William Vollmann

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He seems to have written an awful lot of books. I picked up the Rainbow Stories a while ago, but haven't started it; is this a good place to begin? Is he worth beginning with, or not?

toby, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

sterling to thread?

toby, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

God, thanks for reminding me! I bought 'Royal Family' (very big and very expensive) about a month ago, and didn't even remember buying it until seeing this thread! How do you misplace something like that? Because I got high. Maybe I absentmindedly stuck it in the microwave 'just for a second', and no wonder I haven't seen it again because I'm not into 'eating', too arduous a chore between cigarettes. 'Rainbow Stories' is as good a place to start as any, although it's more a collection of unrelated pieces - if you're into 'warts-and-all' this guy is totally beyond shame, he admits to things most people wouldn't tell their shrinks if it would get them off death row. And if he made them up, that's even better, because there's no way these confessions could be remotely considered as 'bragging'. (Being clipped and subsequently humiliated in public by prostitutes in his own neighborhood! Most people would brush that under the carpet)

dave q, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

He tends to bring the "form a cult of personality around MEEEEEE!" thing in a little too much for my taste, & gets carried away by his own prose style. But I admire the pure gush of his language. And I'm really looking forward to reading _Rising Up & Rising Down_, which is supposed to be finally coming out this fall.

Douglas, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I got nothing but admiration for the man (and for The Atlas in particular) but everytime I see a picture of the guy I think "God, what a creep" (which admittedly is better than the "God, what an asshole" response most author pics prompt).

J Blount, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I really wanted to like him for reasons I've forgotten, maybe because he seemed like such a freak. His personal "rescue" of Thai sex slave teens seemed like something beyond charity and surely he must know that. Prose obviously unforced but it's not easy reading, despite the mounds of research he supposedly pours into each novel. I've got 13 Stories About Small Stories or whatever it's called, but never got beyond the first one. Any good?

Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

His prose has gotten less and less convoluted over time, and he's learned to restrain his wild eccentricities into sharp, tight narrative.

Rainbow Stories has some GREAT pieces and a few duds. Same with Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaths, both of which books contain some of his earliest writing. Avoid his first novel (Oh You Bright and Risen Angels). Butterfly Stories and The Rifles best capture what I consider his "mid period" apex where he's not just a big sprawl, but he's still got ambitious scope.

The Atlas has some incredible stories mixed with some okay ones, but is much better as a whole than his other two collections.

Finally, Argall is his most rigorous historic novel and v. absorbing, while The Royal Family seems to be his definitive statement on SF whores which I found quite good though rilly getting a bit unwieldy by the last third.

Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

six months pass...
I know this thread is dead, but I'll pick at the fraying end anyway. I'm nearly finished Rainbow Stories, and I love it. I pretty much wanted to read his work for the same reason Tracer Hand gave above, but I put it off for a long time because I was afraid of being disappointed by his prose, and that would just too bad. I plan on purchasing Atlas next, I guess. What's also too bad is how poorly his books seem to sell. The Barnes & Noble only has these two books on the shelf!

Seth D. Moody, Friday, 10 January 2003 15:00 (twenty-two years ago)

ten months pass...
!!!

etc, Tuesday, 9 December 2003 23:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Just in time for Christmas! Awesome.

adam (adam), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 00:28 (twenty-one years ago)

awww you noticed!

rising up really blew me away by how absorbing it became -- like i feel i need to get into a vollmann "groove" and forget that i'm in the middle of this big weird project, and his prose is better at that than lotsa other writers who either consciously or not call attention to their own shtick.

i mean for a guy with this much shtick he manages to not call attention to it pretty well.

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 04:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I'm in the middle of reading it right now--really absorbing! (And I really liked your piece, Sterling.)

Douglas (Douglas), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 08:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Good article. Makes me urgently want to read this.

dave q, Wednesday, 10 December 2003 10:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I wish it weren't so classy-looking 'cause I know my pit bull will eat it first chance she gets. She eats Richard Powers too.

adam (adam), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 17:21 (twenty-one years ago)

nice article sterling.

dave- what did you think of 'royal family' (if you found it, that is)?

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 17:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I've read Royal Family. It's interesting but very tiring. A lot (A LOT) of really grim, repetitive stuff, dirt & filth, which takes its toll over the 900 or so pages. The end is annoying. I prefer You Bright and Risen Angels, the only Vollman I've read which I really liked.

NA (Nick A.), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 17:40 (twenty-one years ago)

NA explain what you liked about Bright and Risen Angels please. It felt showy and never took off for me, partially coz I was trying to assemble it into a meaningful thing in my head and he kept dragging in all sorts of weird stuff that didn't fit and I'd try to piece it together and it became really big and unweildy, and also the bits that tried to be funny were really not and there was way too much self-angsting?

