In one sense [Quake is] really an old fashioned adventure story where you see the hero—narrator—going through many changes, though without being changed; except in the end he loses touch even with language. We are brought into the company of an assortment of people in Los Angeles at the Tropicana Motel, who are either in shock or hysterical because suddenly the earth is falling to pieces. If this represents the collapse of anything, let's hope it also represents the collapse of the more artificial aspects of the conventional novel. By artificial, I mean such things as sentimental character development or the innocent but silly attempt to imitate Life as We Know It. No such thing is possible and Wurlitzer knows it…. In Quake we get, not a novel of distinct characters, but one made up of human images put together in a collage nightmare, nonentities, who...