Published in Great Britain in 2014 by

      Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       www.canongate.tv

      This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books

      This book was first published in the United States of America

      by Four Seasons Foundations in its Writing series edited by Donald Allen

      First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1970

      Copyright © Richard Brautigan, 1967

      Introduction © Neil Gaiman, 2014

      Introduction from TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA by Billy Collins

      (reproduced as Afterword in this edition). Copyright © 2010 by Billy Collins.

      Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

      All rights reserved.

      The moral right of the author has been asserted

       British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available on

      request from the British Library

      ePub ISBN 978 1 78211 380 5

      AN INTRODUCTION TO TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA BY NEIL GAIMAN

      I.

      The Introduction to Trout Fishing In America was, when young, introduced to Richard Brautigan through a book called The Hawkline Monster, which it bought because the word Monster was in the title. By the time it had read the book and realised it was not actually the Gothic Romance it had been led to believe by the title and the cover, it was already too late. Also, the back of the book contained advertisements for other books by Mr Brautigan, including In Watermelon Sugar and Trout Fishing In America. The Introduction to Trout Fishing In America, which at that time did not know what it was an introduction to, did not want to read Trout Fishing In America, because it believed erroneously, based on the title, that it might be a book about trout fishing in America.

      The Introduction was big on monsters in those days. Not so big on Trout Fishing. It firmly believed that America was a fictional place, where the superheroes lived.

      II.

      When young, the Introduction to Trout Fishing In America went fishing twice. The first time it was taken by its grandfather, Harry Goldman, to fish from the seashore, before dawn, in Southsea. It was cold on the beach. No fish were caught, although mealworms were impaled upon hooks and flung into the ocean. This can be found in a graphic novel by the Introduction, with illustrations by Dave McKean. The fishing rods (fishing poles, as the Americans call them, which always confuses the Introduction, which believes that these should be some kind of spear) were brown, and kept in brown sacking in the garage. Who knows what happened to them, or where they went when the garage was no more?

      The second time it was given a grey plastic fishing rod, and went to the little pond across the road, in the garden of the empty house. It fished for several hours, and caught nothing, but there was a dead fish, all silver, floating on the surface of the pond, which meant that there must be fish in there, just waiting.

      Much later, that pond and the dead fish would appear in a novel written by the Introduction. Nobody knew that the Introduction was using its second fishing trip in the novel.

      III.

      The Introduction to Trout Fishing In America is puzzled that Trout Fishing In America is considered an obscure book, and that Richard Brautigan is sometimes considered an obscure author. It firmly believes that it should be impossible to describe the 1960s in literature without talking about both Brautigan and Trout Fishing In America. Obviously this is the kind of thing that Introductions believe about the books they introduce. The Introduction to Trout Fishing In America has no opinions about the matter. Perhaps it believes that no book that is truly loved can ever be obscure. Perhaps it knows that fashion, in literature and clothes and places to fish, will come around again, like a trout rising to feast on the evening gnat-clouds and sinking back into the dark waters.

      IV.

      Imagine an empty stage. Or an empty trout pool. Or a person who has figured out how to make a book in a way that nobody has made a book before. Part surrealist manifesto, part realist tract, partly an elusive joy that’s hard to explain to others, which is why you hand it to them and say ‘Read this’ and why you are so happy it is back in print once more. You hope that this may be the beginning of a Brautigan revival, but mostly you just want people to read it and be happy. Or be puzzled. Or be alive.

      Signed in mayonnaise,

      The Introduction to Trout Fishing In America

      Trout Fishing In America says nothing in response.

      It waits for you to begin the book.