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The Drop Edge of Yonder
"Time Out New York"'s #1 Best Book of 2008."[A] funny, inquisitive novel [that] asks readers to re-examine their ideas of the Western frontier and personal freedom." --Jeffrey Trachtenberg, "Wall Street Journal""May be the most hallucinogenic western you'll ever catch in the movie house of your mind's eye." --Erik Davis, "Bookforum""A picaresque American "Book of the Dead.".. in the tradition of Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and Terry Southern." --David Ulin, "Los Angeles Times Book Review""Should be as well known as anything by Cormac McCarthy, Steve Erickson, or Jim Harrison." --Paul DiFilippo, "Barnes & Noble Review""Rudolph Wurlitzer takes no prisoners. An uncompromising, wild, and woolly tale."--Sam Shepard"Sam Beckett with a six-gun and a sack of rattlesnakes."--Gary Indiana"Where has Rudy Wurlitzer been for the last fifteen years? The mental traveler who gave us "Nog" and the "Two-Lane Blacktop" screenplay takes another vision quest, this time into the Old American West. His mapping of mythic and sacred landscapes and his ability to distinguish between different tribal world-views makes this a truly revealing conversation."--KCRW's "Bookworm"In his fifth novel, Rudolph Wurlitzer has written a classic tale of the Western frontier and created one of his most memorable characters in Zebulon, a mountain man whose view of life has been challenged by a curse from a mysterious Native American woman whose lover he inadvertently murdered."The Drop Edge of Yonder" begins in the mountains of Colorado and ends in the far reaches of the Northwest, a journey that includes the beginnings of a Mexican revolution, a voyage across the Gulf of Mexico to Panama, and up the coast of California to San Francisco and the gold fields. Along the trail, Zebulon becomes involved in a series of tragic love triangles, witnesses the death of his mother and father, and confronts the age-old questions of life, love, and death.Rudolph Wurlitzer is the author of the novels "Nog," "Flats," "Quake," and "Slow Fade," and the nonfiction book, "Hard Travel to Sacred Places." Among his twelve produced screenplays are "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," "Two Lane Blacktop," "Voyager," "Walker," and "Little Buddha."
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
32 people are currently reading
1161 people want to read
About the author
Rudolph Wurlitzer
25 books72 followersThe great-grandson of the man who founded the famous music company published his first novel, Nog in 1969. For most of the seventies Wurlitzer worked in Hollywood, writing screenplays. His 1971 play 2 Lane Blacktop was filmed by maverick producer Monte Hellman, starring Warren Oates with singer James Taylor and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. In 1973 he wrote the screenplay for Sam Peckinpah's Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, starring Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
July 17, 2024
The Drop Edge of Yonder is supposed to be an acid western…
In the beginning Zebulon is cursed so he lives and dies and resurrects again and again to fulfill the curse…
The Drop Edge of Yonder is what may be considered as postmodern of latter days – a toothless suite of bizarre happenings…
“Your problem is that you think too much. And not enough.”
Rudolph Wurlitzer’s problem is that he is too much fun. And not enough. So The Drop Edge of Yonder can’t rise above becoming the incessant diarrhea of vulgar nonsense.
The American frontier is known as the Wild West, not as the Stupid West.
In the beginning Zebulon is cursed so he lives and dies and resurrects again and again to fulfill the curse…
It was as if he had been through this before, in the same dimly lit cantina with most of the oil lamps burned out, listening to the same restless chords from a bangedup piano with cracked and missing keys, the same row of moose heads with their eyes shot out, the same low murmur of betting and raising, the same slap of shuffling cards whose numbers and faces had become so bent and rubbed that they were barely visible. He was dimly aware that he might be in trouble because winning and losing no longer seemed to matter, as if the results had already been decided.
The Drop Edge of Yonder is what may be considered as postmodern of latter days – a toothless suite of bizarre happenings…
“Your problem is that you think too much. And not enough.”
Rudolph Wurlitzer’s problem is that he is too much fun. And not enough. So The Drop Edge of Yonder can’t rise above becoming the incessant diarrhea of vulgar nonsense.
The American frontier is known as the Wild West, not as the Stupid West.
dnf
November 14, 2023DNF at 40%. "The Drop Side of Yonder" is what happens when you take a fairly good trilogy, remove everything but the barebones action, a few short dialogue exchanges and 5 adjectives.
Even though Wurlitzer does 'show', due to the warp speed of events and the sober, removed narrative voice, the novel reads like it's all 'tell' from the mouth of a drunk '49er trying to recall 27 different tall tales he heard at some point, but hopelessly mixing them up.
Zebulon himself could be a very interesting character, if more time were spent on his character. The events could be dramatic, if more time were spent on some drama.
As it is, though, it's hard to care or even be interested when there's absolutely no depth to anything that happens, nor even the slightest break taken for the exploration of character, motivation or setting.
Stuff just happens. And more stuff, and more stuff and more stuff.
Could be mystical, could be a curse, or it could be a taped together collage of some Western motifs with no real meaning. I couldn't be bothered enough to find out.
The trilogy could have been really good. Too bad it didn't make it.
Even though Wurlitzer does 'show', due to the warp speed of events and the sober, removed narrative voice, the novel reads like it's all 'tell' from the mouth of a drunk '49er trying to recall 27 different tall tales he heard at some point, but hopelessly mixing them up.
Zebulon himself could be a very interesting character, if more time were spent on his character. The events could be dramatic, if more time were spent on some drama.
As it is, though, it's hard to care or even be interested when there's absolutely no depth to anything that happens, nor even the slightest break taken for the exploration of character, motivation or setting.
Stuff just happens. And more stuff, and more stuff and more stuff.
Could be mystical, could be a curse, or it could be a taped together collage of some Western motifs with no real meaning. I couldn't be bothered enough to find out.
