I am surprised by the word psychedelic. João Gilberto Noll does not accept realism in a straightforward way, but I am more inclined to call Quiet Creature a realist text than I am to call it a psychedelic one. The transcendent aspect of the psychedelic experience is totally absent.
In the quiet hours when we are alone and there is nobody to tell us what fine fellows we are, we come sometimes upon a moment in which we wonder, not how much money we are earning, nor how famous we have become, but what good we are doing.
The Force which has to be called down from above must be pure and quiet because there are all kinds of forces - it will not do to call them all. And one must have sincerity.
Dreamlike sequencing is perhaps one of João Gilberto Noll's most remarkable triumphs in Quiet Creature on the Corner. I translated the novel and still it remains a mystery as to how exactly how this works. Noll thinks more like an experimental filmmaker than a novelist.