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

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

A Table of Fortune is (tentatively?) slated for 2021 ::

"Additionally, William T. Vollmann has two upcoming novels: ...and another titled A TABLE FOR FORTUNE about an American spy whose life and career exemplifies the surveillance culture of the US (Viking 2021)."
https://www.bardonchinese.com/admin/d...

An excerpt was published recently ::
http://www.metroactive.com/features/W...
http://www.metroactive.com/features/W...
And the circumstances behind that excerpt getting published ::
http://www.bohemian.com/northbay/bill...

Nice to see that Viking is still behind Bill and his Books.

It looks like Viking is finally taking a look at How You Are. According to the document linked below, we can expect it in 2019 ::

"Additionally, William T. Vollmann has two upcoming novels: one set in San Francisco about a polysexual woman whom everyone loves (Viking 2019)..."
https://www.bardonchinese.com/admin/d...

Release date for Carbon Ideologies :: Summer 2018.

According to this round up of stuff ::
https://www.bardonchinese.com/admin/d...

"Vollmann’s journalistic investigations into the ideologies behind coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power production around the world, from West Virginia to Japan."

T.R. wrote: "Cheapest I've seen it. Ex Library. Seein the "Discard" is painful. :("

A shame. But yeah, 400 bucks is about as low as it gets. And but too I know it'll end up in another deserving library.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: ""Invisible and Insidious
Living at the edge of Fukushima’s nuclear disaster" from the March '15 issue of Harpers--:"
http://harpers.org/archive/2015/03/in...

Now twice best'd ::
The Best American Travel Writing 2016
The Best American Series: 16 Short Stories & Essays
The latter is just a cheap (free!) kindle thing that bests from 8 Best of '16 collections.

I seem to have missed this one (?) ::

"Moby-Dick in the Desert :
Unplug the phone. There’s a new William T. Vollmann book."
By Sam Anderson
http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/5...

For all you Vollmanniac Heartthrobs :: here's a little piece about some writerly encouragement provided by Our Beloved upon a frustrated writer ::

"What Should You Be Writing? Encouragement from All Around"
by Aaron Gilbreath
http://www.kenyonreview.org/2016/11/1...

A recent nicely done blog=review of The Dying Grass ::

"Blind Vision – The Dying Grass"
https://yswriting.wordpress.com/2016/...

Huh. Looks like it's never been released as ebook. But it looks like amazon canada has a few copies of the pb for CDN$0.73+shipping.

Damn. Is it really out of print?

A video of images from his book The Best Way to Smoke Crack ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5A0d...

Still not known (?) if it's been published. According to Hemmingson, the thing's pretty much been finished since 2006. Some images from it had at one time been included with Terri Saul's interview "A Day at William T. Vollmann’s Studio" ::
http://quarterlyconversation.com/will...

This is the first time I've seen some of these paintings. But I believe a few at least were included in his exhibition last year in SF :: "It's My Job" ::
http://www.vice.com/read/william-t-vo...

In interview from 2010 regarding Imperial ::

"A Modest Imperialist: William T. Vollmann"
by Steven Ross
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2010/03/e...

In interview from 2010 regarding Imperial ::

"A Modest Imperialist: William T. Vollmann"
by Steven Ross
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2010/03/e...

Henry wrote: "Did anyone else encounter this or a similar problem? "

Haven't heard of this before. Can you post some pics?

Henry wrote: "Ok, ok, I am hooked now."

That's great to hear!

Hadrian wrote: "I've found no translations of Vollmann into Chinese, meaning this author would have had to read the English original."

Just recently there's :: 窮人 ; Chinese?

And please keep us posted if anything on the translation front of Cheng Qian's work eventuates.

Alexander wrote: "I may have a friend who is looking to buy the full set. I think I remember someone on here saying they had possible access to one or two... am I remembering that right?"

Cheapest I'm seeing atm is US$500 at amazon.

