Trout Fishing in America

I'm taking a course called Contemporary American Fiction this semester. The latest book we read was Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America. If you've never heard of it, that's okay, Professor Boughn reports that he may very well be the only person in the world to teach Brautigan.
Reading this book brought to mind thoughts of old days and high school. Not directly because of the content, but rather the style of book. What I once thought was new and edgy, exciting because it was different, such as our good friend Chuck Palahnuik, I am quickly learning is actually not new at all. Rather, this seemingly new take on literature is part of a greter tradition - I just didn't know about it. I guess you might be able to call it the post-modern novel; in encompases things like last year's great revelatory text White Noise.
When I think about it, the books that have had the most impact on me personally seem to be in this tradition - sometimes because I learn something about myself from them, and others because they afford me an opportunity to look at the world in a different way.
Now I slip in to the part of the discussion where I assume you've read the book. I thought it was incredibly tragic. That's really saying something, since there isn't really a plot. But towards the end Trout Fishing in America, the personifaction of the concept has his last meeting with the narrator and his baby daughter. The daughter plays with Trout Fishing in America while the narrot fishes in a trout stream. But, she is merely toying. It's like this book is actually about the end of trout fishing in america. Trout Fishing in America leaves, not to be found or mentioned again. Trout Fishing in America Shorty is legless, unable to do anything except pollute himself with wine. And the fabulous chapter near the end where the narrator goes to a wrecking yard and looks at lengths of trout stream stacked and for sale, with the trout still swiming in it. There is a box of scraps, lengths of stream anywhere from six inches to a foot - good for almost nothing. All of this seems to point to some sort of death of Trout Fishing in America. In fact, there is the journal of the old ladie's brother who, despite all his years of effort, never catches a single trout. Trout fishing in america, the book seems to suggest is over. Even the trout that Lewis and Clark catch at the base of the waterfall are twice the size those the narrator catches through the novel.
But there is another thought in my mind. Maybe the book isn't so tragic after all. It's the concept from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity that comes to mind here: are we depressed because of so many bad love songs, or are the bad love songs caused by our depression? DO i find this book to be tragic (as opposed to comic, Professor boughn said it is) because I have read so many depressing books in my day (see Nick Hornby's How To Be Good) or is there actually a strong undercurrent of tragedy in this unassuming novel that we just haven't yet recognised in lecture?
Hopefully I'll find out when I talk to Professor Boughn. for now, I must depart and go to lecture.