before, no longer seemed to know who he was.” He experienced a steep drop in income, exacerbated by his relentless drinking and frequent stays in Tokyo, “the erotic capital of planet Earth”. He reacted to all criticism defensively or with self-aggrandizing claims: “There are those who say ‘Richard Brautigan sits down in an hour and a half and writes his annual bestseller’ . . . [but] I work very, very hard to make things appear very, very simple”. Guns assumed a central, almost fetishistic significance, alienating everyone except perhaps the director Sam Peckinpah, with whom Brautigan shot at alley cats from a hotel window. A less enthused filmmaker was Wim Wenders, who once had to “literally escape” Brautigan, who was “aiming at him, drunk and confused”. He became every host’s nightmare: “One, he brought uninvited guests. Two, he was already drunk. Three, he had a .357 Magnum with him”.'
The party's over now, for the friends, Brautigan and Hjortsberg. May these signal contributors to American literature rest.
'Without the hippies [approbation], Brautigan struggled to accomplish “the dewhimsicalizing of his literary reputation”. An attempt to write five genre novels in five years didn’t help, generating only his laziest books, which even Hjortsberg quickly passes over. “Students, always his fan base before, no longer seemed to know who he was.” He experienced a steep drop in income, exacerbated by his relentless drinking and frequent stays in Tokyo, “the erotic capital of planet Earth”. He reacted to all criticism defensively or with self-aggrandizing claims: “There are those who say ‘Richard Brautigan sits down in an hour and a half and writes his annual bestseller’ . . . [but] I work very, very hard to make things appear very, very simple”. Guns assumed a central, almost fetishistic significance, alienating everyone except perhaps the director Sam Peckinpah, with whom Brautigan shot at alley cats from a hotel window. A less enthused filmmaker was Wim Wenders, who once had to “literally escape” Brautigan, who was “aiming at him, drunk and confused”. He became every host’s nightmare: “One, he brought uninvited guests. Two, he was already drunk. Three, he had a .357 Magnum with him”.'
The party's over now, for the friends, Brautigan and Hjortsberg. May these signal contributors to American literature rest.
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