Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery by Richard Brautigan

Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery is a novel by Richard Brautigan written in 1975. The story takes place in San Francisco, California in the early 1970s. The title character is a papier mache bird that shares the front room of a San Francisco apartment with a collection of bowling trophies that some time earlier were stolen from the home of the Logan brothers. The human tenants of this apartment are John and Pat, who have just returned from seeing a Greta Garbo movie in a local movie theater. Their neighbors are Bob and Constance, a married couple going through some rough times in their relationship. Because of their failing relationship, Bob becomes depressed. Meanwhile the Logan brothers are looking for their bowling trophies stolen three years earlier. The brothers have turned their happy life of bowling into a life of vengeance. Brautigan tried to have all the main characters in the story have an intersection that is comically sad. Richard Brautigan got the name Willard in the novel from his friend Stanley Fullerton's paper-maché bird named Willard and, in fact, a bird is on the front cover of the novel. In 2018, filmmaker Kansas Bowling and musician Kat Meoz shot the only existing footage of the real Willard for a music video for Meoz's song "Here I Wait".

The 1079th greatest fiction book of all time


This book is on the following lists:

  1. - 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (The Book)

Buy This Book

Name Binding Sales Rank Lowest New Lowest Used Published
Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery Paperback 3804149 $68.72 $10.00 1978
Willard and His Bowling Trophies (Picador Books) Paperback 3904603 $13.33
Willard and His Bowling Trophies Hardcover 1537325 $38.67 $1.48 1975
Willard and His Bowling Trophies Paperback 2239119 $54.15 $2.49
Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery Mass Market Paperback 10228582 $18.51
Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery Paperback 1882097 $30.00 $8.98 1977