The trilogy could have been really good. Too bad it didn't make it.
September 1, 2013
This is a western, but High Noon or John Wayne it is not. It is much more in the mould of Clint Eastwood's more mystical offerings and it did not surprise me to read that Wurlitzer had started it in the 70s and intended it to be a film; it almost reads like a film script with lots of short scenarios or action sequences. One reviewer has described it as "Sam Beckett with a six-gun and a sack of rattlesnakes". Not sure I would go that far, but it is mystical and it times almost poetic with some good descriptive passages.
It is the story of Zebulon Shook set at the time of the California gold rush; he is a mountain man with some rather complex family relationships and there is a bit of searching for dad in this. He is also an outlaw, lover, killer and saviour at various times. There is plenty of violence, card sharpery, sex. mystic religious mumbe-jumbo and general chicanery enough for about three books. There are also comic moments which really should not be funny, but are. Another reviewer has described it as a combination of William Burroughs and Mel Brooks and this is closer to the truth. The bad guys are suitably bad, but the good guys are a lot worse.
This is not a calm and sedate read, if you like thrills, spills and excitement this may be for you. On the whole I really enjoyed it; it is far from boring, totally outrageous and delightful
It is the story of Zebulon Shook set at the time of the California gold rush; he is a mountain man with some rather complex family relationships and there is a bit of searching for dad in this. He is also an outlaw, lover, killer and saviour at various times. There is plenty of violence, card sharpery, sex. mystic religious mumbe-jumbo and general chicanery enough for about three books. There are also comic moments which really should not be funny, but are. Another reviewer has described it as a combination of William Burroughs and Mel Brooks and this is closer to the truth. The bad guys are suitably bad, but the good guys are a lot worse.
This is not a calm and sedate read, if you like thrills, spills and excitement this may be for you. On the whole I really enjoyed it; it is far from boring, totally outrageous and delightful
March 9, 2012
I am not sure why it should be the case, but The Drop Edge of Yonder scratched me right where I itch—constituting, in my estimation, a Lazarillo de Tormes, aged a good baker's dozen of years or more and given a harder edge whilst transplanted forward to a mid-nineteenth century American West with the California Gold Rush in full swing, as related by a less bitter, more facetious Céline, running off a generator pumping out portentous and laconic McCarthyian undercurrents and recurrently ascending to hallucinogenic flights of Pynchonesque fancy. Reaching into his authorial bag, Wurlitzer (whom I hadn't read anything by previous to this) drew forth a myth-laden and -generating frontier travelogue, conducted in episodic fashion by archetypal characters and bringing to bear upon its variegated set scenery all the genre staples of violence and adventure, exploitation and greed, escape and pursuit, camaraderie and sex, and confident, encroaching white man versus desperate, retreating red man with a sprawling half-continent as the stake and a gold rush to serve as lodestone. In addition, Wurlitzer spices his modern interpretation with a variety of shamanism and eastern mysticism, spirit-world interference and uplift, saloon sorcery and six-shooter sleight-of-hand, with the entirety bundled and cinched by the flexibly inexorable strands of fate. An enigmatic aura surrounds this enjoyable romp: Wurlitzer has, herein, pulled-off a wry, beautiful, dreamily darkling literary magic trick.
The book's epigraph—a Buddhist aphorism noting Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise—functions as a pole star in the story's heavens, its potent, bearings-finding light primarily shining for the benefit of Zebulon Shook, a taciturn, restless, and amoral Mountain Man, susceptible to the energies of the spirit world and, in the opening pages, placed under a powerful, trinity-themed curse by a half-breed native witch ere she plunged beneath a roiling wintry river. Zebulon begins to exhibit the symptoms of a man caught between the worlds of the living and the dead: condemned to a pseudo-earthen purgatory wherein events unfold with a detectable circularity, a sort of post-apocalyptical frontier in which all human action is covered in grit or grime amidst a nature flush with color and energy, and other lost souls begin to stake their claims for the same territory or fleshy vessel.
There are undoubted nods to Blood Meridian here, though the violence, while just as endemic, serves less to horrify than humor in its popcorn explosiveness. As the primary character, Zebulon is diametrically drawn to Meridian's The Kid—whereas the latter served as an inflectionless blank slate on which the grotesqueries and excesses of the others could be concentrated and magnified to potent effect, Zebulon remains the focal point throughout, with all the other characters constrained by their interpretation or their imitation of him, in their relation to him. A mythical character from the start, his legend begins to precede him once, via the embellishments of a public-pandering press, it takes on a life of its own, such that the story wends about two legendary Zebulons running in Non-Euclidean parallel lines. With such entertainingly tall tale-telling, what matter the truth? In the manner by which Zebulon progresses through each stage of his journey unsure of how much of his experience is real and how much illusion, and if he is encumbering himself in order to disencumber when he can make that distinction, The Drop Edge of Yonder also shares traits with David Lindsay's much earlier mind-fuck A Voyage to Arcturus .
The opening part of Wurlitzer's tale sucked me right in, laden as it was with raw passages, foreboding encounters, and magicked momentum, especially once the mysterious Delilah—a mixed-breed African beauty whose spiritual agonies, afflictions, and resolutions are linked to those of Zebulon—emerges from the shadows of a decrepit saloon and into the story. This transitions into a middle section that is rock solid, a looping arc of experiential passages and scenes that heightened all of my appreciations for what was happening, and anticipations of what was yet to come. Alas, the final third cannot sustain the weight of this earlier narrative mass; as another reviewer here has remarked, it's as if Wurlitzer had so many ideas that he wished to work in he couldn't resist doing so, no matter that several serve only to sap the story—of both its urgency and the brilliantly taut tension between Zebulon and Delilah that had been near-perfectly poised leading in. The resolution itself continued the discouraging trend I've experienced recently in which I feel rather let down by how the author has chosen to deliver on all the promise channeled towards the conclusion. I believe I can understand what Wurlitzer wished to accomplish here; I cannot help but wish that he had opted for something, well, more fitting, more apt for what portended so wonderfully rounding into the final stretch. Perhaps, as with Jess Walter's The Zero , it will improve with time to settle and reflect upon it—and, whether that be the case or not, The Drop Edge of Yonder as a whole was a pleasure I'm quite happy to have partaken of.
