Nathan "N.R."’s
Comments
(group member since Oct 28, 2012)
Nathan "N.R."’s
comments
from the William T Vollmann Central group.
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Jim wrote: "Apparently Vollmann has written an essay on documentarian Frederick Wiseman, contained in this book:"Nice catch. Let us know what you find.
A new article from Bill about surveillance which continues what he started in the Harpers article ::"Machines of Loving Grace: I'd rather risk becoming a terrorist's victim than live under a surveillance state" from foreignpolicy.com, 09 December 2013.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles...
What didn't make it into Expelled, and I hadn't heard of before JK brought to my attention, is Vollmann's Afterword to Simenon's Dirty Snow. And it is available online :: http://assets.nybooks.com/media/doc/2...
A recent review of Imperial ::"In 'Imperial' Vollmann Struggles to Understand the Salton Sea as He Would a Mark Rothko Painting" By John L. Murphy, 24 November 2013 ;;
http://www.popmatters.com/column/1766...
"It’s an effort to pick up this weighty tome on Imperial County, in content and heft. Sections ramble as a massive compilation on purportedly a single subject. Similar criticisms were aimed at Moby-Dick. Vollmann digs deep in 1,100 pages (the paperback reprint excises some hardcover endnotes), annotated with dissertation-level documentation. This tribute to the overlooked Southeastern (rather than scrutinized Southern) California stands as a leviathan of fact and lore. "
Jonathan wrote: "I plan to read the rest of the Dreams next, and then see how the Royal Family goes."Jonathan, your Vollmann reading has shored up my thesis about the diversity among Bill's books. I know any writer worth their salt has a diverse set of voices showing up in each book ; but I'm finding Bill's books to a little more than average, differing among themselves -- although, to be sure to remark, there is, on each and every book, something of Vollmann roundly stamped upon their pages. Looking forward to both your reading of The Royal Family, and your possible eventual re-attempt at Europe Central, should that reading possibilize itself eventually.
Marc wrote: "You Bright and Risen Angels was the first Vollmann for me."I reeeeaally want that second half of YBARA ; but I know that my wanting it means that I totally didn't 'get it' ;; and but too, Bill's not 26 any more. But what a fantastic book.
Jonathan wrote: "as much as it is not necessary to read The Ice Shirt first, there are some references made between the two, and it does flow rather well from that book"agreed. I note too that it seems that the four published Dreams (plus RURD) were all written more or less simultaneously. The end-notes in all four dreams tend to refer to each other ; and, too, a number of events in the main text, such as Argall's appearance in F&C. I mention this inter-relatedness because as far as I recall, I have not seen him make any references to the three unpublished Dreams. This is all further explicated or complexified by the fact that Vollmann originally conceived the Seven Dreams as a single novel ; there is more on his conception of the project in Expelled from Eden, page 447ff. [edit: I'm not sure where I saw the mention of the original single volume for the Dreams.]
NYT review/interview/article re: Dolores"William T. Vollmann: The Self Images of a Cross-Dresser" by Stephen Heyman
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/fas...
Let's pay attention to the misogynist subtexts whenever this book is discussed. As Vollmann says, “A lot of friends who could always handle the prostitutes and the drugs felt that I had somehow degraded myself. The idea of stepping down from the dominant male class really disgusts a lot of people, including women.”
A man dressing as a woman = freak show. Why?
Friend Jeff Bursey has a review of Expelled and Poor People at the electronic book review, "'A realm forever beyond reach': William Vollmann's Expelled from Eden and Poor People". Get there by visiting and Liking his review found :: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Don't miss the bibliography at the end ;; there's at least one link there we don't have at Central, plus a number of other nuggets some of you might want to track down.
Okay, here's one of those links ::
"Tome Improvement: William T. Vollmann's Real World" by James Gibbons at Bookforum ; a review of Expelled and Europe Central :: http://www.bookforum.com/archive/sum_...
