Nathan "N.R."’s
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(group member since Oct 28, 2012)
Nathan "N.R."’s
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from the William T Vollmann Central group.
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A nice write up on The Dying Grass. Includes an alternate reading order and recording of Bill reading in Seattle ::"The writer we deserve"
http://seattlereviewofbooks.com/revie...
In the strangest places. Asia Times cites Vollmann ::'“They came out like ants!” Some years ago, William T. Vollmann wrote this headline in Harper’s, adding the subtitle “Searching for the Chinese tunnels of Mexicali.” Tomorrow (Saturday, February 20), “they”—the Chinese Americans—might again come out “like ants” in more than 40 cities, this time not from the mysterious tunnels of Mexicali, but from a cellphone-based social media network called WeChat.'
http://atimes.com/2016/02/thoughts-on...
In other Vollmann=news, The Rifles makes it onto The Guardian's " Top 10 Arctic novels" listicle ::http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016...
"If you like Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis, this is probably your kind of Arctic novel."
biblioklept asks, "Why the hell did I buy William Vollmann’s Argall?"[book porn warning]
http://biblioklept.org/2016/02/19/why...
I'm not certain, but it may be my favorite Dream.
Vollmann is not getting more than his due. It would appear that one might review a novel about Shostakovitch without mentioning Europe Central."From a historian’s point of view, the license allowed novelists is something to envy." --that sentence alone ought to be glossed by something from one of WTV's apologia.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n04/sheila-f...
Tom wrote: "I'm not sure I've ever seen a $35 paperback, except for maybe a university press item or textbook. Still, with discounting, Amazon will probably sell it for about $20."Like the hd's price reflecting the publisher's lack of confidence, I think the pb's price reflects how poorly it sold. And not due to page=count/difficulty.
just fyi -- the pb of The Dying Grass is slated for July 26, '16. For US$35 ; which is the current amazon price for the hd.
I've been remiss about adding this, but Year End Reviews got me reminded. Vollmanniac Jonathan has nominated Evelyn Scott's Civil War Trilogy as contender for this Expanded Edition of Vollmann's Seven Dreams. He explains in his review of A Calendar of Sin, with qualifications aplenty, why he's nominated her work.https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In part, he writes ::
"Why, after having read her trilogy, is WTV's Seven Dreams the first thing that leaps to mind as a comparison?
"Because, I think, in both we find Historical events portrayed from the inside out, illuminated from multiple viewpoints, all given equal validity. We find sexual violence, and the justifications for such violence. We find melodrama (WTV's rhapsodic riffs on the female goddess carry echoes of some of the love-struck thoughts of Scott's characters, for example) and, most importantly I think, we find authorial ambition, a desire and a drive to create a text which truly does justice to the rich expanse of the past and which re-writes the national myth.
"There are, of course, significant differences between the two. WTV's project is perhaps the greater in part because of its ranging over a thousand years, while Scott moves only from about 1830 to 1914, and also in part part because I think his stylistic and imaginative range more impressive. Nevertheless, both are very much concerned with the American unconscious, the true Being of the American soul. Neither gives a flying fuck about reader expectation or desire, nor do they care about publisher demands. They are both, I think it is fair to say, a little bit crazy. "
Mark wrote: "establishing the prior existence of the Amortortak figure"Not definitive, but the first result returned by google on "Amortortak" is The Ice-Shirt wikipedia page.
Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Nathan "N.R." wrote: ""Jewish Museum’s ‘Unorthodox’ Group Show Will Include, Among Others, Writer William T. Vollmann""""Vollmann's works, though they're fairly bad paintings, delve into similar territory, as the straight artist addresses femininity and desire via images of cross-dressing and his female alter ego."
==sounds about right!
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jew...
“Unorthodox" :: thru March 27, 2016, at the Jewish Museum, New York.
A new review by Casey Sanchez of the Santa Fe-New Mexican ::http://www.santafenewmexican.com/pasa...
I don't think I've seen this one before. Vollmann reads from EC in 2005 ::https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y7TS...
Mala wrote: "Did you translate it into English? Wow! "I googlated it into English!!
Griffin wrote: "this is really really weird to be heard and not read. What a disconnect."My thoughts too ; but unfair for me to have them since I think audiobooks are weird to begin with. But the novel is very oral, so the idea at least makes sense to me.
@Zadignose -- yes, I thought his voice had that wild west timbre to it ; which, my humble opinion, is the wrong way to go with this novel.
A not-so-long article on Vollmann in Spanish ::"El autor que sólo escribe sobre lo que experimenta: William T. Vollmann"
by Andrés Hax
William Faulkner was a peculiar but excellent criterion to evaluate their fellow writers. He said that the greatness of a novelist was to the size of its failure. The best was the one that had more tried, which aspired to an impossible perfection, one whose ambition was so excessive that the execution of the project would inevitably end in a failed work. This criterion put to Thomas Wolfe (the Look Homeward, Angel, not the Bonfire of the Vanities) on top.
If we took the same approach to a ranking of the best American novelists today, there is no doubt who would correspond to the top. No Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides. Neither Donna Tart or James Ellroy. Not even we could give honorable octogenarians Philip Roth or Cormac McCarthy. According to the "Faulkner-Test" the best living American writer William T. Vollmann is. With 56 years (the same age as Franzen, who has just published his fifth novel) and his work has literally the size of an encyclopedia. It consists of more than 30 volumes which include reports, stories, novels, travel diaries and photo books. Among its themes are war, poverty, drug addiction, immigration, prostitution, violence-how and when justified and the history of the colonization of North America."
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1840947-bi...
amazon has now removed this from my pre-order thing. Fingers crossed that it will still eventually see the light of day.