The book's epigraph—a Buddhist aphorism noting Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise—functions as a pole star in the story's heavens, its potent, bearings-finding light primarily shining for the benefit of Zebulon Shook, a taciturn, restless, and amoral Mountain Man, susceptible to the energies of the spirit world and, in the opening pages, placed under a powerful, trinity-themed curse by a half-breed native witch ere she plunged beneath a roiling wintry river. Zebulon begins to exhibit the symptoms of a man caught between the worlds of the living and the dead: condemned to a pseudo-earthen purgatory wherein events unfold with a detectable circularity, a sort of post-apocalyptical frontier in which all human action is covered in grit or grime amidst a nature flush with color and energy, and other lost souls begin to stake their claims for the same territory or fleshy vessel.
There are undoubted nods to Blood Meridian here, though the violence, while just as endemic, serves less to horrify than humor in its popcorn explosiveness. As the primary character, Zebulon is diametrically drawn to Meridian's The Kid—whereas the latter served as an inflectionless blank slate on which the grotesqueries and excesses of the others could be concentrated and magnified to potent effect, Zebulon remains the focal point throughout, with all the other characters constrained by their interpretation or their imitation of him, in their relation to him. A mythical character from the start, his legend begins to precede him once, via the embellishments of a public-pandering press, it takes on a life of its own, such that the story wends about two legendary Zebulons running in Non-Euclidean parallel lines. With such entertainingly tall tale-telling, what matter the truth? In the manner by which Zebulon progresses through each stage of his journey unsure of how much of his experience is real and how much illusion, and if he is encumbering himself in order to disencumber when he can make that distinction, The Drop Edge of Yonder also shares traits with David Lindsay's much earlier mind-fuck A Voyage to Arcturus .
The opening part of Wurlitzer's tale sucked me right in, laden as it was with raw passages, foreboding encounters, and magicked momentum, especially once the mysterious Delilah—a mixed-breed African beauty whose spiritual agonies, afflictions, and resolutions are linked to those of Zebulon—emerges from the shadows of a decrepit saloon and into the story. This transitions into a middle section that is rock solid, a looping arc of experiential passages and scenes that heightened all of my appreciations for what was happening, and anticipations of what was yet to come. Alas, the final third cannot sustain the weight of this earlier narrative mass; as another reviewer here has remarked, it's as if Wurlitzer had so many ideas that he wished to work in he couldn't resist doing so, no matter that several serve only to sap the story—of both its urgency and the brilliantly taut tension between Zebulon and Delilah that had been near-perfectly poised leading in. The resolution itself continued the discouraging trend I've experienced recently in which I feel rather let down by how the author has chosen to deliver on all the promise channeled towards the conclusion. I believe I can understand what Wurlitzer wished to accomplish here; I cannot help but wish that he had opted for something, well, more fitting, more apt for what portended so wonderfully rounding into the final stretch. Perhaps, as with Jess Walter's The Zero , it will improve with time to settle and reflect upon it—and, whether that be the case or not, The Drop Edge of Yonder as a whole was a pleasure I'm quite happy to have partaken of.
July 17, 2024
For all of you Robert Coover addicts out there.
Tall-tale of a mountain man turned dashing if addle pated desperado and attendant misadventures.
I loved previous Wurlitzer works - poetic, dazzling, hallucinogenic writing -but that was back in high school.
Only comparable authors are Coover or maybe Richard Brautigan especially Brautigan’s Hawkline Monster - A Western Gothic or whatever it’s called. Except that novel is actually filmable. This is a rip-roaring, knock-the-walls-out, action packed serving of well-intended, well-known celebrities-endorsed bound gibberish.
I paid twenty bucks for this purely on speculation. I liked the author in the Peckinpah film Pat Garrett And Billy the Kid, his script (minimal as it was) for Two Lane Black Top, and I loved his novel Nog - but that was a hunnerd years ago back in high school.
Wish I could get my 20 bucks back.
Tall-tale of a mountain man turned dashing if addle pated desperado and attendant misadventures.
I loved previous Wurlitzer works - poetic, dazzling, hallucinogenic writing -but that was back in high school.
Only comparable authors are Coover or maybe Richard Brautigan especially Brautigan’s Hawkline Monster - A Western Gothic or whatever it’s called. Except that novel is actually filmable. This is a rip-roaring, knock-the-walls-out, action packed serving of well-intended, well-known celebrities-endorsed bound gibberish.
I paid twenty bucks for this purely on speculation. I liked the author in the Peckinpah film Pat Garrett And Billy the Kid, his script (minimal as it was) for Two Lane Black Top, and I loved his novel Nog - but that was a hunnerd years ago back in high school.
Wish I could get my 20 bucks back.
Read
April 7, 2023Video review, along with Nog, Flats, and Quake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyIyN...
June 14, 2018
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.
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.
April 20, 2017
A twisted western taking place during the Gold Rush, in which a mountain man is cursed to linger between worlds, uncertain if he's alive or dead, floating through dream-like encounters as he sets out towards California, trying to make sense of what is happening to him.
Wurlitzer's style of prose grabs you right from the start and only tightens its grip as the pages wear on. The Drop Edge of Yonder is a hangover of a novel, intentionally disorienting the reader with unrelenting amounts of liquor, sex, and violence. It's an experience that leaves the reader as muddle-minded as its characters - once its over, we are unsure of where we had just been, where we currently are, and where the hell we should move on to next.
