Everything is under the supervision of machines of loving grace

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) was called by literary critics of the late 1960s and early 1970s a cult writer of the younger generation, Salinger of the 70s, an "honorary child" of the time. Brotigan's style crystallized against the background of the beatnik movement, but his work and the beatnik school form a contact zone rather than an organic fusion or identity. In particular, Brotigan's eclecticism, experimentalism, and outrageousness were consonant with Beatnikism, but the worldview was more ironic and skeptical. In his poems, Brotigan skillfully, and sometimes bravuraly and rather defiantly juggles well-known literary clichés, plots, and images. His imagination is mainly directed not to the creation of fundamentally new forms, but to their transformation, filling them with new content, to highlighting the known from an unusual angle of view, to an original approach to - it would seem - forever solved problems.