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Nice piece Sterling -- how long did it take you to read it? That's like a half-year project for me.

Mark (MarkR), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 18:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Um, honestly Sterling, I don't really remember. I read it a couple of years ago, and my memory is shit. But maybe I liked it more because I just "went along for the ride" rather than trying to get anything specific out of it. It was also the first thing I'd read by Vollman, so no real preconceptions.

NA (Nick A.), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

sterling-- I went quickly to a bookstore on my way home to look for some vollmann and I found two of the seven volumes of 'seven dreams'. would that be reasonable as a starting point? could you talk a bit abt this.

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 10 December 2003 21:18 (twenty-one years ago)

um okay like i said above i like The Rifles best out of them, coz its short, powerful, and not fulla his weirder more mystical-like tangents (the one which has that would be The Ice Shirt) but Rifles is the most complex, structurewise flashing between him camping in the arctic, a failed expidition which turned to cannibalism, and the state of native americans in the north today (the best part, i think). The Ice Shirt has some fantastic bits when its' not off and running on weird stuff, as far as vikings and stuff tho in retrospect there's a huge Sigrid Undset cast to those things and in someways it serves as an introduction to her series (The Axe in particular).

Fathers and Crows is sorta between his more compact but structurally weirder stuff and his more straightforward stuff, but if you're interested in Catholocism its the one to get.

Argall is the most straightforward but longest of the bunch. I think its his tightest prose, and feels the most *in* the period.

depends what yr. looking for, i guess.

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:04 (twenty-one years ago)

what do you consider "weird stuff" and what exactly about "weird stuff" makes it such a negative thing, worth avoiding?

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:12 (twenty-one years ago)

he goes into this mytho-poetic mode (big chunks of Bright And Risen, a few bits of Rainbow Stories involving biblical metaphors, the end of Royal Family) where everything becomes some sort of tortured symbol in this cosmic good/evil battle. its not as bad as some of the more bizzare parts of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series, but it has that character.

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:20 (twenty-one years ago)

why is it negative, in your view?

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:27 (twenty-one years ago)

coz its confusing and lame and convoluted but doesn't really go anywhere?

(have you read any vollmann or are you just asking me to expand for the sake of it?)

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:40 (twenty-one years ago)

i mean i dunno if anyone's ever done this sorta thing right -- pynchon only slips into this stuff momentarily, like a glimpse beyond the veil or something some sort of grotesque-inspired vision of the unknowable.

but vollman just sometimes gets *stuck* there and can't leave.

i don't know who else even has the ambition to really try a thing like that though? cormac mccarthy, at times? which i also find miserable.

but vollmann can strike the *right* balance with it too, like the bits on The Recording Angel in The Atlas, or the opening part of Rainbow Stories.

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I have read lots of Vollmann and I am asking you to expand because I don't agree. (For the record the only ones mentioned on the thread that I haven't finished is Argall - got too bored by it - and The Royal Family - haven't attempted it yet.)

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:49 (twenty-one years ago)

well hstencil howabout you tell me WHY you don't agree!!!1

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Beat me to it.

Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:55 (twenty-one years ago)

well Sterling it'd be easier to tell you what I thought if I knew what the hell you're talking about! Even your description above is pretty vague.

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I should say, I think I don't agree, but I am still not really sure.

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 01:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Would anybody like some soda?

Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:03 (twenty-one years ago)

look, I'm not trying to start a fight, just asking him to clarify. I don't see what's so wrong with that since he brought up his dislike of "weird stuff" in the first place.

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Hm. I think I know what he's talking about and I haven't even read Vollmann. (I have read the Dirk Gentley novels and some Pynchon, so.)

Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:07 (twenty-one years ago)

gee, sorry I bothered to ask then!

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah but do you disagree that Vollmann does that (goes into a mytho-poetic mode where all the symbolism is strained in its attempt to tie into a large picture of good vs. evil) or do you just dig that kinda stuff?

Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:09 (twenty-one years ago)

some sort of grotesque-inspired vision of the unknowable.


Lovecraft!

scott seward, Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:15 (twenty-one years ago)

okay realspecificlike -- Scintillant Orange and Yellow Rose in The Rainbow Stories, The Grave of Lost Stories and Gun City in Thirteen Stories, all of You Bright And Risen Angels, the really old stuff in The Atlast in the section around the death of his sister, the end of Ice Shirt!

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:16 (twenty-one years ago)

I think he does different things depending on the circumstance, and his mytho-poeticism (if it's that) can be boring sometimes (at least I thought it was in The Rainbow Stories), but sometimes not. I found his treatment of the Jesuits/whole Ignatius Loyola backstory in Fathers and Crows pretty compelling, and I didn't think anything in The Ice Shirt was too out-of-place or tiresome, either. I mean, what I assume Sterling is talking about is much different from book to book.