Wurlitzer's style of prose grabs you right from the start and only tightens its grip as the pages wear on. The Drop Edge of Yonder is a hangover of a novel, intentionally disorienting the reader with unrelenting amounts of liquor, sex, and violence. It's an experience that leaves the reader as muddle-minded as its characters - once its over, we are unsure of where we had just been, where we currently are, and where the hell we should move on to next.
March 27, 2008
This is about a mountain man on the tail end of the trapping exploitation of western north america. Zebulon, the trapper, leaves the colorado area and goes on a search for his Pa in the goldfields of california in 1849. He also goes on the search for more mountain man country, because he doen't like the "hoards" of settlers/travelers moving to the west.
This is a really good book, but also very graphic.
This is a really good book, but also very graphic.
December 11, 2008
It reads like it's written, kind of a non-stop, fast paced flight and wander through one mystical adventure after another. Set in the Wild West (The Anti-Hero(es) run from the Pacific North West to South America and back again). Wurlitzer kind of uses his characters as vessels to lay out a journey before you. They aren't characters that you can understand or get to know but they are interesting vessels that struggle with intriguing conflicts both within and without (like characters in Myth or Religious stories). Wurlitzer fuses eastern religious overtones and Native American Mysticism, Ghost story, a kind of supernatural old fashion John Ford action set in the Old (almost new) West of Blood Meridian and Dead Wood. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that, like McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Wurlitzer seems to nail the never ending blood and mud that was the foundation of what was to soon become our modern American "civilization" as we know it. This book was given to me by a friend on tour who recommended "Nog" by Wurlitzer as the great one to get and "Quake" as an almost unbearably grim vision of Los Angeles after the "Big One" hits. I have not read either of these two yet.
May 27, 2008
"...you will drift like a blind man between the worlds, not knowing if you are dead or alive, or if the the unseen world exists, or if you're dreaming..." - pg. 16
"Dreaming was easy, he thought. Being dreamed was the problem." pg. 225
"Because I have lost my way, I am hostage to all that floats between the worlds. Including you." pg. 130
"Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise. ~ Lankavatran Sutra~ " pg. 7
"You've cracked wide open.."
"That's what happens when a crack lets in too much light..." pg. 267
"Dreaming was easy, he thought. Being dreamed was the problem." pg. 225
"Because I have lost my way, I am hostage to all that floats between the worlds. Including you." pg. 130
"Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise. ~ Lankavatran Sutra~ " pg. 7
"You've cracked wide open.."
"That's what happens when a crack lets in too much light..." pg. 267
June 5, 2024
As far as Westerns come, this acid Buddhist Western ranks on the same level as Blood Meridian, which is arguably the best I have ever come across, maybe even slightly higher. If you want to read a Western that illustrates the closing of the Western Frontier and the sordid and in my opinion, quite contradictory morals of the American West, in a creative yet captivating way, The Drop Edge of Yonder is surely for you.
June 15, 2024
Before reading this book I did the one thing you’re not supposed to do and looked at the reviews. One review assessed the main character, Zebulon, starting with “Zebulon could be an interesting character” as if he wasn’t already. While Zebulon certainly doesn’t stand out as special when it comes to typical leads in westerns: the stoic rough gunslinger, sometimes from the prairie and sometimes from the mountains, who wanders the country with an uncertainty of himself and the things and people around him, that does not warrant the false claim of someone who does not live up to his potential.
Zebulon is a drifter, literally and figuratively as his mortality is constantly questioned in weird, dream like sequences leaving the reader questioning whether the story ever actually happened. Zebulon’s past is constantly mentioned through the use of other characters, which is probably what the audience wants more of, but characters like Zebulon aren’t supposed to allude to a past. The western protagonist is perhaps a metaphorical definition of “in media res,” a man with no past and no future; Zebulon is stagnantly existing, but he himself is unaware of his own existence or unsure of what it means, constantly getting caught up in carnal desires of the western frontier. Zebulon is Clint Eastwood, not Arthur Morgan; the reader is not supposed to know him and it’s that sentiment that makes traditional western leads that much more intriguing.
The end of the book offers a world of speculation with a short history of the characters that have been followed. When examining a photograph of Zebulon, the book ends with “Zebulon’s face had become blank” (265) which solidifies Zebulon’s role as a drifter, a man that has become a ghost and perhaps has always been a ghost.
I’ve always believed that there’s two types of confusion when it comes to literature: bad confusion in which the narrative makes little to no sense and you can’t wait to put the damn book down, and good confusion, which is closer to the lines of curiosity. It is in bad practice to read Fiction expecting specific things, as the act of reading isn’t always a selfish one. To me, the character of Zebulon is exactly what he’s supposed to be, and people should be more sympathetic when judging characters and what they think they’re supposed to represent.
Zebulon is a drifter, literally and figuratively as his mortality is constantly questioned in weird, dream like sequences leaving the reader questioning whether the story ever actually happened. Zebulon’s past is constantly mentioned through the use of other characters, which is probably what the audience wants more of, but characters like Zebulon aren’t supposed to allude to a past. The western protagonist is perhaps a metaphorical definition of “in media res,” a man with no past and no future; Zebulon is stagnantly existing, but he himself is unaware of his own existence or unsure of what it means, constantly getting caught up in carnal desires of the western frontier. Zebulon is Clint Eastwood, not Arthur Morgan; the reader is not supposed to know him and it’s that sentiment that makes traditional western leads that much more intriguing.
