what's the point of william t vollmann?

he's really a short story writer when you get down to it, which is funny because haha he writes really long books.

Is he still writing the thing The Ice-Shirt is part of? I have been really meaning to read that one, bcz I'm kinda interested in saga vikings.. all I have here tho is 'the rifles' and 'the atlas' and the aforementioned rising-up etc. If he's really a short story writer I guess I should go with The Atlas next.

Did you write the thing on 'Rising Up' in the village voice? I liked that.

The Atlas is totally great, except that I don't like the big middle "tie it together" story.

This is very true. I think Vollmann's interest (and talent) lies in the macro-level emotion and development and projected resolution of the subjects he goes after. His thinking is pretty rigorous (for a novelist) and that doesn't really lend itself to super-acute characterizations.

I picked up his new one last week but haven't started it yet. It's fucking huge--how does the man write so fast?

Bump.

I forget who posted this link and in what thread, but I finished reading "The Last Contract" in the Metropolitan Review:

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

Vollmann has come to fascinate me because he is the living-dying embodiment of Guy Lit. Mailer... that's it, it was on the Mailer thread, xyzzzz__ shared the link. Mailer or Updike or David Foster Wallace or Hemingway or any of those other white MAN'S MEN.

I'm not saying that entirely facetiously. I'll admit that much of what fascinates me about Vollmann is his relationship with Dolores, but it's much more than that. Dolores is mentioned in the Metropolitan Review article, but she's only a very small part of the article - as she should be. If, as Vollmann says, Dolores wishes him dead, there is this inner Clever White Boy in me still. This would-be guy who admires Vollmann for his willful prolixity, for his dedication to topics far outside the sphere of public interest, for his guilt, for his...

I mean nobody DOES owe him a living. I don't hear a lot of self-pity in him saying that. The idea of the stoic man who bears his burdens without complaint, the stubborn would-be iconoclast who has to do things HIS WAY, these are, in my head, negative stereotypes, and with Vollmann it's easier for me to see the upside. It's this approach to gender that he has:

"To the extent I’ve noticed a gender divide in the attitudes of people who know Vollmann personally, as I’ve conducted interviews for this piece and read the voluminous transcripts of others, it’s been men attesting that he’s smart, stubborn, strange, ambitious; women uniformly that he’s kind."

I don't care whether or not it's because of Dolores. I'd like to think he would be kind to me, if we met. I'm actually not aware of any direct interactions between him and trans people. I have a copy of _The Book of Dolores_ on my coffee table, and I... well, he overwhelms me with his wit and insight. I can't keep up with everything in his head. He's _kind to women_. A lot of these "man's men" aren't. When I read what Vollmann says to Soronado... he's not kind to himself, and he's also not cruel. He strikes me as being a careful man. I do think it's wise of him to not be on the Internet. I think it's a mark of the ways in which he is careful. I suspect that he wasn't always as careful as he seems to be now, that it's something he's learned.

All of these "man's men" and their macho bullshit and their endless prolixity irritates me (blatant hypocrisy, of course, on the latter count), and for whatever reason Vollmann irritates me a bit less. Of course fucking nobody is going to _really_ be like him, just like nobody is _really_ going to be like Clavicular. I feel like there aren't a lot of people who'd try. I didn't really know about Vollmann or pay attention to him, when I was younger. He's someone I likely would have rolled my eyes at. Looking back at who I was, though, and looking at who he is now... well, the man I wanted to be was Robert Wyatt. I've failed at "man" but I hope at least that I've become a little like Robert Wyatt, in the ways that I wanted to be. The man I was afraid of becoming was William T. Vollmann. Looking at Vollmann now, living-dying, I think that was... unkind of me. That I was unkind to myself. I see something _preserved_ in him, a sort of manhood that was common when I was young and is rare now. I think that what's preserved in him is of value. My hope and belief is that a man doesn't need to have a Dolores to preserve those things of value in himself.