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Product Description
Product Description
Originally published in 1968, NOG became a universally revered novel and part of the countercultural movement. Now, 42 years later, it is back in print with a brand new introduction. In Wurlitzer's signature haunting and hypnotic voice, NOG tells the tale of a lone man adrift through the American West, armed with nothing aside from his own pencil-thin memories and an octopus in a bathysphere. After releasing the fake octopus into the ocean, Nog meanders up the California coast, repeatedly tracing his memories and making lists.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Someone should write a review of this book, a real one. My mum works in a library and she brought it home one day. I do not have a clue, but I like it. I like the way the words sound, the way the writing flows. I like the way the book has all the dream/nightmare qualities of a bad trip. If you have more of a clue, write about it. At the moment this book, like Eliot's Wasteland, is a beautiful enigma. I'm a writer myself and it's influenced me.
Format:Paperback
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.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
This book is full of unhealthy mental excitement.
23 Feb 1999
Format:Paperback
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.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
"I am becoming Nog, I am Nog, except that he slips away..."
25 Jun 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Reading "Nog" is a little like living in the mind of Zen monk strung out on drugs. Whatever, whoever Nog is, I'm not sure that he's human. If a human being is one step removed from reality-having to interpret the physical world through the senses and through the mind-then Nog is about four or five steps removed. Impressions from the world come in, bounce around inside his cavernous mind and finally end up distorted beyond recognition, which is where the fun begins.
Nog strives to maintain a maximum of three memories, considers facts subjective, and will not, under any circumstances, give out information. But don't get him started on the octopus...
"He kept complaining about a yellow light that had been streaming out of his chest from a spot the size of a half dollar. We drank and talked about the spot and the small burning sensation it gave him early in the morning and about his octopus. He had become disillusioned about traveling with the octopus and had begun having aggressive dreams about it. He wanted to sell it."
Rudolph Wurlitzer's style is reminiscent of other writers of the era-Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, et cetera-and the novel's genre is the good old American "yarn." As with Mark Twain, Wurlitzer just wants to keep pulling your leg as long as you'll let him. This sort of thing is difficult to sustain outside the confines of a short story, however-and, like some of Twain's novels, "Nog" does lose a bit of its steam somewhere. The opening of the book is absolutely priceless, but soon Wurlitzer must do something to up the ante in his narrative con game. This, unfortunately, means falling back on an listless plot to move Nog around and add fodder to that bizarre imagination. If "Nog" never quite surpasses the flair of the opening chapters, Wurlitzer has still achieved a deliciously eccentric style and created one truly unforgettable character.
Nog strives to maintain a maximum of three memories, considers facts subjective, and will not, under any circumstances, give out information. But don't get him started on the octopus...
"He kept complaining about a yellow light that had been streaming out of his chest from a spot the size of a half dollar. We drank and talked about the spot and the small burning sensation it gave him early in the morning and about his octopus. He had become disillusioned about traveling with the octopus and had begun having aggressive dreams about it. He wanted to sell it."
Rudolph Wurlitzer's style is reminiscent of other writers of the era-Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, et cetera-and the novel's genre is the good old American "yarn." As with Mark Twain, Wurlitzer just wants to keep pulling your leg as long as you'll let him. This sort of thing is difficult to sustain outside the confines of a short story, however-and, like some of Twain's novels, "Nog" does lose a bit of its steam somewhere. The opening of the book is absolutely priceless, but soon Wurlitzer must do something to up the ante in his narrative con game. This, unfortunately, means falling back on an listless plot to move Nog around and add fodder to that bizarre imagination. If "Nog" never quite surpasses the flair of the opening chapters, Wurlitzer has still achieved a deliciously eccentric style and created one truly unforgettable character.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A Surrealistic Existential Nightmare Classic
8 Feb 1999
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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.
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