The end of the book offers a world of speculation with a short history of the characters that have been followed. When examining a photograph of Zebulon, the book ends with “Zebulon’s face had become blank” (265) which solidifies Zebulon’s role as a drifter, a man that has become a ghost and perhaps has always been a ghost.
I’ve always believed that there’s two types of confusion when it comes to literature: bad confusion in which the narrative makes little to no sense and you can’t wait to put the damn book down, and good confusion, which is closer to the lines of curiosity. It is in bad practice to read Fiction expecting specific things, as the act of reading isn’t always a selfish one. To me, the character of Zebulon is exactly what he’s supposed to be, and people should be more sympathetic when judging characters and what they think they’re supposed to represent.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 10, 2020
I first heard about this book in a reddit post that deemed it Pynchon-lite, pinning it up with names like Steve Erickson, Jim Dodge, Oakley Hall. Basically anyone that Pynchon ever blurbed.
This isn’t Pynchon, though.
If I may make this comparison, The Drop Edge of Yonder Feels like it could take place in the same universe as the Hateful Eight or Django Unchained. Whereas Pynchon’s work is either A) unfilmable or B) gleaned in small doses from films by the Coen brothers and PTA.
Legend has it Jim Jarmusch ripped this from Rudy Wurlitzer back when it was a screen play, then rang up Johnny Depp and shot the film Dead Man.
I haven’t seen the film, but the novel does not read evenly. To hope that each subsequent chapter might be as good as the first is like having hope in a game of crapshoot. Some of the scenic prose and happening are quasi-reminiscent of Denis Johnson and early Donald Antrim; well, at least that’s what Wurlitzer seems to have been gunning for. The verbiage isn’t the same. The words aren’t mulled over. Rather, they’re convenient. The dialogue is piss poor at best. Imagine if Pynchon’s dialogue was only ever as good as the talk in the The Sailor’s Grave in V. That’s the dialogue on display across the whole of Drop Edge of Yonder.
I also feel like the book should have been driven by metaphor rather than action. The ideas Wurlitzer is trying to explore call for a strong central metaphor. But instead the book is scene driven, like I suppose an Elmore Leonard book would read. Minus what I’ve heard about Leonard’s strong narratives.
It’s appropriate that I read this after Pedro Paramo, as both books explore a world between life and death. Both books have characters that may or may not be dead; or are dead, but try to persuade you otherwise.
Pedro Paramo is an example of a book of the dead with a central metaphor to back it up. A book of the dead that succeeds.
The drop edge of Yonder does not. Among others, Wurlitzer tries to work in a hand of cards as a metaphor, but draws a blank.
Still, it can be fun. Like watching Shanghai Knights or Shanghai Noon is fun when you’re saturated on beer and Oreos.
A good read? Maybe.
This isn’t Pynchon, though.
If I may make this comparison, The Drop Edge of Yonder Feels like it could take place in the same universe as the Hateful Eight or Django Unchained. Whereas Pynchon’s work is either A) unfilmable or B) gleaned in small doses from films by the Coen brothers and PTA.
Legend has it Jim Jarmusch ripped this from Rudy Wurlitzer back when it was a screen play, then rang up Johnny Depp and shot the film Dead Man.
I haven’t seen the film, but the novel does not read evenly. To hope that each subsequent chapter might be as good as the first is like having hope in a game of crapshoot. Some of the scenic prose and happening are quasi-reminiscent of Denis Johnson and early Donald Antrim; well, at least that’s what Wurlitzer seems to have been gunning for. The verbiage isn’t the same. The words aren’t mulled over. Rather, they’re convenient. The dialogue is piss poor at best. Imagine if Pynchon’s dialogue was only ever as good as the talk in the The Sailor’s Grave in V. That’s the dialogue on display across the whole of Drop Edge of Yonder.
I also feel like the book should have been driven by metaphor rather than action. The ideas Wurlitzer is trying to explore call for a strong central metaphor. But instead the book is scene driven, like I suppose an Elmore Leonard book would read. Minus what I’ve heard about Leonard’s strong narratives.
It’s appropriate that I read this after Pedro Paramo, as both books explore a world between life and death. Both books have characters that may or may not be dead; or are dead, but try to persuade you otherwise.
Pedro Paramo is an example of a book of the dead with a central metaphor to back it up. A book of the dead that succeeds.
The drop edge of Yonder does not. Among others, Wurlitzer tries to work in a hand of cards as a metaphor, but draws a blank.
Still, it can be fun. Like watching Shanghai Knights or Shanghai Noon is fun when you’re saturated on beer and Oreos.
A good read? Maybe.
Read
December 20, 2016My old college roommate nagged me about this one for ages, and I finally got around to picking it up. Now I know that Wurlitzer is probably best-known for his screenplay to Two-Lane Blacktop, which in my mind is one of the most overrated films of all time (putting it in the same shitty, badly aged "counterculture" boat as Easy Rider and Zabriskie Point), which made me a bit skeptical. As did the notion of a "psychedelic" Western. But then I was taken in.
It's very much a screenwriter sort of novel, with filmic touches. However, those that are there come from the best of the counterculture era, Jodorowsky and Sweet Sweetback and the rest, and it quickly became obvious how much of the story was a reflection of Jarmusch's Dead Man (which apparently Jarmusch largely cribbed from Wurlitzer years before this was ever published). While it's not quite at the Thomas Pynchon- level of experimental fiction, it's not that far from it.
It's very much a screenwriter sort of novel, with filmic touches. However, those that are there come from the best of the counterculture era, Jodorowsky and Sweet Sweetback and the rest, and it quickly became obvious how much of the story was a reflection of Jarmusch's Dead Man (which apparently Jarmusch largely cribbed from Wurlitzer years before this was ever published). While it's not quite at the Thomas Pynchon- level of experimental fiction, it's not that far from it.
October 16, 2015
The great Buddhist acid western.
