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The Million-year Centipede
Wakelin, frontman of seminal rock group The Hinge, once wrote a poem so prophetic that to ignore its wisdom is to doom yourself to drown in blood. After realizing the power of his words he faked his own death. Now one obsessed fan is tracking Wakelin down...can he be found before it's too late?
- GenresBizarro Fiction
128 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2007
42 people want to read
About the author
Eckhard Gerdes
45 books65 followersEckhard Gerdes is an American-born novelist & editor. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He's author of fifteen published books of fiction:
Projections ['86 Depth Charge] a novella
Ring in a River ['92 Depth Charge] a novel
Truly Fine Citizen ['89 Highlander] a novel
Cistern Tawdry ['02 Fugue State] a novel
Przewalski's Horse ['06 Red Hen] a novel
The Million-Year Centipede, or, Liquid Structures ['07 Raw Dog Screaming] a novel
Nin & Nan ['08 Bizarro] a novella
My Landlady the Lobotomist ['08 Raw Dog Screaming] a novel
The Unwelcome Guest and Nin and Nan ['10 Enigmatic Ink] two novellas
Hugh Moore ['10 Civil Coping Mechanisms, '15 Heroinum] a novel
Three Psychedelic Novellas ['12 Enigmatic Ink] three novellas
The Sylvia Plath Cookbook: A Satire ['12 Sugar Glider] a long short story
White Bungalows ['15 Dirt Heart Pharmacy ] a novel
Marco & Iarlaith ['18 Black Scat] a novel in flash fiction
The Pissers'Theatre ['21 Black Scat] a novel
two volumes of poetry:
23 Skidoo! 23 Form-Fitting Poems ['13 Finishing Line]
Blues for Youse ['15 ATTOHO]
a play:
'S A Bird ['13 Black Scat]
a work of creative nonfiction
How to Read ['14 Guide Dog]
His work reflects experimental technique, sometimes ignoring time, space, or causality in the service of stories of individuals struggling to transcend fear & limitation. His recent work has been associated with the Bizarro Fiction movement, of which he is one of the leading proponents.
Reviews of his work have appeared in Rain Taxi, Notre Dame Review, Dream People, Review of Contemporary Fiction & elsewhere.
Eckhard Gerdes is the editor of The Journal of Experimental Fiction, issues of which are usually Festschrifts on a single writer (e.g. John Barth, Raymond Federman, Harold Jaffe). He has also written on modern & post-modern literature for Review of Contemporary Fiction, Hyde Park Review of Books & other magazines.
Gerdes has been awarded an &NOW Award for Innovative Fiction and has twice been the recipient of the Richard Pike Bissell Creative Writing Award for excerpts from Przewalski's Horse. The Million-Year Centipede was selected as one of the top ten mainstream novels of 2007 in the annual Preditors & Editors Readers Poll. He has also been a finalist for both the Starcherone & the Blatt fiction prizes for his unpublished manuscript White Bungalows. For Cistern Tawdry Gerdes was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award in the Fiction Category. He lives near Chicago. He has three children and five grandchildren.
He's author of fifteen published books of fiction:
Projections ['86 Depth Charge] a novella
Ring in a River ['92 Depth Charge] a novel
Truly Fine Citizen ['89 Highlander] a novel
Cistern Tawdry ['02 Fugue State] a novel
Przewalski's Horse ['06 Red Hen] a novel
The Million-Year Centipede, or, Liquid Structures ['07 Raw Dog Screaming] a novel
Nin & Nan ['08 Bizarro] a novella
My Landlady the Lobotomist ['08 Raw Dog Screaming] a novel
The Unwelcome Guest and Nin and Nan ['10 Enigmatic Ink] two novellas
Hugh Moore ['10 Civil Coping Mechanisms, '15 Heroinum] a novel
Three Psychedelic Novellas ['12 Enigmatic Ink] three novellas
The Sylvia Plath Cookbook: A Satire ['12 Sugar Glider] a long short story
White Bungalows ['15 Dirt Heart Pharmacy ] a novel
Marco & Iarlaith ['18 Black Scat] a novel in flash fiction
The Pissers'Theatre ['21 Black Scat] a novel
two volumes of poetry:
23 Skidoo! 23 Form-Fitting Poems ['13 Finishing Line]
Blues for Youse ['15 ATTOHO]
a play:
'S A Bird ['13 Black Scat]
a work of creative nonfiction
How to Read ['14 Guide Dog]
His work reflects experimental technique, sometimes ignoring time, space, or causality in the service of stories of individuals struggling to transcend fear & limitation. His recent work has been associated with the Bizarro Fiction movement, of which he is one of the leading proponents.