Alexander wrote: "I found the author's LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-a..."

Unfortunately not updated! 2014?!

Alexander wrote: "This website lists it as being $105 :(
https://global.oup.com/academic/produ..."

Writing America's Other Histories is the first book-length study of the vast range of work produced by William T. Vollmann, relating his fiction to his ground-breaking studies of class, gender, and warfare. His work is discussed in relation to literary modes such as auto-ethnography, auto-fiction, and New Journalism, since his quasi-ethnographic interviews with poor people, sex-workers, and combatants and civilians in war-zones, are guided by a belief in the political value of personal testimony.

Vollmann also builds on the techniques of historiographic metafiction to challenge how different cultures are represented, refining the process through collaborative work with anthropologists and native informants. This book therefore outlines a theory of 'ethnographic metafiction' as a praxis epitomised by Vollmann; in particular, in the Seven Dreams series which focuses on historic encounters between European settlers and Native Americans, using their myths and poetics to show how colonisation is not simply an event but the imposition of a structure of power-relations.

The interrogation of American identity is central yet Vollmann is alert to global concerns and global traditions more than most. He draws on, and therefore helps us to rethink, Surrealism, Magic Realism, and a range of (post)modernisms. Due to the complexity of his work, he has been praised by numerous authors (not least, David Foster Wallace) and theorists (such as Larry McCaffery and Steven Moore) but few have articulated his achievement, making this an essential contribution to discourse on 'post- or late-postmodernism' for students, lecturers, and researchers alike.

And here's the ToC from that page ::

Introduction
Part I: An overview of William T. Vollmann's life & writing
1: Analogies of warfare in the Revolution Trilogy - How I Saved the World (`1982), You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), Rising Up and Rising Down (2003)
2: The Prostitute Trilogy as an American Nekyia - Whores for Gloria (1990), Butterfly Stories (1993), The Royal Family (2000)
3: The Tenderloin Stories as ethnographic collage and auto-ethnography - selections from The Rainbow Stories (1989), Thirteen Stories (1991), The Atlas (1996)
4: Europe Central (2005) as historiographic metafiction

Part II: Pioneering Ethnographic Metafiction in Seven Dreams
5: Power personified and figures of change - The Ice-Shirt (1990)
6: Religious Conversion, or the 'Soul-Trade' - Fathers and Crows (1992)
7: Colonized bodies and the gendering of colonization - Argall (2002)
8: Technologies of change - Argall and The Rifles (1994)
9: Auto-ethnography and the limits of self-knowledge - The Rifles (1994)
Conclusion: Vollmann's critical status, 25 Years after Angels
Bibliography
Index
https://global.oup.com/academic/produ...

Which sounds pretty great. Now if only we can get a solid release date!

Under Fire: William T. Vollmann, -The Rifles-: A Critical Study is now available at amazon. Academic pricing @ US$59.95.

"This study of a novel by William T. Vollmann offers a port of entry into his fiction. Like other titles from his planned «Seven Dreams» collection, The Rifles deconstructs the historical novel. Following in the steps of the nineteenth-century English explorer John Franklin, the contemporary American character Subzero risks his life in the Arctic, looking for a way to transcend the history of colonization and his personal limitations. He ventures out on the permafrost of his memory, both private and collective, haunted by history as he revisits the Gothic genre. Deploying the poetry of an anachronistic errand into the white wilderness of snow and ice, in the wake of Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab and Edgar Allan Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym, the narrator plays with avatars of the author as an explorer, a historian, a cartographer and a sketch-artist to encounter otherness, whether Inuit women or men, or fellow travelers who exchange with the authorial figure in his search for meaning. This critical analysis uses close-reading, ecocriticism, cultural studies and comparative literature to examine an innovative novel of the post-postmodern canon, by one of the finest contemporary American authors."

Poor People in Chinese? 窮人
https://www.amazon.com/Poor-People-Ch...