Shootout on the Bardo.
Review TK.
Shootout on the Bardo.
Review TK.
Read
June 29, 2008A mishmash of Western cliches, coincidences, mystic talk, and awkward repetitions, this book is better than it seems to be. It's best when the story is flying free, with characters appearing and disappearing without notice, and with people getting shot up and robbed and laid in between chapters.
The book is at its worst when Delilah is around. Yes, she's a collage of cliches like everyone else, but it's not working with her because Wurlitzer gives the reader nothing to experience. And if I ever reread this book, I swear I'm going to count the number of times a sequence or chapter ends with some variation of the following: "and then he got up and left the room without a word."
Every now and then this novel keys into some crushing atmosphere, but not often enough.
The story of this book's creation is also worth reading about.
The book is at its worst when Delilah is around. Yes, she's a collage of cliches like everyone else, but it's not working with her because Wurlitzer gives the reader nothing to experience. And if I ever reread this book, I swear I'm going to count the number of times a sequence or chapter ends with some variation of the following: "and then he got up and left the room without a word."
Every now and then this novel keys into some crushing atmosphere, but not often enough.
The story of this book's creation is also worth reading about.
October 30, 2017
A promising premise that turns into an unbelievable (in a bad way) adventure through Central America, Mexico and California. The central character is mountain man, or so we’re told repeatedly, which apparently means doing incredibly stupid things that leave you beat up, abused and broke. His only real talent seems to be the inability to learn from his mistakes.
On top of that, much of the book reads like a police report, with one incredible thing after another treated as just another day.
There are themes in here, but they never seem to go anywhere.
I chose this book because I had loved Warlock. I get why it would be a recommendation, but don’t be fooled. This is just an oater dressed up with some metaphysics.
On top of that, much of the book reads like a police report, with one incredible thing after another treated as just another day.
There are themes in here, but they never seem to go anywhere.
I chose this book because I had loved Warlock. I get why it would be a recommendation, but don’t be fooled. This is just an oater dressed up with some metaphysics.
September 25, 2012
A dark, violent and unconventional western from the screen writer of the cult flim Two Lane Blacktop. The Drop Edge of Yonder is full of murder,shoot-outs, sea voyages, indian shamans,whisky and plenty of whores. This ain't your father's John Wayne western.
June 15, 2015
A western that reads a bit like
Cormac McCarthy on peyote.
But nothing can top "Nog."
Cormac McCarthy on peyote.
But nothing can top "Nog."
April 23, 2020
If Life of Brian was an Acid Western written by Cormac McCarthy
September 5, 2017
Gran decepción.
May 8, 2020
quarantine book #5-- like the coen brothers got their hands on the 'dead man' script before jarmusch filmed it
January 15, 2023
Couldn’t stick the landing. Fully an acid western. Got a little repetitive and overly long.
May 22, 2017
Mi reseña de Zebulon, de Rudy Wurlitzer
Aderezada con fotos de época.
Aderezada con fotos de época.
July 30, 2008
The Drop Edge of Yonder is a western in that it is set on the American frontier during the California gold rush. It is not a western in just about every other aspect.
Of course, there’s plenty of senseless violence, thievery, sex, gambling, and drinking to satisfy anyone pining after America’s glorious past, but from the very beginning the novel sets out to do something different—to give us a sense of the underlying worldviews that come with living in a barren, untamed landscape. The epigraph, taken from the Lankavatara Sutra, one of the ancient Buddhist texts, seems just as much a warning as a guide for readers: “Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise.” This is true not only for the events that take place in the novel, but also for the characters as they drift, murder, and philosophize.
The main character, Zebulon, drifts throughout most of the novel with almost no direction. At first this is fine, as the dream-like language and the surrealistic encounters with healers and oracles and second-seers is enough to carry the novel. However, after a significant middle-section, devoted to Zebulon’s travel with a Russian count and his slave/wife, the story seems to meander, as if Wurlitzer had an abundance of scenes floating around in his head and no place to put them.
Apparently The Drop Edge of Yonder is based on Wurlitzer’s unproduced screenplay Zebulon, which makes sense, considering that most chapters are short and composed mostly of either dialogue or action. The descriptive passages in the book are beautiful, providing a sense of place, and of the characters’ perceptions of place and consciousness; the book could benefit from more description, a slower pace, more room to breathe.
That said, The Drop Edge of Yonder is absolutely worth a read. Wurlitzer has gained cult status because he writes as no one else does—philosophically, surrealistically, and violently. It’s like Cormac McCarthy on hallucinogens. In one scene, as Zebulon begins to drift drunkenly into a dream-state during a game of cards, in which all things look familiar and unified, Wurlitzer states, “He was dimly aware that he might be in trouble because winning and losing no longer seemed to matter, as if the results had already been decided.” Wurlitzer presents the frontier as a land of individualistic competition, and yet simultaneously as a place where life is uncontrollable, untamable, and surrendered to fate. The characters are in a constant struggle for control over their own lives; and it always seems just out of reach.
Review by Caleb Murray, Indigo Editing, LLC, originally posted at Seeing Indigo.
ISBN: 9780976389552
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Pub Date: April 2008
Paperback: $15.00
Of course, there’s plenty of senseless violence, thievery, sex, gambling, and drinking to satisfy anyone pining after America’s glorious past, but from the very beginning the novel sets out to do something different—to give us a sense of the underlying worldviews that come with living in a barren, untamed landscape. The epigraph, taken from the Lankavatara Sutra, one of the ancient Buddhist texts, seems just as much a warning as a guide for readers: “Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise.” This is true not only for the events that take place in the novel, but also for the characters as they drift, murder, and philosophize.
