Rudy Wurlitzer

Wurlitzer’s writing elides your grasp for meaning or connection. Words appear, words you know and that have previously provided information, but in Wurlitzer’s sentences this information always slides away. It is a poetic style this writing. A style that parallels the thinking of his main character who works to avoid all connections and meaning built on memory and thought. It is as if his main character - who is not Nog and yet sometimes has Nog living within him - resides on the very edge of awareness. An awareness without memory to hold him down or planning to limit his experience. An awareness steadfastly (although that implies a desire much more intent than the character himself would ever own up to) living in the shifting now of experience. People and scenes and situations come and go around him without any sticking power or greater context. A room, an ankle, an octopus. But that is OK for a person with light coming out of a small hole in his chest. Or maybe that was someone else? A person trying to be Nog but not Nog. Some writing seems easy, if you only put the work in and had enough ideas. Wurlitzer’s writing seems something else. A style so stripped down and distilled, colorful yet intensely minimal, perfectly faceted in each instant and yet flowing softly as a breeze you aren’t quite sure you just felt…

I could try to coax meaning out of Nog's plot but that seems a disservice to its nature.
Much better to let its mood continue to wash over me as it slowly recedes from memory...… (meer)

You're alive. In some way you're connected to everything around you. Everything that you choose to do. There's a connection between you and your life. Then something happens...

That damn ditch...

Now your life is filled with events and people but there's an overwhelming Déjà vu. Except you don't feel it as Déjà vu. There's just something uncanny about everything that happens. Every person you meet. Shuffled. Everything that made you you comes back but out of order. Out of context. Repetition of something almost just like something before. The decisions you previously felt embodied in now just seem to happen. As if in a dream. It's almost like you're watching yourself do everything you've done, but again and slightly different. That person is now this person. Wasn't that painting different? Much like a dream you sense what's coming but can't focus on it.

Who really did shoot you?
Why did you sit back down at that table?
At least your billiard skills seem to follow you here.

A blurb on the front from the LA Times states that it's an American Book of the Dead.
I usually cringe at that description.
This time it might be accurate.

This is a book that takes the tropes of the western genre and tells what it feels like to live, and then live again being subtly forced to make sense of your previous experiences.

Maybe it's more like a western Groundhog's Day, except every day all the main pieces and events are shifted so slightly. Not enough to bring awareness of the new situation you are in (you basically travel in a dream state) but just enough to make you randomly focus on very small details that swing into focus on each go round.

I started this review by giving this book 4 stars, but right now I think I'm changing it to 5.
There's something special here.

Hard to pin down but sticks with you like that dream that keeps coming back during the day in furtive snatches.… (meer)