Jeff wrote: "I may be off base (it wouldn't be anywhere near the first time), but having read all of "The Lush Life of William T. Vollmann," the references to drinking (eight, by my count) seem numerous. Mostl..."Only so much one can expect from Newsweek which writes for folks mostly who read only newspeak. For the title, yes, there may be a little resentment regarding the fact that Vollmann has supported himself with his writing/art/journalism -- without needing to teach or win jackpot-sized awards -- and still no one reads him. Or else it was a teenage crack at irony.
The booze, well, eight mentions is overdoing it. Sure, he likes his bourbon. I like my scotch. But is it necessary to work so hard to put Vollmann in that Poe-through-Barthelme tradition? But at least there weren't eight mentions of prostitutes. Or were there?
Or, for the less suspicious, Bill's just kicking back on a little publicity tour, maybe not working quite so much for a week or two. Here's my Bill tracker -- book release in NYC ; talk given at UCSB ; now the Newsweek thing.
Bill gets a Newsweek treatment ::"The Lush Life of William T. Vollmann" by Alexander Nazaryan, November 06 2013
http://www.newsweek.com/lush-life-wil...
"If William T. Vollmann ever wins the Nobel Prize in Literature - as many speculate he will - he knows exactly what he will do with the $1.1 million pot the Swedes attach to the award. "It will be fun to give some to prostitutes," he says, sitting on his futon, chuckling, a half-empty bottle of pretty good bourbon between us."
thnks to biblioklept for the tip.
For those folks curious about Vollmann's research for the Seven Dreams, here's a fer instance. One of Vollmann's main sources for Fathers and Crows is the Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist, and ethnohistorian, Bruce Trigger. Friend and scholar AC is currently reading one of Trigger's books :: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... For F&C, Vollmann mostly relied on Trigger's The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 ;; but note too that Trigger read and commented upon portions of F&C as Vollmann was working ; those comments about the discussions with Trigger (and other authorities) in the endnotes were one of the more pleasant aspects of F&C for this geek-reader. So, if nothing else, when AC praises a scholars' work, please do take note ; and that Vollmann wasn't writing F&C from a public library copy of an anonymous encyclopedia.
Geoff wrote: "I found this curious document browsing about just now: http://www.melleragency.com/shared/de..."Which reads ::
"The Dying Grass is the fifth book in William Vollmann's acclaimed Seven Dreams series - a hugely original fictional history of the clash of Native Americans and the White settlers in the New World. This volume is set during the Nez Perce War of 1877, with flashbacks to the Civil War. It follows Chief Joseph and the other non-treaty Nez Perce as they subjected the United States Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn (the previous year). But to do so they had to flee from northeast Oregon and western Idaho into Montana, down into Wyoming near Yellowstone Park, and back into Montana almost to Canada. The ultimate outcome was devastating for the Native Americans Indians, and their removal one of the most tragic episodes in American history. Told frequently through dialogue spoken by various characters in powerful scenes, the book often reads as if it were a theatrical text. It is Vollmann’s most dramatic work yet."
I have The Rifles to read ververy soon and then I want The Dying Grass immediately after that.
Mala wrote: "Dolores' eye sight"It's a central piece of how the art works.
You are also judging her,not fair.
I can't avoid judging. I'm not certain that I'm unfair. In the book we see Dolores seeing herself and we see Bill seeing her. Let's call it a dialectic of perception.
Geoff wrote: "Oh yeah, hell yes! Many thanks!"Credit to our newest Vollmanniac, Jonathan who wears the Ice-Shirt.
Mala wrote: "every acne,wrinkle,cellulite are photoshopped away": o
See, but Vollmann is old-fashion, so he's able to -away these things with his water-colors, but also because as he is doing a "self-portrait" of Dolores he is not wearing his glasses because Dolores doesn't wear glasses and can't see very well.
"Defiance might justly be called a sort of fantasy, because until the defier has prevailed (if he ever does), the reality principle's insistence that he cannot prevail appears true." -- William T. Vollmann
FAIR NOTICE :: I hate to disfigure this space with such a warning label, but I am in fact anxious. ANY sexist, chauvinistic, misogynist, homophobic, ETC remarks about Dolores written in ANY of my threads will be unhesitatingly DELETED. If you must say things of this nature, do so in your own space. Only those comments which incite or advocate violence will be FLAG’d by me.