The main character, Zebulon, drifts throughout most of the novel with almost no direction. At first this is fine, as the dream-like language and the surrealistic encounters with healers and oracles and second-seers is enough to carry the novel. However, after a significant middle-section, devoted to Zebulon’s travel with a Russian count and his slave/wife, the story seems to meander, as if Wurlitzer had an abundance of scenes floating around in his head and no place to put them.
Apparently The Drop Edge of Yonder is based on Wurlitzer’s unproduced screenplay Zebulon, which makes sense, considering that most chapters are short and composed mostly of either dialogue or action. The descriptive passages in the book are beautiful, providing a sense of place, and of the characters’ perceptions of place and consciousness; the book could benefit from more description, a slower pace, more room to breathe.
That said, The Drop Edge of Yonder is absolutely worth a read. Wurlitzer has gained cult status because he writes as no one else does—philosophically, surrealistically, and violently. It’s like Cormac McCarthy on hallucinogens. In one scene, as Zebulon begins to drift drunkenly into a dream-state during a game of cards, in which all things look familiar and unified, Wurlitzer states, “He was dimly aware that he might be in trouble because winning and losing no longer seemed to matter, as if the results had already been decided.” Wurlitzer presents the frontier as a land of individualistic competition, and yet simultaneously as a place where life is uncontrollable, untamable, and surrendered to fate. The characters are in a constant struggle for control over their own lives; and it always seems just out of reach.
Review by Caleb Murray, Indigo Editing, LLC, originally posted at Seeing Indigo.
ISBN: 9780976389552
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Pub Date: April 2008
Paperback: $15.00
October 16, 2012
Ein Western. Gut - ich bin kein Fan des Genres. Und nach "Zebulon" werde ich es wohl auch nicht mehr werden...
Der Nicht-Held / Held des mystischen Dramas ist Zebulon Shook, ein Mann mit nur einem Prinzip: Kein Prinzip zu haben. Gleich zu Beginn lernen wir seinen einzigen Charakterzug näher kennen und dürfen dabei sein, wenn er sexuell mit einer Frau eines Freundes aktiv wird, was denn auch gleich mit gröbsten Brutalitäten, zwei Toten und einem Fluch endet, der das "Mystery"-Element in den Western bringt.
Zebulon reist durch die Welt, kann sich aber nicht entscheiden, ob er noch lebt oder bereits tot ist. Analog dazu möchte man meinen, dass der Leser sich nicht entscheiden kann, ob er noch wach ist oder schon schläft - doch die immer wieder eingestreuten plötzlichen Szenen-Wechseln oder logischen Unwegbarkeiten halten einen zumindest in sofern auf Trab, als man sich immer wieder fragen muss: "Hä? Hab' ich was verpennt?".
So besteht ein Gutteil der Story auf flüchtigen Begegnungen mit zwielichtigen Charakteren, die wie ein Gummiband vom Protagonisten weg gespannt werden und gelegentlich zu selbigem zurück schnalzen. Terry Pratchetts Theorie, dass es viele Menschen aber nur wenig Personen gibt, hat kaum je genauer ins Schwarze getroffen als in diesem Machwerk - denn alle Figuren sind aus dem gleichen Holz geschnitzt. Die Dialoge zwischen Ihnen wirken so konstruiert, dass man sie ab und an mit verbalem Modellbau verwechseln könnte.
Ein wesentliches Stilmittel der Interaktion zwischen ihnen ist es, sich zu widersprechen und im Anschluss aufeinander zu schießen - wobei nicht ganz klar ist wer auf wen schießt, denn immer wieder wacht der Antiheld am Ende auf und kann sich an nichts mehr erinnern.
Nein, ehrlich. Selten etwas derart plumpes gelesen.
Ich möchte den Roman jedem empfehlen, der sich die Gehirnwindungen 'mal ordentlich verknoten möchte. Wer in einer Geschichte auf Erzählung, Struktur, verständliche Handlung wert legt, der sollte tunlichst die Finger davon lassen.
Der Nicht-Held / Held des mystischen Dramas ist Zebulon Shook, ein Mann mit nur einem Prinzip: Kein Prinzip zu haben. Gleich zu Beginn lernen wir seinen einzigen Charakterzug näher kennen und dürfen dabei sein, wenn er sexuell mit einer Frau eines Freundes aktiv wird, was denn auch gleich mit gröbsten Brutalitäten, zwei Toten und einem Fluch endet, der das "Mystery"-Element in den Western bringt.
Zebulon reist durch die Welt, kann sich aber nicht entscheiden, ob er noch lebt oder bereits tot ist. Analog dazu möchte man meinen, dass der Leser sich nicht entscheiden kann, ob er noch wach ist oder schon schläft - doch die immer wieder eingestreuten plötzlichen Szenen-Wechseln oder logischen Unwegbarkeiten halten einen zumindest in sofern auf Trab, als man sich immer wieder fragen muss: "Hä? Hab' ich was verpennt?".
So besteht ein Gutteil der Story auf flüchtigen Begegnungen mit zwielichtigen Charakteren, die wie ein Gummiband vom Protagonisten weg gespannt werden und gelegentlich zu selbigem zurück schnalzen. Terry Pratchetts Theorie, dass es viele Menschen aber nur wenig Personen gibt, hat kaum je genauer ins Schwarze getroffen als in diesem Machwerk - denn alle Figuren sind aus dem gleichen Holz geschnitzt. Die Dialoge zwischen Ihnen wirken so konstruiert, dass man sie ab und an mit verbalem Modellbau verwechseln könnte.
Ein wesentliches Stilmittel der Interaktion zwischen ihnen ist es, sich zu widersprechen und im Anschluss aufeinander zu schießen - wobei nicht ganz klar ist wer auf wen schießt, denn immer wieder wacht der Antiheld am Ende auf und kann sich an nichts mehr erinnern.
Nein, ehrlich. Selten etwas derart plumpes gelesen.
