First published in 1980 (special Targ edition published 1979), The Tokyo-Montana Express, a collection of one hundred and thirty-one stories, was Brautigan's second published collection of stories. The book was inspired by a seven month trip to Japan, January-July 1976.

Most of the stories seemed to come from memories of Japan or Montana, and formed a somewhat autobiographical work. Few were fully rendered. Most focused on what the narrator saw or did. Some on his reactions. But none on what these events meant to him or why they were included. A few stories deal with Shiina Takako, owner of The Cradle, a Tokyo bar patronized by writers and artists, and Brautigan.

Dedication of Targ limited edition and the Delacorte trade edition reads:

For Richard and Nancy Hodge

The Hodges were friends of Brautigan's in San Francisco. Richard Hodge, a lawyer and judge, served as Brautigan's attorney.

• Don and Joan Marsh
• Doreena(?) and Eric
• Marilyn
• Mickey and Joyce
• Seymour Lawrence

New York: Targ Editions, 1979
7.25" x 10.5"; 37 pages
Hard cover, green, cloth-covered boards, with a clear glassine dust jacket
Authors name and book title embossed in gold on spine
Limited edition of 350 copies, each signed by Brautigan
Designed and handprinted by Leonard Seastone at Tideline Press
Number six of the Targ Editions
Published in Greenwich Village in New York, New York, 21 December 1979

Brautigan's signature on Colophon page

Editor, bibliophile, and publisher William Targ started Targ Editions, a fine press, in 1978. He ran the press until 1985 and published twenty-five Targ Editions.

The Targ edition featured twenty of the stories included in the later Delacorte trade edition:
"Subscribers to the Sun," "Spiders Are in the House," "The Closest I Have Been to the Sea Since Evolution," "The Smallest Snowstorm on Record," "Harem," "Ice Age Cab Company," "My Fair Tokyo Lady," "Crows Eating a Truck Tire in the Dead of Winter," "The Pacific Ocean," "Chicken Fable," "Umbrellas," "A Safe Journey Like This River," "Fantasy Ownership," "Autumn Trout Gathering," "A Reason for Living," "The Wolf Is Dead," "The Beautiful Oranges of Osaka," "Winter Vacation," "Drowned Japanese Boy," and "Kyoto, Montana."

7.0" x 10.75"
Hard Cover; Boards covered with gray, gold, and blue paper cut and overlayed front and back to look like mountains against a blue sky
Title "THE TOKYO-MONTANA EXPRESS" embossed center top of front cover
Red cloth binding along spine
A note, typewritten on the sheet containing pages 25, 26, and the Colophon of the Targ edition, just below the Colophon, reads

(TRIAL BINDING)

OUT OF SERIES—publisher's file copy:
This is an experimental copy lacking
corrections, printed by hand on Okawara
hand-made paper and bound in a trial
hand-produced binding. There are three
such copies in addition to the 350
copies above indicated in regular cloth

Signed by Brautigan, as per the 350 copies of the Targ edition. Additionally signed by William Targ, publisher.

This small collection of short stories
was written in Tokyo and Montana between
1977 and 1978. The stories are positioned
so as to alternate between the two cultures.
They are another way of looking at things.
     RB
       June 15, 1979

New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1980
258 pages; ISBN 0-440-08770-8
Hard Cover, with dust jacket; Title embossed in gold ink on the spine
Front cover dust jacket illustration of a medallion by Walter Harper. The same illustration is embossed in gold ink on the front cover.

Back cover photograph by Nakai Keisuke of Brautigan and Shiina Takako
Takako owned The Cradle, a Tokyo bar patronized by writers and artists. The caption reads,

Richard Brautigan and Shiina Takako lolling in a small boat off the coast of Japan. It was a hot afternoon and they were tired of fishing.

Brautigan dedicated his collection of poetry, June 30th, June 30th to Takako. Several of the individual poems in the collection were dedicated to her as well.

Though the Tokyo-Montana Express moves at a great speed, there are many stops along the way. This book is those brief stations: some confident, others still searching for their identities.

The "I" in this book is the voice of the stations along the tracks of the Tokyo-Montana Express.

Advance Reader Copy/Uncorrected Page Proof
New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1980

Brautigan embarked on a promotional tour in November 1980. One stop on the tour was the Nebraska Bookstore at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he signed copies of The Tokyo-Montana Express.

A poster advertising this event notes the date as Friday, 14 November.

