Nathan "N.R."’s Comments (group member since Oct 28, 2012)

Nathan "N.R."’s comments from the William T Vollmann Central group.

Jim wrote: "The good news is that Bill is still alive and will continue to write and publish books. Wallace, on the other hand, is dead... "

I had a morbid fantasy comment I was considering about having the two switch fates. Bill would have approved. Many of us have been searching for something to fill that DFW-shaped void, and I hope some folks at least will be happy to settle for WTV. Nothing will replace Dave, but. . . .

David Foster Wallace wrote IJ and that book has received 20,442 ratings and 3,376 reviews on goodreads.

goodreads claims that WTV has "41 distinct works" and those 41 works have received a total of 13,467 ratings and 1,408 reviews. His most popular book on goodreads, Europe Central, has received 815 ratings and 134 reviews. Two books for which he wrote afterwords have a combined total ratings greater than his entire oeuvre, Lowry's Under the Volcano (6600 ratings) and Journey to the end of night (7,486 ratings). Don't believe any fool that says Vollmann be 'overrated.'

Nick wrote: "@Nathan - Aha! You make Goodreads.com Awesomereads.com"

Yes. Yes I do.

You didn't miss this link dump, did you?
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

Nick wrote: "Debuts - like seeing an the inside of a person's workshop before heading off to discover things they've made and are making... "

You mean like, "A Day at William T. Vollmann’s Studio"?
http://quarterlyconversation.com/will...

It's there. Hidden on Group's main page, but fully functional.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

And how 'bout that review link going also in the Rainbow thread? I think you'll find a damn good time with the Angels.

A list of books (selected, but the majority (all?) of what will be of interest to the crowd here) which are listed in Larry McCaffery’s “A William T. Vollmann Chronology,” pp387ff of Expelled from Eden. Consider them Bill’s influences.

See also “William T. Vollmann’s Favorite ‘Contemporary’ Books” (taken from a 1990 interview with McCaffery) from Eden reproduced by bibliokept here:
http://biblioklept.org/2011/09/24/wil...


East of Eden
Ovid's Metamorphoses
The Tale of Genji
Grænlendinga saga
Kanami Kiyotsugu (Noh playwright)
The Prince
Ignatius Loyola's The Spiritual Exercises
Shakespeare
Japanese Ukiyo (wood-block prints)
Gibbon's The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
William Blake's Songs of Innocence
Wordsworth, Coleridge, other British poets
Blake's Songs of Experience, Europe, The First Book of Urizen
Wordsworth & Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads & W's Preface thereto.
Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket & Related Tales
Das Kapital
Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth
War and Peace
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Idiot (cf The Royal Family)
Maldoror
Percival Lowell's Mars & Mars And Its Canals
Well's The War of the Worlds
Burroughs, his early pulp novels
The Brothers Karamazov
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
Treasure Island
H.R. Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, She, Allan Quatermain
Anthony Hope (The Prisoner of Zenda)
Knut Hamsun's Mysteries & Hunger
The Winning of Barbara Worth by Harold Lloyd Bell
Rev. Silas T. Rand's compilation of Micmac legends
The Jungle Book other Kipling books
HG Well's The Time Machine
Crane's Maggie & George's Mother
Frank Norris (McTeague), Jack London (Before Adam), other naturalists
John Muir's First Summer in the Sierras
Doyle's The Lost World
A Princess of Mars
The Tractatus of Wittgenstein
Burroughs' Pellucidar
The Grapes of Wrath
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Orwell's Homage to Catalonia & The Road to Wigan Pier
Shostakovich's String Quartet, No. 1
Philosophical Investigations
The Golden Age of American sci-fi: Sturgeon, van Vogt, Heinlein, Bradbury.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Koestler's Darkness at Noon
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Kawabata's Snow Country
Mishima's Confessions of a Mask
Mark Rothko's color fields
Post-War American sci-fi: Sturgeon, Dick, Blish, Heinlein, Bester
William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
The Vinland Sagas
Dick's The Man in the High Castle & Martian Time-Slip
Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy
Blish's Cities in Flight
Slaughterhouse-Five
Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions
Experimental sci-fi by Dick, Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Joanna Russ, Delany, Thomas Disch, Roger Zelazny
Kawakata's House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories
Kipling, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Stephen Crane.
Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (cf The Atlas)
Penguin’s Writers from the Other Europe series.
George Konrad's The Case Worker
Dante's Purgatorio
Ken Miller
Vollmann had not read Gravity's Rainbow until after Angels had been written/published.

