Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance
- $13.95 PaperbackISBN: 978-1-935738-40-4
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Life in Dreamfield, Indiana, is a daily harangue of pigs, cornfields, pigs, fast food joints, pigs, Dollar Stores, motorcycles, pigs, and good old-fashioned Amerikan redneckery. The decidedly estranged yet complacent occupants of this proverbial smalltown go about their business like geriatrics in a casino … until their business is interrupted by a sinister gang of outsiders. Angry, slick-talking, and ultraviolent to the core, Samson Thataway and the Fuming Garcias commit art-for-art’s-sake in the form of hideous, unmotivated serial killings. When an unsuspecting everyman’s wife is murdered by the throng, it is up to Felix Soandso to avenge her death and return Dreamfield to its natural state of absurdity.
What They’re Saying About Peckinpah
“Surreal, ultraviolent, gruesome, unique, and so full of references that getting all of them would be a challenge for anyone, Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance is a must-read for anyone who likes their fiction smart, fast, and dangerous.”
—Spinetingler Magazine
“Filmstrip inserted into the projector of the subconscious, the raw violence of a land where law has been murdered for the sake of art; “Peckinpah” is a beautiful Leone-Tarantino hybrid that might be a glimpse into the lingering fantasies—or nightmares—of artistic vision desensitized and transfigured by shades of blood in the glare of a rising sun.”
—Vincenzo’s Zombie Horror
“A bludgeoning celluloid rush of language and ideas served from an action-painter’s bucket of fluorescent spatter, Peckinpah is an incendiary gem and very probably the most extraordinary new novel you will read this year.”
—Alan Moore, author of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
“D. Harlan Wilson’s latest romp of a book, Peckinpah: An Ultravoilent Romance, proves that Wilson is either a genius or a madman, in all likelihood a crazed hybrid of both. A book that will delight Wilson’s fans and mortally shock the uninitiated.”
—Eric Miles Williamson, author of Welcome to Oakland and East Bay Grease
“Peckinpah is so much more than a tribute to legendary cinematic director, Sam Peckinpah—it stands on its own as a unique work of art. The narrative purposely shifts voice, changes pace, hits the reader with rapid-fire snorts of ultraviolence and absurdity. At times it comes across as social commentary, warning us of the dangers of our fascination with violence. At other times, Wilson seems to lay on the violence so thick as though it were some therapeutic way of purging our craving for violence through repulsion. No matter the angle, Wilson succeeds in presenting this dark, tragic comedy … that takes place in a world where the soap opera As the World Turns has been re-titled The World has Turned to Celluloid as though we were watching ourselves via spliced celluloid edited by a crazed nihilistic loner … The rummy writing style compliments the whacked out content in this brainy masterpiece.”
—Dark Recesses
“Wilson’s surreal view of a midwestern town called Dreamfield features the author’s trademark prose, which goes from violent to hysterical to bizarre—sometimes within the same sentence … all the while leaving behind witty commentary and observances on the rural lifestyle.
—Horror Fiction Review
“Wilson presents the story in rapid-fire bursts of images in a literary equivalent of the meth addict MTV style of movie editing … There are moments of absolute brilliance to be found here. The usually overwrought wordplay occasionally reaches levels of the sublime.”
—HorrorNews.net
“Peckinpah is written with the frenetic pace of a schizoid-savant cranked on dexedrine driving an alcohol fueled funny car across the Nevada salt flats while attempting to make a collage out of pornography, In Touch magazine and stills from 30 years of ultraviolent horror and western films. This … burst of excess teems with sensual text that drips like the sweat off the back of a pervert in a Bangkok whorehouse. Words are strung together like the infinite mass of billboards that run and dot the highways and by-ways of America and we pass them in picoseconds hardly absorbing much more than a greasy smile across the lips of a buxom young co-ed. For Wilson, it’s A-more-ica. A place of filth and dollar stores and “8lb bowel movements.” … In the end, the book is an acid soaked ride through America’s filthy billboard mass consumption heartlands on the back of a souped up chainsaw. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in literature on the edge, taking up space usually left for drunken angry desperate filmmakers of the late 1970s and early 80s.”
—Blunt Force Beating
“A frighteningly talented cultural theorist and writer … D. Harlan Wilson’s latest novel, Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance, is a gore-shock Kafkaesque rampage that clips along like Peckinpah’s trademark editing—alternately slow and fast—and … will likely thrill fans of Peckinpah and those who have never heard of him alike.”
—The Pedestal Magazine
“Wilson weaves words into a brutal tapestry, creating a presence that will remain with you long after you stop reading … An existential love letter to Sam Peckinpah … Strange. Erratic. Captivating.”
—Nightblade
“A fierce, biting talent.”
—Sonar4
“You know that scene in A Clockwork Orange where they have Alex strapped down for ‘treatment’ and he’s forced, unblinking, to witness a barrage of horror and violence that is projected before him while the music of Beethoven blares in the background? This book is like that … in a good way.”
—Shock Totem
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