The poster, printed in black ink on brown paper reads

Richard Brautigan
The Tokyo-Montana Express
stops in Lincoln
for just 2 hours
on Friday, November 14
and Richard Brautigan is aboard.
Arrival: NOON
Depot: Nebraska Bookstore
Departure: 2 pm

Michael Zangari, a reporter for the Daily Nebraskan, the daily student newspaper at the University of Nebraska, wrote about Brautigan's appearance at the Nebraska Bookstore. (Zangari, Michael. "Author Brautigan Is Gilded As Counterculture Hero." Daily Nebraskan 17 November 1979: 10.)

READ the full text of this article.

A note on Zangari's website adds further detail to his meeting with Brautigan.

The evening I spent with Richard Brautigan was by far the most important encounter of my life as a journalist and writer. Most of the evening was off the record. We went drinking at a local bar. I'd never seen anyone drink like that before. He downed tumbler after tumbler of Jack Daniels and never got drunk. He said he had an expense account with his publisher that paid for them. I had to leave at midnight to go to the radio station where I worked for my midnight show. Brautigan asked if he could go along. I thought he'd go on the air. But he did not want to. We just played music and talked. He spent half the night down at the studio. He sensed I needed something as a novelist, and gave me the best advice of my life. He said "Any success in the market place is luck. If you're not enjoying what you’re doing, don't do it."

I'll never forget him.

READ this note and the original newspaper article at Zangari's website.

Zangari provides additional details about his meeting with Brautigan in a series of email messages.

As part of his cross-country promotion for The Tokyo-Montana Express, Brautigan was interviewed by Sheryl McCall of People Weekly. Brautigan discusses "his deep distaste for the automobile and explains how he successfully remains in the driver's seat by staying out of it." Included photographs of Brautigan. (McCall, Sheryl. "A Happy But Footsore Writer Celebrates His Driver's Block." People Weekly 8 June 1981: 113, 116, 120.)

READ the full text of this interview.

• Cape
• Delacorte
• Delta
• Picador

• Czech
• French
• German
• Italian
• Persian

Unless noted, stories first published here. The stories in order of their appearance:

"The Overland Journey of Joseph Francl and the Eternal Sleep of His Wife Antonia in Crete, Nebraska"

The Overland Journey of Joseph Francl: The First Bohemian to Cross the Plains to the California Gold Fields. San Francisco: William P. Wreden, 1968.
Limited edition of 540 copies of which 500 were offered for sale.
7.25" x 10" bound in white decorative paper boards.
Illustrated by Patricia Oberhaus, typographic design by Jack Werner Stauffacher of Greenwood Press, San Francisco.
Publication date: 16 December 1968.

The publication announcement sent out by William P. Wreden notes the introduction by Richard Brautigan.

Richard Brautigan is a novelist-poet living in San Francisco. His novels include A Confederate General from Big Sur and Trout Fishing in America. In the person of Joseph, Francl, freely, gently, in a new manner, he inquires after the phenomena of the overland pioneer.

The announcement also includes an illustration of Joseph Francl by Oberhaus. A separate invitation to a publication party also mentioned Brautigan. "All the People That I Didn't Meet and the Places That I Didn't Go" "The Japanese Squid Fishermen Are Asleep Now" "The Smallest Snowstorm on Record" "A San Francisco Snake Story" "Football"
TriQuarterly 35 Winter 1976: 89.
Published in Evanston, Illinois.

A two-volume set. Brautigan's story appears in Volume 1. "Ice Age Cab Company" "Shrine of Carp" "Meat"
"Four Stories for Aki and Other Treats." California Living 14 January 1979: 5-7.
The magazine of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle. Described as "a compendium of short stories."

Featured seven stories: "The Short Story," "Walking Toward December," "The Purpose," "Meat," "The Great Golden Telescope," "Harmonica High," and "Her Last Known Boyfriend." The first two stories: "The Short Story" and "Walking Toward December" were not collected. The last, "Her Last Known Boyfriend" was retitled "Her Last Known Boyfriend a Canadian Airman" in The Tokyo-Montana Express.

The table of contents has this note about Brautigan:

Richard Brautigan is true to his word. In addition to being a fine writer and storyteller [sic]. That is why we are able to share with you some of his new short stories in Perspectives on Page 5.

We were having lunch at Blanche's on a blustery day when Richard said he would send some of his new work so we could let you see it. A long time passed.

He didn't forget. Neither will we.

"Umbrellas" "A Death in Canada" "Autumn Trout Gathering" "Harmonica High"
"Four Stories for Aki and Other Treats." California Living 14 January 1979: 5-7.

The magazine of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle. Described as "a compendium of short stories."

