Gunslinger
Select Format
Select Condition 
Book Overview
Fiftieth Anniversary Edition "Gunslinger is a fundamental American masterpiece."---Thomas McGuane This fiftieth anniversary edition commemorates Edward Dorn's masterpiece, Gunslinger, a comic, anti-epic critique of American capitalism that still resonates today. Set in the American West, the Gunslinger, his talking horse Claude L vi-Strauss, a saloon madam named Lil, and the narrator called "I" set out in search of the billionaire Howard Hughes. As they travel along the Rio Grande to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and finally on to Colorado, they are joined by a whole host of colorful characters: Dr. Jean Flamboyant, Kool Everything, and Taco Desoxin and his partner Tonto Pronto. During their adventures and hijinks, as captured in Dorn's multilayered, absurd, and postmodern voice, they joke and smoke their way through debates about the meaning of existence. Put simply, Gunslinger is an American classic. In a new foreword Marjorie Perloff discusses Gunslinger's continued relevance to contemporary politics. This new edition also includes a critical essay by Michael Davidson and Charles Olson's idiosyncratic "Bibliography on America for Ed Dorn," which he wrote to provide guidance for Dorn's study of, and writing about, the American West.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1478000856
ISBN13:9781478000853
Release Date:September 2018
Publisher:Duke University Press
Length:280 Pages
Weight:0.75 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.7" x 8.7"
Grade Range:Grade 11 to Postsecondary
Customer Reviews
5 ratings
The Postmodern Epic Poem
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 17 years ago
The epic is conceivably the endpoint of the modernist implosion into premodern aesthetics and anti-formal/anti-perspectival tribal art. Whether that makes GUNSLINGER modern, postmodern, or premodern is anyone's guess, 5 of 8 dentists prefer "postmodern." The book smears semantics and Heidegger and cocaine into a psychedelic, post-industrial dreamscape. Ed Dorn studied an americanized version of "psychogeography" at the Black Mountain College with Charles Olson and Robert Creely which contributed to the development of his slow-acid-laced-western-sound poetry aesthetic: "I have no wish to continue my debate with men, my mare lathers with tedium, her hooves are dry. Look, they are covered with the alkali of the enormous space between here and formerly."(Gunglinger, Book 1). This should be read with some cigars and cactus and MM's cover of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show's "Get My Rocks Off" and Beck's parenthetical "Lazy Flies" ("The skin of a robot vibrates with pleasure, Matrons and gigolos Carouse in the parlor").
John Bunyan in a showdown with Paul Bunyan
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
An epic poem so richly filled with wisdom, wordplay & laughs that a little of it is often enough. Dorn's characters - who are derived from both John Bunyan & Paul Bunyan - wander through a landscape that feels like a spaghetti western existing inside a Star Trek wormhole. All of the rituals of the Great American Desert are honored & performed in ways that surprise & delight. The cinematography is nonpareil. Does the Zlinger fall in love with Lil? Does he ride off into the Sunset of Happy Trails? Does Walter Brennan make a cameo appearance? Read on, fellow pilgrims, read on. Bob Rixon
Masterpiece
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
The late Ed Dorn wrote a masterpiece with "Gunslinger", an anti-epic poem that prefigures many post-modern gestures from its 60s era starting point. Funny, cartoonish, erudite to the extreme, it also locates a tuned lyricism in the Western vernaculars that Dorn uses: the metaphysical aspect of our legends, the sheer questing for answers as Euro-Americans come treading closer to a West coast that will stop them and force them to settle and create lives from dust and ingenuity, comes alive in way that never escapes the zaniness of Dorns' narrating inquiry into the nature of the search.A masterpiece
The author is a tightrope walker on mescaline.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
Dorn has crafted a hysterical political allegory. Swift would've busted a gut at his work.
Dusty fun rides a talking horse, with occasional music
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
READ IT!
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
