The first half of this book is a depiction of a mind ripped apart by psychedelics or psychosis: complete confusion, without logic or causality, nothing but incomprehensible being and sensation. There can be no explanation for why anything occurs. Stuff is happening, but there is no way to say what anything means. Yet within the flow of sensation, the reader catches what might be glimpses of a world beyond this distorted mind -- like reflections bent and twisted through irregular glass. There was a person, they were in the world, now their mind is gone.
The second half is a drag, the author seemed to think it necessary to create a plot, with protagonists and antagonists. It's familiar. It's a harsh come-down.
But still: five stars, because the first half is so brilliant. If Wurlitzer had kept the first half going to the end, he'd be considered something like an American James Joyce.
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Nog
Audible Audiobook
– Unabridged
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Originally published by Random House in 1969, Nog became a universally revered cult novel and a symbol of the countercultural movement. In Rudolph Wurlitzer's signature hypnotic and haunting voice, Nog tells the tale of a man adrift in the American West, armed with nothing more than his own three pencil-thin memories and an octopus in a bathysphere.
©2009 Rudolph Wurlitzer (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
- Listening Length5 hours and 1 minute
- Audible release dateDecember 30, 2009
- LanguageEnglish
- ASINB0032G55HM
- VersionUnabridged
- Program TypeAudiobook
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Product details
Listening Length | 5 hours and 1 minute |
---|---|
Author | Rudolph Wurlitzer |
Narrator | Stefan Rudnicki |
Audible.com Release Date | December 30, 2009 |
Publisher | Audible Studios |
Program Type | Audiobook |
Version | Unabridged |
Language | English |
ASIN | B0032G55HM |
Best Sellers Rank |
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Customer reviews
4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
26 global ratings
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- Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2020Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
- Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 1999I may have been one of the first people to read this book. God knows for years I would thrust my tattered copy at friends and insist they read it. My best friend and I still use phrases in conversation that we picked up from the book 20 years ago ("hasten a focus" comes to mind). For some reason I even remember the moment I purchased the book, in paperback, in a Woolworth's back in 1970, mostly because of its "psychedelic" cover art and the promise that "Nog is to literature what Dylan is to music." After a single, futile attempt at reading it, I found it on the shelf in my old bedroom at my parents' house one day in 1974, and noted that a glowing blurb from my favorite author, Thomas Pynchon, graced its back cover. If there is a message in "Nog", it may be: mental illness and hallucinogens are probably not a very good combination. Then again, there's more to "Nog" then meets the eye.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2012Format: PaperbackI read this book when it first came out and saw, for the first time, that it was possible to find language for what the world had become.
I remain utterly grateful.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2019It's a dirty, sluty mess. If that's what your into. I imagine it's similar to doing benzene and porn was like. Not for reading around people ( nfrop)
- Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2008Coming out at the end of the 1960's, it is a tempting mistake to put this book with what was just about to ahhpen anyway--and it is too bad that mor ethings like this did not go on. I see a continuation--not a throwback--to such delerious yet clear works as Eater of Darkness, The Journal of Albion Moonlight, Doctor Faustroll--before the Beats weighed down the novel of spontanaeity and surprise--and after they did Rudolph Wylitzer proved that it could still be done right with Nog. This is a really remarkable book--the narrator has the same hilarious hysteria that Ishmael has at the beginning of Moby Dick--and carries it through to the end, more or less (no spoilers here!)--the writing never stops being surprising, and it is at turns lyrical, absurd, poigniant, puzzling--and suddenly clear as sky for a line or two. Though the narrator never has--nor wants--more than a passing understanding fo what is really going on, the reader never lacks a story, no matter what bizzare items get tossed out of the trick top hat on the way. This sounds like what a lot of books promise--Nog delivers this kind of thing all the way.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2007Nog was one of those books that taught me more about writing at the time than all my college courses lumped together. I remember buying this book in its Pocket Books incarnation in the autumn of 1970. The book cost me $.95 cents brand spanking new, but, as they claim on the Master Card commercials, the experience is priceless. I stayed up all night reading the book and raving to my roommates the following morning. One read it; the other demurred. Simply put, it is one of the great classics, not just of an era but in modern American Lit. I still have that original copy of Nog. I handle it with care.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 1999I wish that I could take credit for the "unhealthy ..." quote, but it is attributed to Donald Barthelme from his capsule review which appears on the back cover of my old paperback copy. Writing about Nog, Pynchon proclaimed, "The novel of bull **** is dead." I thought that the book was marvelous. Wurlitzer has a field day with issues of identity, integrity and all sorts of other topics that, as far as I am concerned, were explored in a manner that was much more compelling during the late '60s and early '70s. The notion of a character who invents/chooses his "memories" tickled my fancy then as much as now. Wurlitzer has always been willing to step out into areas where other authors were either afraid or simply unwilling to follow. Try to find the video of "Two Lane Blacktop" if you haven't already seen it. Wurlitzer wrote the screen play and that of "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" as well. If unhealthy mental excitement is appealing to you, I would recommend this work highly. If not, save your yourself some upset and read something a bit more tame.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2017Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseI first learned of Nog through watching the extras on the Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). As I loved Two-Lane Blacktop and as I have read and greatly enjoyed surrealist, symbolist, experimentalist, existentialist, modernist, Beatnik, and counterculture novels, I really thought I was going to like this novel. I didn’t. The writing seemed to me to be a whirlwind of drug-induced dementia telling a story about a mentally unstable character in a whirlwind of drug-induced dementia. It started with potential, but just became too much after a while and seemed to lose its way. Halfway through, I started reading more quickly just to finish it. The novel has its bright spots, both in terms of the writing and in terms of the story, but not enough to impress me. I do intend to give his latest novel, The Drop Edge of Yonder (2008), a go, though. So I haven’t given up on Wurlitzer yet.
Nog (1968) by Rudolph Wurlitzer, published by Two Dollar Radio (2009).
Top reviews from other countries
- ArisReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 16, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars A counter-culture masterpiece
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseHazy, dreamy, elliptical and psychedelic.