The Book of Dolores contains three parts ; a triptych of characters, if you will.
Firstly, and most conspicuously, it is about Dolores. You may call her “Vollmann as a Woman” if you like ; but she is not he. She is the model, he the photographer and artist. Is she his muse? Not quite. In fact, I think her role is second fiddle to the role played by Vollmann as artist ; but discussion of this book will likely revolve mostly around her. There is no need really to discuss her shortcomings in front of her ; she is well aware of the limits of prettiness.
Secondly, The Book of Dolores is about another book, a novel written but not yet published called How You Are. We receive a few excerpts of this novel ; they are a bit disappointing only in so far as they are small fragments of a whole, and reading them in isolation from the whole scarcely causes literary tinglings. The novel is about a second woman, also named Dolores and also a Vollmann-as-Woman. This second Dolores is a fiction, one whom Good Society would have as a degradation ; to wit ::
The more some acquaintances saw and heard of what I will call my research, the more degraded they considered me. This encouraged me to embellish what they called my degradation. So in the book I became a physically unattractive Mexican street prostitute. How could anyone believe that women, Mexicans, prostitutes, street people are by nature inferior? But multitudes do....
Thirdly, this is an artist’s book, about an artist and by the same artist. It is also the part of the book which will likely be least discussed. By the second half it becomes clear that this is not a book so much about Dolores, but the art=work which surrounds her, creates her, honors her, portrays her, discovers her. Reading, one experiences Bill himself coming to know who this strange person, Dolores, is and what her aspirations are. The descriptions and discussions about Dolores and about How You Are melt into a discussion of Vollmann’s techniques of producing his visual art :: photographic prints, water colors, and block-printing. And having read the text (merely an hour or two’s reading) one looks backwards through the book and discovers the art ; Dolores melts into the form in which we will always have her, the work of art. No, she’s not pretty (who is?) but Vollmann’s art is more than pretty.
The Book of Dolores is only Vollmann’s second book of visual art ; the first being Imperial, also published by powerHouse Books, which accompanied his mammoth Imperial. His recent Kissing the Mask is the predecessor to Dolores which must serve as Mask’s photographic supplement given that his artwork received such poor treatment in Mask. I wish I could say something more than “I like it” about his visual art, but I possess about zero critical skills for such. I am happy to finally see some of his art available for those of us whose pockets are not $10,000 deep.
But what becomes clear is the enormous breadth/depth of Vollmann’s WORK, the variety and intensity of all of his work ; the infinity of 16-hour work=days one imagines in order for him to create all of this stuff. Not many contemporary artists work like Vollmann. Off the top of my head, only a few people like Frank Zappa have been as intense and as single-minded in the pursuit of their own idiosyncratic vision to such a degree ;; at least in so far as they’ve re-shaped my own world.
So, but here’s the word about disappointment. I’ve been reading Vollmann since the Summer of 2011. Since I first read The Ice-Shirt, this legendarily prolific writer has published precisely TWO books :: one an ebook-only to which I have no access, and the other, this book of his visual art. Whatever happened to the two-Vollmann-tomes per year release rate we crave? And on top of all of this, we have now for a year running been promised not only the publication of the next installment of Seven Dreams (for which we have waited more than a decade) but also teased with a collection of Ghost Stories. Okay, those two books -- but then too Bill announces that he has a THIRD book in his drawer about an unattractive, transvestite/transgender’d, Mexican street prostitute -- WHEN can we have this novel, Bill? We really want it.
Geoff wrote: "already listened to all of them!"Check. I've corrected for that.
Link Fest!!This link goes here because it contains very short blurbs for each and every Bill Book ; whereby one might quickly sort for that book which must be NEXT.
A blog post from a Lover of Vollmann :: "Why You Should Know Who William T. Vollmann Is, and Go Out and Read Him Immediately" :: http://dontdontoperate.wordpress.com/...
