November 25th, 2009 / 12:53 pm
Author Spotlight

Rudy Wilson’s The Red Truck

redtruckVery excited last night by an email from Peter Markus, who mentioned that the long-difficult-to-drum-up novel The Red Truck by Rudy Wilson has just been reprinted by Ravenna Press, along with another new book by Mr. Wilson. I seriously almost paid a heftier tag a week or two ago when I was about to buy the original version on Amazon used, but now the always excellent Ravenna has solved that problem.

If you haven’t read Rudy Wilson before, via this novel or in issues of Unsaid or elsewhere, here’s Peter on why this means you should be excited too:

The Red Truck is one of those late-80s Knopf books edited by Lish that I found remaindered one day in some TV appliance-warehouse-turned-bookshop that is now a place that sells tires. I took it home and immediately could feel the sensation of something new running through my hands. I think it’s a brilliant book, a one of a kind book, a book that wouldn’t have been made into a book had it not found its way into Gordon’s hands. I think the story goes behind it that Lish cut the manuscript in half (sort of what he did to Barry Hannah’s revved up Ray). I suspect what Lish did was find the core of Rudy’s Red Truck and cut away much of what a much younger Wilson thought was needed to hold the story together. For me it’s a novel that is pure hallucination and is the kind of book that I return to again and again in order to recapture that initial rush that language in its purest, most musical form can offer to us. Each time that I do Rudy’s sentences unglue me and then put me back together in new ways. I let my sister read The Red Truck, some years ago, and when she did she ended up having a major seizure. The effect that the book had on my sis is what we all want from our work: sentences that take hold of the brain and seize it up, unhinge us from the world around us, and make the body of us do some fucked-up sort of pogo to a music that Wilson’s song makes us hear inside our own heads. The Red Truck by Rudy Wilson is the realest of deals. You can get it now from Ravenna Press along with a brand new book of short fiction by Wilson called Sonja’s Blues. And while you’re loitering around at the Ravenna website, do yourself a third favor and nab Norman Lock’s The Long Rowing Unto Morning, an equally dreamy and necessary book. Thanks for listening.

You can pick up the book, also available in a package deal with Wilson’s Sonja’s Blue, now from Ravenna Press.

Now we just need all those other Knopf gems to get the same treatment…

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32 Comments

  1. davidpeak

      somebody needs to list a lish-edited primer–i’m still pretty fresh in his world and really loved ray, want to expand on that

  2. davidpeak

      somebody needs to list a lish-edited primer–i’m still pretty fresh in his world and really loved ray, want to expand on that

  3. davidpeak

      somebody needs to list a lish-edited primer–i’m still pretty fresh in his world and really loved ray, want to expand on that

  4. sasha fletcher

      dad says he saw you at the mall by ken sparling.

  5. sasha fletcher

      dad says he saw you at the mall by ken sparling.

  6. sasha fletcher

      dad says he saw you at the mall by ken sparling.

  7. davidpeak

      thank you more please i am hungry

  8. davidpeak

      thank you more please i am hungry

  9. davidpeak

      thank you more please i am hungry

  10. Blake Butler

      i have a pretty massive compendium i’ve written up, i’ll post it sometime soon

  11. Blake Butler

      i have a pretty massive compendium i’ve written up, i’ll post it sometime soon

  12. Blake Butler

      i have a pretty massive compendium i’ve written up, i’ll post it sometime soon

  13. davidpeak

      thanks, b

  14. davidpeak

      thanks, b

  15. davidpeak

      thanks, b

  16. gene

      fuck you man. just when i tell myself i’m going to take a break buying shit. last joints being cronopios and famas by cortazar, babyfuckers by allemann, and for those whom god has blessed with fingers by way of amazon canada. fuck.

  17. gene

      fuck you man. just when i tell myself i’m going to take a break buying shit. last joints being cronopios and famas by cortazar, babyfuckers by allemann, and for those whom god has blessed with fingers by way of amazon canada. fuck.

  18. gene

      fuck you man. just when i tell myself i’m going to take a break buying shit. last joints being cronopios and famas by cortazar, babyfuckers by allemann, and for those whom god has blessed with fingers by way of amazon canada. fuck.

  19. mike

      Call me shallow, but is that really the cover? Cringe.

  20. mike

      Call me shallow, but is that really the cover? Cringe.

  21. mike

      Call me shallow, but is that really the cover? Cringe.

  22. KevinS

      Great idea.

  23. KevinS

      Great idea.

  24. KevinS

      I agree with you, Mike. The book sounds cool but that cover is uggghhhh.

  25. KevinS

      I agree with you, Mike. The book sounds cool but that cover is uggghhhh.

  26. KevinS

      Great idea.

  27. KevinS

      I agree with you, Mike. The book sounds cool but that cover is uggghhhh.

  28. mike

      iawtc

  29. mike

      iawtc

  30. mike

      iawtc

  31. HTMLGIANT / Alec Niedenthal interviews Rudy Wilson

      […] have Blake’s original post on the book, and Peter Markus’s write-up on the same, to thank for running me into Rudy Wilson’s […]

  32. Gordon Lish Edited This

      […] at HTML Giant, Peter Markus states that he found The Red Truck as a remainder as well (as did Gary Lutz): The Red […]