Featured seven stories by Brautigan: "The Short Story," "Walking Toward December," "The Purpose," "Meat," "The Great Golden Telescope," "Harmonica High," and "Her Last Known Boyfriend."

The first two stories: "The Short Story" and "Walking Toward December" were not collected. The last, "Her Last Known Boyfriend" was retitled "Her Last Known Boyfriend a Canadian Airman" in The Tokyo-Montana Express. "Winter Vacation" "The Purpose"
"Four Stories for Aki and Other Treats." California Living 14 January 1979: 5-7.

The magazine of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle. Described as "a compendium of short stories."

Featured seven stories by Brautigan: "The Short Story," "Walking Toward December," "The Purpose," "Meat," "The Great Golden Telescope," "Harmonica High," and "Her Last Known Boyfriend."

The first two stories: "The Short Story" and "Walking Toward December" were not collected. The last, "Her Last Known Boyfriend" was retitled "Her Last Known Boyfriend a Canadian Airman" in The Tokyo-Montana Express. "The Irrevocable Sadness of Her Thank You" "No Hunting Without Permission" "OPEN" "Spiders Are in the House" "Very Good Dead Friends" "What Are You Going to Do with 390 Photographs of Christmas Trees?"
Evergreen Review 61 December 1968.

Included a photographic collage of discarded Christmas trees by Erik Weber.
Evergreen Review, published in New York, New York, 1957-1973, was edited by Barney Rosset and Donald M. Allen (numbers 1-6 only) with the backing of Grove Press. "The Pacific Ocean" "Another Texas Ghost Story" "There Is No Dignity, Only the Windswept Plains of Ankona" "The Tomb of the Unknown Friend" "Cooking Spaghetti Dinner in Japan" "The Beacon" "Blue Sky" "An Eye for Good Produce"
Mademoiselle November 1974: 192-193. "Gone Before We Open Our Eyes" "Harem" "Montana Love" "Cat Cantaloupe" "Al's Rose Harbor"
San Francisco Stories 1979
Paperback, with printed wrappers; 59 pages.
Edited by George Matchette, Robert Monson, and Charles Rubin.

Published in San Francisco, California. First issue of a biannual magazine of "Short Fiction by Bay Area Writers."
Featured three stories by Brautigan: "Skylab at the Graves of Abbott and Costello," "Al's Rose Harbor," and "Waking Up Again."

Also featured original works by Michael Rubin, Annette Dozier, Yuri Kageyama, Barry Gifford, Ray Scippa, and Jane Nudelman. "Farewell to the First Grade and Hello to the National Enquirer"
The CoEvolution Quarterly (21) Spring (March 21) 1979: 77.
Published by Point, Sausalito, California.

Brautigan's story appeared in a section titled "Used Magazines" where "63 strange people tell what they read." Included in the list of "strange people" were Wendell Berry, William S. Burroughs, Robert Crumb, and Allen Ginsberg. Of note: William S. Burroughs read Soldier of Fortune. "The Wolf Is Dead" "The Closest I Have Been to the Sea Since Evolution" "Homage to Groucho Marx" "A Feeling of Helplessness"
"2 New Stories by Richard Brautigan." The New Ingenue, May 1973: 92-93.
Published by Ingenue Communciations, New York, New York.
Featured two stories by Brautigan: "A Feeling of Helplessness" and "The Last of my Armstrong Creek Mosquito Bites."


Both stories printed on page 92. The photograph above by Erik Weber of Brautigan fishing Armstrong Creek, Montana, October 1972, was used as a background across the two pages.

The table of contents reads :"A FEELING OF HELPLESSNESS/THE LAST OF MY ARMSTRONG MOSQUITO BITES
Richard Brautigan gives us two new short stories." "One Arm Burning in Tokyo" "Rubber Bands" "Werewolf Raspberries" "Toothbrush Ghost Story" "Skylab at the Graves of Abbott and Costello"
San Francisco Stories 1979
Paperback, with printed wrappers; 59 pages.
Edited by George Matchette, Robert Monson, and Charles Rubin.
Published in San Francisco. First issue of a biannual magazine of "Short Fiction by Bay Area Writers."
Featured three stories by Brautigan: "Skylab at the Graves of Abbott and Costello," "Al's Rose Harbor," and "Waking Up Again."

Also featured original works by Michael Rubin, Annette Dozier, Yuri Kageyama, Barry Gifford, Ray Scippa, and Jane Nudelman. "The Bed Salesman"
Transatlantic Review 58/59 February 1975: 117.
Published in London, England and New York, New York. Edited by J. F. McCrindle.
"Tire Chain Bridge" "White" "Montana Traffic Spell" "Hangover as Folk Art" "Marching in the Opposite Direction of a Pizza" "Dogs on the Roof"
Outside September 1977: 7. "California Mailman" "The Cobweb Toy" "Her Last Known Boyfriend a Canadian Airman"
"Four Stories for Aki and Other Treats." California Living 14 January 1979: 5-7.
The magazine of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle. Described as "a compendium of short stories."

