San Francisco, 1967/1968: Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue. A tall man with medium-length blonde hair, a walrus mustache, and a bulging cowboy hat. In a short span of time, he publishes two novels and two poetry collections, and suddenly his pockets are filled with money. The warm, surreal tone of his texts enchants especially younger readers, the hippies. They appreciate his zen-like simplicity. Brautigan's poetic credo, "Make the small great - and the great will become small," flickers into the American Dream. Yet his longing lies far to the east: Japan. With the gradual decline of his writing career in the late 70s, the clouds grow darker. The "good spirits" leave the lonely drinker, who takes his own life on his ranch in Montana in 1984. So writes Arne Rautenberg about his ambivalent author.