Slow Fade

Overview

With a geography as diverse as the streets of Beverly Hills and the charnel grounds of India, a Mexican beach resort and the Russian Tea Room in New York City, this is a spare, eloquent, and deeply informed novel about the world of the movies. It is a profound and utterly convincing portrait of a man whose career and life has been devoted to the manipulation of images—on the screen and at the conference table, with actors and technicians—and the story of how, at the age of 71, he tries to divest himself of illusions and make peace with his demons and his past.

Reviews

“The return of Slow Fade is a fine thing. It's Rudy Wurlitzer's greatest work of fiction . . . and one of the best American books there is.” —Alex Cox, director, Repo Man and Sid & Nancy

“Slow Fade comes out of the space between real life and the movies and closes it up for good. A great book: beautiful, funny, and dangerous.” —Michael Herr, screenwriter, Full Metal Jacket

“If you splice Rudy Wurlitzer's Slow Fade to his other four novels, they become a beautiful quintet, never losing their miraculous beat.” —Robert Downey, director, Hugo Pool and Putney Swope

“Slow Fade may be the most traditional of Wurlitzer's novels, and the time-honored pleasures of the novel are here in abundance: a twisting and turning story about fathers and sons, power and poverty, violence and fate. Some may read it as a 'roman a clef' about certain notorious Hollywood players, but that seems rather secondary to me. Wurlitzer has fashioned a rare and wonderful thing—a deeply spiritual novel, without one whiff of incense or candle wax.” —Scott Spencer, author, Endless Love and Waking the Dead

Author Biography

Rudolph Wurlitzer is the screenwriter of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Two-Lane Blacktop. He is also the author of the novels Flats, Nog, Quake, and The Drop Edge of Yonder, and the travel diary Hard Travel to Sacred Places. He lives in Hudson, New York.