Reviews of his work have appeared in Rain Taxi, Notre Dame Review, Dream People, Review of Contemporary Fiction & elsewhere.
Eckhard Gerdes is the editor of The Journal of Experimental Fiction, issues of which are usually Festschrifts on a single writer (e.g. John Barth, Raymond Federman, Harold Jaffe). He has also written on modern & post-modern literature for Review of Contemporary Fiction, Hyde Park Review of Books & other magazines.
Gerdes has been awarded an &NOW Award for Innovative Fiction and has twice been the recipient of the Richard Pike Bissell Creative Writing Award for excerpts from Przewalski's Horse. The Million-Year Centipede was selected as one of the top ten mainstream novels of 2007 in the annual Preditors & Editors Readers Poll. He has also been a finalist for both the Starcherone & the Blatt fiction prizes for his unpublished manuscript White Bungalows. For Cistern Tawdry Gerdes was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award in the Fiction Category. He lives near Chicago. He has three children and five grandchildren.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 2, 2012
Hero worship is so overrated. Especially when your heroes don't want to be worshiped, rare though that might be in today's culture of finely-tuned and carefully produced “reality” entertainment. There are still a few artists of varying disciplines that do what they love for their own passion, not for the adoration of strangers.
In his first novel “The Million-Year Centipede” (the first one he wrote, not the first published) Eckhard Gerdes takes a semi-autobiographical approach to fiction, as explained in his introduction, and presents a haunting tale of that all-too-American quest of connecting to our celebrities in a tangible way. Not by collecting trinkets or paraphernalia, but through face-to-face contact.
This type of journey is a problem for Wakelin, former frontman for the band The Hinge. He carries a burden in the form of prophecy so overwhelming that eventually the lines between reality and unreality become blurred for him. He leaves the world behind, faking his death. But one fan won't just let him fade into the background. He knows Wakelin is still out there, heard the message between messages in The Hinge's lyrics. Will this fan find Wakelin? Or something far more terrible?
While it shines brightly with thinly-veiled caricatures of real-world things, Mr. Gerdes presents a wonderful work of fiction that explores the strangeness found in fame, the fallacy of celebrity idols, and getting exactly what you wished for. “Centipede” is brief but deep, and touches the part of every human that wants for that fleeting brush with their fifteen minutes.
Will you seek out Wakelin now? Are you afraid of what you may find? Grab this novel and take the journey yourself. It is guaranteed to be enlightening.
In his first novel “The Million-Year Centipede” (the first one he wrote, not the first published) Eckhard Gerdes takes a semi-autobiographical approach to fiction, as explained in his introduction, and presents a haunting tale of that all-too-American quest of connecting to our celebrities in a tangible way. Not by collecting trinkets or paraphernalia, but through face-to-face contact.
This type of journey is a problem for Wakelin, former frontman for the band The Hinge. He carries a burden in the form of prophecy so overwhelming that eventually the lines between reality and unreality become blurred for him. He leaves the world behind, faking his death. But one fan won't just let him fade into the background. He knows Wakelin is still out there, heard the message between messages in The Hinge's lyrics. Will this fan find Wakelin? Or something far more terrible?
While it shines brightly with thinly-veiled caricatures of real-world things, Mr. Gerdes presents a wonderful work of fiction that explores the strangeness found in fame, the fallacy of celebrity idols, and getting exactly what you wished for. “Centipede” is brief but deep, and touches the part of every human that wants for that fleeting brush with their fifteen minutes.
Will you seek out Wakelin now? Are you afraid of what you may find? Grab this novel and take the journey yourself. It is guaranteed to be enlightening.
Displaying 1 of 1 review