Slow Fade

Drag City has just released an audiobook of Will Oldham with D.V. DeVincentis reading Rudy Wurlitzer's Slow Fade, which you can download as an mp3 or a 5-disc set.

Per the site: “The story alternates between [Wesley] Hardin in Santa Fe, Mexico, and New York — shooting a last-stand Western until the producer blows the whistle and shuts off the funds, generating a cinéma vérité chronicle of his own life — and A.D. and Walker writing their script on the road, so that each movement in the present is complemented by an additional piece of the past uncovered. Apart from generating a respectable amount of plot suspense, this narrative counterpoint allows Wurlitzer to pursue a satirical bent as he charts both fantasy trips, which becomes a contrast between the spiritual excesses of two generations: Yosemite Sam and Mr. Natural, each on a suicide mission.” — Jonathan Rosenbaum

Wurlitzer's Slow Fade

Will Oldham is recording an audiobook of Rudy Wurlitzer's fourth novel, Slow Fade, to be released by Drag City.

On The Drift - Michael Silverblatt Interviews Rudolph Wurlitzer

Unhealthy Mental Excitement

For whatever annoying reason I can't locate the exact blurb that Donald Barthelme gave for Nog upon its original publication, though I do recall it being something to the tune of ". . . full of unhealthy mental excitement."

Bud Parr recently pointed out to me that Barthelme included Nog in a list he made of books he'd recommend reading, which he passed on to his class at the time at the University of Houston. I haven't read most of the books Barthelme lists, but those I have read I genuinely loved.

In particular, I've been reading Max Frisch recently. I loved Homo Faber, which I finished a short while back. I was inspired to read Homo Faber knowing that Rudy Wurlitzer had adapted the book into the screenplay for Voyager, a film directed by Volker Schlondorff and starring Sam Shepard. And I've started I'm Not Stiller, a used copy of which I picked up at Spoonbill and Sugartown, though recently reissued by Dalkey Archive. So far, I think its incredibly brilliant.

I'm looking forward to reading more Frisch, as well as the rest of those recommendations made by Barthelme. It is wonderful that his list survived.

This Made Me Break Out the Camera and...

The UPS guy made my day when he delivered our copies of Rudolph Wurlitzer's second and third novels, Flats and Quake, which we're reissuing this month in a back-to-back or 69ed edition.

Similar to both Nog and The Drop Edge of Yonder, this edition of the two novels features original photographs by Rudy's wife, the celebrated photographer Lynn Davis. It's been really incredible to couple their work like this and I've been pleased with the enthusiastic feedback we've received. (In particular, the cover to Flats makes my spine tingle.)

And in my excitement, I'm also posting Michael Greenberg's truly marvelous introduction, which, after I first read it, inspired me to revisit immediately both of these novels, which I devoured as if for the first time. Which is more than you can ask for in an introduction.

Giddyup:

Open publication - Free publishing

Rudolph Wurlitzer at Pop Matters

The reissue of Rudolph Wurlitzer's first novel, Nog, officially drops tomorrow, August 1.

Today, in his Deconstruction Zone column at PopMatters, Rodger Jacobs has an incredibly rich article called 'Rudy Wurlitzer, Bob Dylan, Bloody Sam, and the Jornado del Muerto' that draws on a wide variety of influences while orbiting the Wurlitzer myth. Touching on Joan Didion and Robert Stone, how Bob Dylan became involved in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and the subsequent chaos that nearly destroyed that film, Jacobs has some nice praise for "a true American master of literary form."

"If all art is at once surface and symbol, as Oscar Wilde suggests in the preface to Picture of Dorian Gray, then Wurlitzer's 1969 debut novel is the ultimate expression of that statement, a writhing copperhead snake that is difficult to hold onto but spellbinding to observe in its raw, natural beauty."