Featured seven stories by Brautigan: "The Short Story," "Walking Toward December," "The Purpose," "Meat," "The Great Golden Telescope," "Harmonica High," and "Her Last Known Boyfriend."

The first two stories: "The Short Story" and "Walking Toward December" were not collected. The last, "Her Last Known Boyfriend" was retitled "Her Last Known Boyfriend a Canadian Airman" in The Tokyo-Montana Express. "The Butcher" "To the Yotsuya Station" "A Safe Journey Like This River" "Parking Place Lost" "Studio 54" "Crows Eating a Truck Tire in the Dead of Winter" "Something Cooking" "Cold Kingdom Enterprise" "The Beautiful Oranges of Osaka" "Drowned Japanese Boy" "The Great Golden Telescope"
"Four Stories for Aki and Other Treats." California Living 14 January 1979: 5-7.
The magazine of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle. Described as "a compendium of short stories."

Featured seven stories by Brautigan: "The Short Story," "Walking Toward December," "The Purpose," "Meat," "The Great Golden Telescope," "Harmonica High," and "Her Last Known Boyfriend."

The first two stories: "The Short Story" and "Walking Toward December" were not collected. The last, "Her Last Known Boyfriend" was retitled "Her Last Known Boyfriend a Canadian Airman" in The Tokyo-Montana Express. "The Man Who Shot Jesse James" "Dancing Feet" "Seventeen Dead Cats" "Light on at the Tastee-Freez" "The Eyes of Japan" "The Magic of Peaches" "Times Square in Montana" "Wind in the Ground" "Tokyo Snow Story" "The Last of My Armstrong Spring Creek Mosquito Bites"
"2 New Stories by Richard Brautigan." The New Ingenue, May 1973: 92-93.
Published by Ingenue Communciations, New York, New York.
Featured two stories by Brautigan: "A Feeling of Helplessness" and "The Last of my Armstrong Creek Mosquito Bites."

Both stories printed on page 92 against a photograph by Erik Weber of Brautigan fishing used as a backdrop across the two pages.

The table of contents reads :"A FEELING OF HELPLESSNESS/THE LAST OF MY ARMSTRONG MOSQUITO BITES
Richard Brautigan gives us two new short stories." "Clouds over Egypt" "Fantasy Ownership" "The Mill Creek Penguins" "A Reason for Living" "1953 Chevrolet" "My Fair Tokyo Lady" "The Menu/1965"
Evergreen Review (42) August 1966: 30-32, 86.
Brautigan discussed the menu served to San Quentin Death Row prisoners saying,

It's so stark, so real . . . it's like a poem. This menu alone condemns our society. To feed somebody this kind of food who is already effectively dead represents all the incongruity of the whole damn thing. It's senseless.

Evergreen Review, published in New York, New York, 1957-1973, was edited by Barney Rosset and Donald M. Allen (numbers 1-6 only) with the backing of Grove Press. "The Convention" "In Pursuit of the Impossible Dream"
New Orleans Review 7(1) 1980: 24.
Published by Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana. "The Old Testament Book of the Telephone Company" "Breakfast in Beirut" "Another Montana School Gone to the Milky Way" "Four People in Their Eighties" "My Fault" "Florida" "Ghosts" "A Study in Thyme and Funeral Parlors" "Rabbits" "A Different Way of Looking at President Kennedy's Assassination" "Portrait of a Marriage" "Self-Portrait as an Old Man" "Beer Story" "Homage to Rudi Gernreich"
Earth 2(1) January 1971.
Titled here "Homage to Rudi Gernreich/1965."
A story about the Pet Cemetary in San Francisco's The Presidio.
Featured a photograph taken in November 1965 by Erik Weber of Brautigan looking over the pet tombstones there.
The magazine (8" x 11.5" with cover artwork by Bob Zoell) featured four pages of artwork by Robert Crumb titled "Mr. Natural's 719th Meditation" and full color photographs of musician Shuggie Otis by San Francisco photographer Lisa Law.

A quote by California designer Rudi Gernreich acts as a prologue to the story.

The look in clothes expresses an anti-attitude, the result of being bored . . . And so, if you're bored, you go for the outrageous gesture. Everything else seems to have lost any meaning.

