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Nog Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

4.6 out of 5 stars 26 ratings

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.
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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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4.6 out of 5 stars
26 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2020
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    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.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 1999
    I 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.
    15 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2012
    Format: Paperback
    I 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.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2019
    It'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)
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2008
    Coming 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, 2007
    Nog 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.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 1999
    I 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.
    12 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2017
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    I 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).
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Aris
    5.0 out of 5 stars A counter-culture masterpiece
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 16, 2021
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Hazy, dreamy, elliptical and psychedelic.