What if the opening line of Richard Brautigan's novella read, "In hard drugs the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in hard drugs," rather than " In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar," setting the tone for "hard drugs" replacing "watermelon sugar" throughout?
I just did finish my second read through the novella as well as listening to the audio book. One thing is for sure - if we see watermelon sugar as a hard drug - heroin, crack, cocaine, crystal meth, mescaline - the entire tale assumes a much different cast. Immediately all the talk of iDEATH and the tigers can send shivers up a reader's spine.
By way of example, two quotes -
"The tigers and how they lived and how beautiful they were and how they died and how they talked to me while they ate my parents, and how I talked back to them and how they stopped eating my parents, though it did not help my parents any, nothing could help them by then, and we talked for a long time and one of the tigers helped me with my arithmetic, then they told me to go away while they finished eating my parents, and I went away. I returned later that night to burn the shack down. That's what we did in those days."
"I will tell you. This place stinks. This isn't iDEATH at all. This is just a figment of your imagination. All of you guys here are just a bunch of clucks, doing clucky things at your
clucky iDEATH.
"iDEATH—ha, don't make me laugh. This place is nothing but a claptrap. You wouldn't know iDEATH if it walked up and bit you.
"I know more about iDEATH than all of you guys, especially Charley here who thinks he's something extra. I know more about iDEATH in my little finger than all you guys know put together.
"You haven't the slightest idea what's going on here. I know. I know. I know. To hell with your iDEATH. I've forgotten more iDEATH than you guys will ever know. I'm going down to the Forgotten Works to live. You guys can have this damn rat hole."
Every chapter of Richard Brautigan's hippy farm tale takes us deeper, deeper into Benzedrine Bill's Interzone.
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