In 1964, perhaps bored with current clothing fashions, Gernreich introduced the topless bathing suit. Following the call for the outrageous gesture, Brautigan writes about being able to wear this small pet cemetary like a Gernreich coat and being confronted by two young men, shipping out for South Vietnam, having just recently completed their training at the nearby military base in San Francisco's Presidio. "Turkey and Dry Breakfast Cereal Sonata" "Old Man Working the Rain" "The Remarkable Dining Cars of the Northern Pacific Railroad" "Railroading in Tokyo" "Two Montana Humidifiers" "Contents for Good Luck" "Tod" "Five Ice-Cream Cones Running in Toyko" "The Good Work of Chickens" "Castle of the Snow Bride" "The Instant Ghost Town" "The Mouse" "House of Carpets" "The 1977 Television Season" "The Window" "Painstaking Popcorn Label" "Imaginary Beginning to Japan" "Leaves" "Waking Up Again"
San Francisco Stories 1979
Paperback, with printed wrappers; 59 pages.
Edited by George Matchette, Robert Monson, and Charles Rubin.
Published in San Francisco. First issue of a biannual magazine of "Short Fiction by Bay Area Writers."
Featured three stories by Brautigan: "Skylab at the Graves of Abbott and Costello," "Al's Rose Harbor," and "Waking Up Again."

Also featured original works by Michael Rubin, Annette Dozier, Yuri Kageyama, Barry Gifford, Ray Scippa, and Jane Nudelman. "Poetry Will Come to Montana on March 24th" "Sunday" "Japanese Love Affair" "Tap Dancing Chickadee Slaves" "Pleasures of the Swamp" "Sky Blue Pants" "Kyoto, Montana" "A Different or the Same Drummer" "When 3 Made Sense for the First Time" "A One-Frame Movie about a Man Living in the 1970s" "My Tokyo Friend" "Chicken Fable" "The Fence" "Subscribers to the Sun" In addition to the specific reviews detailed below, commentary about this book may also be included in General Reviews of Brautigan's work and his place in American literature, or reviews of his Collections.


READ this review.
Publishers Weekly 11 September 1981: 71.

Brautigan spends most of his time describing things, and it is his unusual descriptions that catch our attention. But the interest lasts only as long as his descriptions stay fresh; after that we look beyond them for something more permanent. In The Tokyo-Montana Express the descriptions wilt after a while, and there is nothing behind them.

READ this review.

Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 42. Eds. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1980. 48-66.
READ the full text of this review.
READ this review.

Carver, Raymond. "Brautigan Serves Werewolf Berries and Cat Cantaloupe." Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose. Ed. William L. Stull. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. 258-259.
Garrett, Daniel. "Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose." World Literature Today Summer-Autumn 2001: 143-144.

Isn't there someone around who loves this author more than anything, someone he loves and trusts in return, who could sit down with him and tell him what's good, even wonderful, in this farrago of bits and pieces, and what is lightweight, plain silly stuff and better left unsaid, or in the notebooks? (143)

The full text of this review reads

Here again is Brautigan in his inimitable buffet style, serving up a diverse feast of life—outer and inner—through a gentle, probing intelligence. The table set across Tokyo, San Francisco, and Montana, we can sample homely adventures (buying a humidifier for the first time), comic epiphanies (mistaking fallen plum leaves for chocolate wrappers), whimsical dilemmas (the smell of a dead mouse in one's heart banished by a beautiful woman's perfume), and pure fancies (tap-dancing chickadees hooked on sunflower seeds), besides a handful of canny character vignettes. There are some flossy calories here. But fans will eat it all up, and even those who decline a meal ticket to the end of the line will find many stops they won't want to miss.

The Library Journal Book Review 1980. Ed. Janet Fletcher. New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1981. 596.
READ the full text of this review.
READ this review.
READ this review.

Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 42. Eds. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1980. 48-66. READ this review.
READ the full text of this review.

[W]hen Brautigan is at his best, his book is home-folks wise. During these moments, we see the world as Brautigan does—a place so special, so magical that the most trivial, commonplace aspects of life shimmer with meaning and incandescence.

READ this review.

Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 42. Eds. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1980. 48-66. READ this review. READ this review.
READ the full text of the reference to Brautigan. READ this review. READ this review.

"'Tokyo-Montana' Line Runs on Uncoupled Ideas." Oregonian 16 November 1980: C4.
READ the full text of this review.
READ the full text of this review. READ this review.
READ excerpts from this review pertaining to Brautigan.
READ the full text of this review. READ this review.
READ the full text of this review.

Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 42. Eds. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1980. 48-66.