Also, I'm sort of surprised (and not) by the hatred for You Bright and Risen Angels, as that's his only book that is stylistically dissimilar from any of his others. I know some people who claim that it's his only good book, for that reason (though I heartily disagree).

Anyway, if asking a question deserves such a beatdown/derision, why should I bother? I was pretty clearly not making fun or trolling, so why get bent out of shape?

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:16 (twenty-one years ago)

(oh yeah scott i stole that bit on the grotesque from some essay i read comparing bits of pynchon to lovecraft like six years ago -- i just saw The Unknowable speaking of which and that movie is camp lovecraft heaven -- have there been any other good adaptations of his stuff? I read lots of him in jr. high because I wanted to find out what the unknowable stuff really was and have it make sense but it never did.
:-(. Only years later did i come to understand how that was sorta the point.)

(stencil the problem just is that it would be really interesting to read why you like that end of the ice-shirt, for example, or why you like Bright And Risen -- which by the way isn't stylistically dissimilar from parts of some of the stuff i mentioned and is also real close thematically to Afghan Picture Show)

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I thought You Bright and Risen Angels was pretty dissimilar as it does not use actual history as a sort of jumping-off-point but rather is about re-writing or re-imagining history entirely. Which is a much different project than, say, Seven Dreams. It is in a way sort of curious as to why he abandoned that style after just one novel, which was probably his most lauded one.

I'd have to re-read The Ice Shirt because I'm blanking on the ending right now, but I don't remember having major problems with it at the time I read it (about 2 years ago, maybe).

hstencil, Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:26 (twenty-one years ago)

here's a list, but if you have never seen the re-animator then go for it.(not that i'm a freak or anything. i probably like the movies and the idea of shapeless bottomless unspeakable evil horror from beneath the depths more than the stories. although the stories are pretty freaky cool. i'm more of a poe man really)

http://www.hplovecraft.com/popcult/moviestv/based.htm

scott seward, Thursday, 11 December 2003 02:38 (twenty-one years ago)

congrats sterl! i will buy this thing as soon as i can afford to

cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 11 December 2003 07:20 (twenty-one years ago)

My mom is getting it for me for Christmas = my mom is awesome.

adam (adam), Thursday, 11 December 2003 07:27 (twenty-one years ago)

thanks sterling.

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 11 December 2003 10:00 (twenty-one years ago)

four months pass...
I'm reading The Rainbow Stories right now, and I really like the first stories, the one about Nebuchadnezzar was too long and drawn out. my favorites though are the ones with the Skinheads, though.

Lesley K., Tuesday, 13 April 2004 18:24 (twenty-one years ago)

four months pass...
Rising Up and Rising Down. Holy mackeral! This guy is ambitious like some sort of 18th Century British man of letters.

Rockist_Scientist (rockist_scientist), Thursday, 9 September 2004 14:06 (twenty years ago)

Oh never mind.

Rockist_Scientist (rockist_scientist), Thursday, 9 September 2004 14:09 (twenty years ago)

Exactly!

You've Got to Pick Up Every Stitch (tracerhand), Thursday, 9 September 2004 14:52 (twenty years ago)

Read the Rainbow Stories last year, liked it a lot. The combination of journalistic observation with stylized po-mo prose was very interesting. Also, it would be unfair to characterize it purely as a stories collection since I think progressing through the whole collection one begins to appreciate the themes and images that repeat.
I'm re-reading the Royal Family right now, after giving up on it last year.

herbert hebert (herbert hebert), Thursday, 9 September 2004 16:09 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...
I'm helping interview Vollmann for a literary journal in a few weeks. I haven't read any of his material recently, but I have read Whores for Gloria, Rainbow and Butterfly Stories, and a couple of the Seven Dreams novels. I think he's a really good writer, but a little long winded and obtuse at times.
Can anyone think of some good questions to ask? Obviously there will be some talk on violence and I'd like to ask about his use of journalistic/historical techniques in his fiction.
Thanks for the input.

wmlynch (wlynch), Thursday, 15 September 2005 03:55 (nineteen years ago)

Anyone?

wmlynch (wlynch), Monday, 19 September 2005 19:17 (nineteen years ago)

two years pass...

poor people

dylannn, Thursday, 17 July 2008 04:06 (sixteen years ago)

two years pass...

No one ever talks about Whores For Gloria.

If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be An Airport, Sunday, 8 May 2011 14:21 (fourteen years ago)

one year passes...

My god, he has published about ten books I hadn't heard about*, since the last time I looked.

*Alas, since reading book reviews is no longer part of my job, I am fairly unaware of what's being published in general.

