Today, issue number 18 of the Quarterly Conversation was published, including my review of Rudolph Wurlitzer’s cult classic, Nog. Excerpt:
Although Nog has never been entirely forgotten since its first publication in 1968, it has never fully emerged from cult-classic status; as Erik Davis observes in the introduction to the recent Two Dollar Radio edition, it has been “attracting passionate fans over forty years of slipping in and out of print.” It’s easy to see how it managed to stay alive during those decades despite critical neglect: it’s a successful and haunting piece of experimental fiction, and a reader who has enjoyed it will press it upon others.
Its neglect is a little trickier to explain; perhaps it’s as simple as the fact that many contemporary reviewers pegged the novel as being a record of a drug trip (based upon no evidence other than sales copy) and that the most superficial reading of the book would likely focus on the vaguely hippie-like characters and their pastimes of popping pills and having casual sex. And many of the contemporary blurbs on the book, including the much-reproduced remarks of Thomas Pynchon, amount to little more than “wow, what a trip, man.” It’s easy to dismiss a book if it’s merely a document of the times.
JEREMYHATCH.COM