This reproduces nearly everything listed in the Chronology. I may have made a few errors or committed a few unintended omissions. Expelled is recommended for both Vollmann noobies and scholars alike. And at US$2.00+shipping, it's a steal.

Geoff wrote: "I'll hold out and hope that he comes around... if so I'll get him to sign two and mail you one as a "thank you"."

Deal.

Geoff wrote: "Does he do book tours? It doesn't seem likely, but in DC there's this amazing bookstore called Politics and Prose that hosts pretty much every friggin' author in existence when they have a new boo..."

Short things that might count as tours. He at least gives the occasional reading when he's in some town with a book culture. There is some footage on youtube--reading from Imperial and Riding Toward Everywhere. Maybe some other books.

Geoff wrote: "Argall and The Rifles are en route to my house, hardcover, 1st editions, very good to like new. Maybe I'll snap a "Vollmann spines" lineup photo after they're all here- a little visual encourageme..."

I've got Bill's whore drawings in my copies of Argall and Rifles. Photos still intended, but not yet produced. Fathers & Crows is a beat up hd from a library sale. [Ice-Shirts is signed, naturally]. I'm gunna track him down across the country to sign my copy of Dying Grass when it finally gets published.

Geoff wrote: "I see myself spending the next few months going through the available seven dreams... "

McCaffery's intro to Expelled from Eden caused me nearly to clear my 2013-sepukku shelf and fill it with nothing but Vollmann. Why am I not always reading Bill? I expect to blaze through the available Dreams this year as well. Each one has it's huge justification for rising to the top of any tbr list. Especially Argall.

MJ wrote: "Does that mean Vollmann has only written one what-we-understand-as novel?"

According to some Vollmann virgins, they might say that he has written no novels at all.

Angels -- Cartoon
Butterfly Stories -- short stories, but Bill calls it a novel.
The Atlas -- Palindrome (more a collection than novel, but maybe not)
The Royal Family -- ? looks like a novel to me.
Europe Central -- pre-publication, the WTV Reader refers to it as a 'collection,' but was marketed as a novel
Whores for Gloria -- novella
13 stories -- not a novel
Last Stories -- not a novel
The Seven Dreams -- Seven textbooks to be used in progressive history courses. But look like a restoration of the entire genre of the historical novel.

But those of us who have read Vollmann, have learned that a novel is not what Vollmann virgins think a novel is. But I'm happy just calling it Vollmann's Fiction.

MJ wrote: "How are people labelling this unlabellable book? One reviewer said novel, most say short stories, some naysayers say literary reportage."

Well said, sir. Maybe "vollmannism"? No matter how much I'd like it to be a novel, I think I'll have to concede to "collection" as some of those things have little to do with The Tenderloin, ie, the fiery furnace and that one out of The Arabian Nights. There's a thematic unity, but a unity which I think makes not a whole but an assemblage. And I think the journalistic material is too worked over to count as reportage.

Jonfaith wrote: "I'm going to do this now. It is superior to Nicholas Nickelby for use at work."

Sounds about right. I'd be onto it too but I'm feeling unworthy for having not gotten to a fat one for a longlong time. I imagine that Atlas will provide a pretty good overview of Vollmann's work and travels.

"I was there" story over at the amazon reviews. And check the dissenting comment.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rainbow-Sto...

Geoff wrote: "Vollmann cherry."

Good call.

Welcome to Central, Richard! Do you know if The Old Man is collected in one of his books? The Atlas maybe?

If you've got some Vollmann reviews which could use some attention, please post us some links in the corresponding threads.

And, hey Nick! how about that Rainbow Review?

Geoff wrote: "An interesting article/profile in the NY Times from 1994:

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/06/mag..."

Highlighting this article again. It's got a good bit of the early biographical info. Thanks for Aubrey for reminding us again.

Vollmann says about his favored "contemporary" books: "Right now it seems like I’ve learned a lot from Mishima, Kawabata, and Tolstoy." http://biblioklept.org/2011/09/24/wil... But I didn't know which Kawabata. That's helpful to me. For which thanks. But otherwise I don't know Kawabata at all.

Brain Pain is considering a Group Reading of the Seven Dreams series, starting with The Ice-Shirt. Drop in a leave word if you're interested:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

Brian wrote: "The Ice-Shirt should arrive any day now"

If you don't have a background in the Icelandic Sagas, I recommend reading the introduction to The Sagas of Icelanders, which is what I had done. It may not be necessary, but it'll give a bit of background to this strange and wonderful book.