_Rudipherous_, Sunday, 30 September 2012 23:20 (twelve years ago)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8sMpXDyWvRA/Tbn7AhYvCXI/AAAAAAAAAHg/2V2VZkJd7kU/s1600/william_vollmann2.jpg

set the controls for the heart of the congos (thomp), Sunday, 30 September 2012 23:26 (twelve years ago)

briefly, writing this on my phone without benefit of zing app.

sterlclove got me into vollmann a long time ago. i bought a paperback of rainbow stories and flipped randomly to "yellow rose." i read it and loved it and slowly worked through the rest of it. my love for vollmann is embarrassing (i think i still hate most of his fiction though).

recently. i liked the sad conventional riding toward everywhere. kissing the mask was unexpected and i like to read vollmann writing about femininity, where he has viewpoints i can sympathize with or understand, and writing about other things he doesn't understand at all. imperial was great... mixture of everything vollmann does, amateur ethnography & social history, perfect lyrical writing (the pages on his camping trip are the best writing he's ever done), stunt writing adventures in whorehouses, sympathetic portraits, investigative reporting. it's long and it's not even long enough. i love the repetition (of phrases themes words), the dullness (rainfall charts erosion chemistry inventories of investigative reporting and canal voyage preparations financial info) + the way those repetitive slow passages or chapters emerge suddenly onto lyrical descriptions of the breasts of a taco stand girl or the desert or build up slowly walking down the streets of calexico.

dylannn, Monday, 1 October 2012 07:39 (twelve years ago)

five months pass...

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Book-Dolores-William-Vollmann/dp/1576876578

dylannn, Monday, 18 March 2013 07:42 (twelve years ago)

wow

johnny crunch, Monday, 18 March 2013 11:20 (twelve years ago)

five months pass...

So, apparently he has an article in September's Harper's about all the goodies he found in his FBI file. Life as a Terrorist -- Uncovering my FBI file (harper's.org)

It's the first time in a while that I've regretted letting my subscription lapse. There's some information to be gleaned here: FBI suspected William Vollmann was the Unabomber (washingtonpost.com)

Øystein, Thursday, 22 August 2013 13:34 (eleven years ago)

http://harpers.org/blog/2013/08/pages-from-william-t-vollmanns-fbi-file/

just sayin, Wednesday, 28 August 2013 10:04 (eleven years ago)

five years pass...

The Most Honest Book About Climate Change Yet: William T. Vollmann’s latest opus is brilliant, but it offers no comfort to its readers, review Nathaniel Rich.

In Carbon Ideologies, William T. Vollmann imagines for himself the opposite: a murderously hostile reader who sneers at his arguments, ridicules his feeblemindedness, scorns his pathetic attempts at ingratiation. Vollmann can’t blame this reader, whom he addresses regularly throughout Carbon Ideologies, because she lives in the future, under radically different circumstances—inhabiting a “hotter, more dangerous and biologically diminished planet.” He envisions her turning the pages of his climate-change opus within the darkened recesses of an underground cave in which she has sought shelter from the unendurable heat; the plagues, droughts, and floods; the methane fireballs racing across boiling oceans. Because the soil is radioactive, she subsists on insects and recycled urine, and regards with implacable contempt her ancestors, who, as Vollmann tells her, “enjoyed the world we possessed, and deserved the world we left you.”

godless hippie skank (Sanpaku), Monday, 10 September 2018 16:03 (six years ago)

six years pass...

A few years ago, the novelist William T. Vollmann was diagnosed with colon cancer. The prognosis wasn’t great but he went ahead with the treatment. A length of intestine drawn out and snipped. It was awful but it worked. The cancer went into remission.

Then his daughter died.

Then he got dropped by his publisher.

Then he got hit by a car.

Then he got a pulmonary embolism.

But things are looking up.

William T. Vollmann spent “twelve or fifteen years” researching and writing a novel about the CIA called A Table for Fortune; as of this writing it has a few back-channel blurbs from editors and assistants who’ve caught glimpses and say it might be his masterpiece, or at the very least a new sort of achievement for him. But when he finished it, in 2022, he turned it over to his publisher, the final installment of a multi-book contract (although even that part gets complicated), and that’s when, to use Vollmann’s words, “Viking fired me."

https://www.metropolitanreview.org/p/the-last-contract

Elvis Telecom, Monday, 12 May 2025 18:02 (two weeks ago)

that article is as long as a vollmann book

I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Tuesday, 13 May 2025 03:14 (two weeks ago)

Thanks for sharing that, ET. Enjoyed it all the way through, especially as a chronicle of that early-90s generation of writers and their editors and agents.

the way out of (Eazy), Tuesday, 13 May 2025 16:58 (two weeks ago)


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