Ich möchte den Roman jedem empfehlen, der sich die Gehirnwindungen 'mal ordentlich verknoten möchte. Wer in einer Geschichte auf Erzählung, Struktur, verständliche Handlung wert legt, der sollte tunlichst die Finger davon lassen.
October 20, 2011
the winter that zebulon set his traps along the gila river had been colder than any he had experienced, leaving him with two frostbitten toes, an arrow wound in his shoulder from a crow war party, and, to top it all off, the unexpected arrival of two frozen figures stumbling more dead than alive into his cabin in the middle of a spring blizzard.
1st sentence in the drop edge of yonder
never read any by wurlitzer...good name, hey? sounds musickal...
reading this one in conjunction with williams's butcher's crossing so i'm thinking fun times.
onward and upward. wagon ho!
finished...on the Kindle...this story is okay...didn't blow me away and didn't bore me to tears. for the most, it follows zebulon shook from one part of the country, south to panama, back up the other coast to san francisco...
on more than one occasion there's this line about being caught between worlds....that includes zebulon and i spose all he comes into contact with...caught between worlds...
more than once, the story seems like a dream although it is clearly not...how to explain?...too, remember the movie blazing saddles?...there's an almost comedic element running throughout...or not almost, but there is...
a western i spose, but a strange western as the times are changing in the story...there's a multitude of personality and nationality that meet up and tangle here....caught between worlds....also, a sense of repetition...
some sort of karmic harmonick...like these things were in the cards, which there is also a lot of here. card playing....playing w/the queen of hearts...you know that ain't really smart...
1st sentence in the drop edge of yonder
never read any by wurlitzer...good name, hey? sounds musickal...
reading this one in conjunction with williams's butcher's crossing so i'm thinking fun times.
onward and upward. wagon ho!
finished...on the Kindle...this story is okay...didn't blow me away and didn't bore me to tears. for the most, it follows zebulon shook from one part of the country, south to panama, back up the other coast to san francisco...
on more than one occasion there's this line about being caught between worlds....that includes zebulon and i spose all he comes into contact with...caught between worlds...
more than once, the story seems like a dream although it is clearly not...how to explain?...too, remember the movie blazing saddles?...there's an almost comedic element running throughout...or not almost, but there is...
a western i spose, but a strange western as the times are changing in the story...there's a multitude of personality and nationality that meet up and tangle here....caught between worlds....also, a sense of repetition...
some sort of karmic harmonick...like these things were in the cards, which there is also a lot of here. card playing....playing w/the queen of hearts...you know that ain't really smart...
January 8, 2019
DUE STELLE E MEZZA
Libro di frontiera atipico, a tratti lisergico.
Molto bene la prima metà, molto MENO bene la seconda, si trascina e fa confusione.
Cit.
Libro di frontiera atipico, a tratti lisergico.
Molto bene la prima metà, molto MENO bene la seconda, si trascina e fa confusione.
Cit.
November 22, 2017
I suspect that when the movie THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY screened in 1903 it would hardly have dawned on anyone to address the myth of the American West as myth. It was still Fresh. And the 19th century didn't exactly cleanly conclude in 1900. But by the time THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER appeared in 2007, the American West was steadfastly a mythical realm. It would then rightfully not provoke much surprise that Rudolph Wurlitzer's waaaay-beyond-concerns-of-revisionism Western is a feverish picaresque cavalcade owing more to Homer and Dante than it does Voltaire. As far as the movies etc. go we might want to at this point address the Sam Shepard blurb on the back of the Two Dollar Radio: "It's like Sam Beckett meets THE SEARCHERS," quoth this other Sam (cowboy laureate par excellence). Well, Beckett is definitely a prime point of reference / reverence for addressing Rudy. There is that whole involvement w/ the meaninglessness of existence mused upon w/ minimalist, elegant, mirthless humour. But THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER is way meatier than Wurlitzer's counterculture novels or yore. There is less cowboy Beckett here than there was in NOG and (especially) FLATS. What about THE SEARCHERS? I can scarcely detect the elegiac, romantic (if troubled) John Ford touch here. We are more obviously in Sam Peckinpah country (perhaps not surprising seeing as Wurlitzer once upon a time provided Mr. Peckinpah w/ one hell of a screenplay). Peckinpah's universe is outlaw-centric, pretty as a ripple in a slop pail, morally blighted, appalled by authority in all its manifestations, and sympathetic to the marginals. What Wurlitzer herein brings to that universe is opiated perception, hyped-up plotting, big spiritual game, and mighty prose (that doesn't show off). This is a book that finds its true ethos in both Eastern mysticism (the book begins w/ an epigraph from the Lankavatara sutra) and aboriginal spirituality. Our heroes wander between the worlds, between life and death, perhaps in their own dreams, perhaps in the dreams of someone else. Though it is not stated outright, it is clear that they are firmly beholden to destiny. Not the preordination circumscribed by a deity, but cold, haunted, literally curs'd inevitability. The book's religion is that expressed openly by its hero Zebulon: Wakan Tanka, the Lakota way of life. In this mystical realm reality in neither reality nor not-reality, the self is mere localized expression of the manifold, and one's identity is (as Wurlitzer writes most succintly / poetically): "a confusion of voices that sounded like marbles poured over a dishpan." It will presumably surprise nobody to hear that aside from the insane amount of Event that occurs in this novel, the commanding pleasure is probably to be found in the dialogue. This is dialogue that both is painstakingly redolent of the era and somehow appropriately not. Either way, and both ways, it definitely sings. This is a very fine late work (emerging at the other end of a protracted gap). It builds to orgasm, then appears to terminate in longueurs and irresolution, only to finally conclude w/ a paragraph that nailed me to the fucking wall.
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