| Title | : | Flats Quake |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0982015143 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780982015148 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 200 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2009 |
[Rudolph Wurlitzer] is a writer whose continuing existence is very meaningful to me.”Michael Silverblatt, KCRW's Bookworm
One of the most unique and fascinating American writers.”Dennis Cooper
A major American writer.”Library Journal
If you can legitimately judge a writer by fellow scribes who honestly extol his work, and count on his inhabiting a plane of popularity and celebrity similar to the one where his endorsers dwell, then Rudolph Wurlitzer should be a name on the lips of sage critics and fans of zesty, transgressive postmodernist fiction everywhere. Wurlitzer might be the closest thing we have to an actual cult author, a highly talented fiction writer.”Paul DiFilippo
Flats is a post-apocalyptic exploration of the human self. Submerged amidst a cast of characters named after ruined American cities who compete over a shrinking fringe of space, Flats is a modern masterpiece of the counterculture.
Quake chronicles the unraveling of society after an earthquake strikes 1960s Los Angeles. By painting a bleak picture of what people are capable of doing to one another in extreme circumstances, Quake is nihilistic and haunting, as well as uncomfortably foreboding. And more relevant than ever.
Rudolph Wurlitzer is the author of five novels, including The Drop Edge of Yonder, Nog, Slow Fade, and the nonfiction book Hard Travel to Sacred Places. Wurlitzer wrote the screenplays for such films as Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Two-Lane Blacktop, and Walker, among others, and he co-directed the film Candy Mountain with Robert Frank.
Flats Quake Reviews
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Video review, along with Nog and The Drop Edge of Yonder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyIyN... -
Rudolph Wurlitzer's first novel, Nog, earned acclaim from the likes of Thomas Pynchon, but he also screenwrote amazing movies like Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop, and co-directed lost favorite Candy Mountain in the late 80s with photographer Robert Frank of The Americans fame. The love of road-stories so well-embodied by those films also shows in both of the earlier novels (his second and third) collected here, though in totally weird ways.
Flats is a kind of post-everything exhaustion of a novel: post-Beckett-despair, in a most-narrative minimalist post-apocalypse of uncertain terms. Insulating himself in a series of third-person personas named for presumably now-lost cities, the protagnist examines the debris scattered about him interacts disjointedly with other survivors in decidedly post-societal confusion, and voyages with exceptional tunnel-vision for the immediate across his destitute surroundings. It's mind-numbing in the best way, maybe, rendering -- on terms that can be felt, practically -- an existence narrowed to the few feet one can touch, stripped of any hopes, long-term goals, or acknowledgement of any past or future whatsoever. 3.5 stars.
Quake, on the other hand, is all action, though it shares the immediacy-of-vision seen in Flats. Here, the narrator can only take in bits of what is going on about him at a time, it seems, because so much is going on as Los Angeles collapses into anarchy in the immediate aftermath of a terrible earthquake. It's so harsh and dire and chilling that it takes a while to admit how hilarious it is. I don't have the book here, but the "I love Hamburger Hamlet" fight scene is so amazing and grim and perfect. Some highly surreal bits too, such as the half-collapsed building journey (totally journeys again) earlier on, which I already want to re-read just for its heightened architectural insanity. 4.5 stars.
I so need some more Rudy Wurlitzer now. -
"Flats" and "Quake" - two novels in one volume, and both are end of the world narratives. One (Flats) is more reflective than the other (Quake), which almost reads like a zombie story. Of the two, I prefer "Flats," mostly due to its quietness and almost Samuel Beckett level of stillness in a vacant landscape. Both are well-written, but I had a hard time connecting to the narratives. On a off-handed manner, the novels remind me of works by J.G. Ballard as well - and actually I prefer Ballard than Wurlitzer. There is for sure a very dry american taste that runs through the two novels.
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Really interesting dual-novel. A die-hard Beckett lover will not find this difficult to read.
Cerebral, bloody and tempered on the edges with a sexual violence of the soul.
I’m glad I started with Quake and skipped the intro until after I started reading Flats.
Michael Greenberg’s tidy and knowledgeable introduction confirms what I believed to be going on.
“What interests Wurlitzer is not the adventures of the traveler, but his state of being when confronted with a blank and unfamiliar landscape...
Kerouac is picaresque. Wurlitzer is existential. His road is a mirror of the mind.” -
This one is tough to review. I'd prefer to give it two and a half stars, but that's not an option. These two back to back books are fairly different, though a melancholy and somewhat nihilistic mood links them both. I have to admit to not finishing Flats -- it's disconnected narrative and purposely vague characters left me rather cold and not caring. I enjoyed Quake, however, as much as one can enjoy an unwaveringly depressing view of a population unraveling and at one another's throats following a massive earthquake in LA. It's got a very bitter black humor that is undoubtedly not to everyone's taste, and the main character is left purposely unnamed and unknown. The book doesn't end so much as stop, which in some ways makes sense, though it's nonetheless a bit unsatisfying. The disaster is perhaps over but the effects are really just starting, and Wurlitzer leaves the reader wondering what's going to happen from there.
Not a pair of books for everyone, that's for sure, but they're certainly interesting. -
Wow. Weird, heavy post-apocalyptic shit served up two ways: Flats like Beckett, Quake like Ballard; but both with a distinctly American inflection, with notes of Shepard, McCarthy, Hammett, and Mamet. These short novels are—each in a diametrically-opposed register—all about the unconscious death-trip latent in the psyche of the U.S., the sociopathic killer thing inside us that turns on itself once it realizes that there is no more empty frontier out there to make us forget about the emptiness inside.
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This was an okay read. I am more surprised at how much these didn't stick with me long term, but of the two stories here, both were a little odd and esoteric and perhaps a little more literary than I was seeking out. In both cases, they're apocalyptic-style tales with something a little deeper, but there's a lot to dig through to get there.
Not for everyone, but if you're into it in the first few pages you'll likely enjoy the ride. -
two novels in one here. Flats is a fascinating idea of a geography and characters and plot that seem to be real but turn out to be....all in his head. so then reader thinks, did this even happen?
quake is the 2nd novel (though you could read it 1st) about the "big one" hitting california and well, you can imagine, all hell breaks loose.
very nice short introduction by michael greenberg
Hurry Down Sunshine
Wurlitzer is a part of beat/post beat idea. -
Two slim existential novels taking place in the immediate aftermath of major disasters, one abstract and difficult (Flats), the other accessible and direct (Quake). Both dryly funny, scary, strange and brutal. I was previously a fan of Wurlitzer the screenwriter (Two-Lane Blacktop, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Candy Mountain) and nonfiction essayist (Hard Travel to Sacred Places). Now I'm also a fan of Wurlitzer the novelist.
