Who is Trout Fishing in Aerica from Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America ; the Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster ; and, in Watermelon Sugar and what is their importance?

Trout Fishing in America is the title of the novella that heads this three-part work. The title itself becomes a mysterious, undefined character, known more by his effect on events than by direct sensory evidence. Whether Trout Fishing in America is a code word for some higher deity is a tantalizing possibility never made explicit by the author, but suggested in the text and difficult to refute altogether. In any event, the character Trout Fishing in America affords Brautigan a convenient device to personify the irony that runs like a steady current through his poetry and prose. Trout Fishing in America is alternately a person, a hotel, a philosophy, a magazine, a trout, and a fishing lure.