2015 The Dying Grass (Seven Dreams #5)

[Zadignose]

As of yesterday, this book has arrived upon the shores of Busan and has been delivered into my hands. I'm stealing time that I can't afford to use for reading just to get a few pages in.

[James]

Did it arrive with the alternate cover? Looking forward to your review.

[Zadignose]

My five-year-old daughter pulled the dust-jacket off the book immediately, and I made myself content with the bare mustard and navy look.

[Brant]

For those so inclined (and who don't already have their copy or just want another), Powell's is offering preorders of signed editions at pub price of $55. Can't manage to embed a link at the moment, but if you browse signed editions from the homepage, there's a link to signed preorders and it pops up.

[James]

http://www.washingtonindependentrevie...
Another review.

[James]

Brant wrote: "For those so inclined (and who don't already have their copy or just want another), Powell's is offering preorders of signed editions at pub price of $55. Can't manage to embed a link at the momen..."


I took advantage of this one. http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-97806...

[Griffin]

I think most of the value of my signed books is negated by the amount of pencil marginalia that inevitably comes from reading something compelling, first edition or not. Though I do think writers appreciate seeing that kind of engagement with their work—we'll see what Bill says when I finally lug some books out to an event of his in NYC for signing!

[Brant]

James wrote: "I took advantage of this one. http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-97806..."

Thanks for posting the link!

[Brian]

How feasible is it that I could jump into Vollmann with this book? I've been eyeing the copy in my local bookstore for the past few days, and though it's daunting, I think it might be right up my alley. Would I be better off starting at the beginning of the Seven Dreams?

[[deleted user]]

The Seven Dreams are only linked thematically. There is a William the Blind "character" who is a kind of narrator in all the books, but there is no real reason to read one Dream before the other.

[Griffin]

Seems good as any place to start with Vollmann!

[James]

Brian wrote: "How feasible is it that I could jump into Vollmann with this book? I've been eyeing the copy in my local bookstore for the past few days, and though it's daunting, I think it might be right up my a..." Do it!

[Nathan "N.R."]

Got another review ::
"William T. Vollmann's new novel on the Nez Perce is 1,376 pages long"
http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index...

And discussion question ::
I had understood that the Dreams are about a clash of civilization kind of thing; and specifically the role played by technologies. But, aside from the Gatling, I'm not picking up what technology is the focus of The Dying Grass. Any thoughts?

[James]

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Got another review ::
"William T. Vollmann's new novel on the Nez Perce is 1,376 pages long"
http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index...

And discussion que..."
I hadn't really heard technology, but I do know each focuses on a different aspect such as Christianity in Father's and Crows. I would think the Dying Grass could be the imposition of Government.

[Nathan "N.R."]

another review ::

"William Vollmann's 'Dying Grass': Heartfelt, panoramic retelling of Indian Wars"
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertai...

[Tom]

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "another review ::

"William Vollmann's 'Dying Grass': Heartfelt, panoramic retelling of Indian Wars"
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertai......"

That's one of the best, most perceptive reviews I've seen, though it misstates the year of the war, and it perpetuates the error that there's 300 pages of end notes. Just not the case.

[Chris]

Each dream represents a gift of sorts, but not necessarily "technology" (although there are parallels in each dream). On the pg. 29 footnote for Argall WTV specifically states his intention to ". . . tell what was given & what taken betwixt Adventurers & Salvages," so it's probably more accurate to think of symbolic gifts rather than technologies. The Dying Grass then, to my mind, symbolizes the physical taking (& destruction) of land by the expanionist Americans.

[James]

Chris wrote: "Each dream represents a gift of sorts, but not necessarily "technology" (although there are parallels in each dream). On the pg. 29 footnote for Argall WTV specifically states his intention to ". ..."
That's somewhat in line with what i was thinking. In the dying grass the us government seeks to implement manifest destiny. As a result, conquered tribes are forced on to reservations where they have to take on formal government rather than the loose structure that plays out during the book. When tribes are involved now in anything with the US government its a government to Government relationship because recognized tribes are considered sovereign governments. At least, that's my loose understanding of a complex situation.

[Chris]

By the way, am a quarter way through and quite engrossed. Hard to compare with other volumes as they're each unique, but I'm definitely sensing the influence of his Japanese Noh theater experiences on the format, along with the battle narratives from Europe Central. While this historical narrative feels tighter and more polished than the previous dreams, I'm sort of missing the edgier, more experimental passages from the others. Anyway, more thoughts later -- for now, greatly enjoying this (very) long-awaited dream journey into America's not so distant past.

[Jonathan]

Chris wrote: "The Dying Grass then, to my mind, symbolizes the physical taking (& destruction) of land by the expanionist Americans. "

I agree - and, of course, the title makes explicit reference to this.

Also interesting that he has written a book about the taking of land in which there are very few descriptions of landscape

[Jonathan]

Actually I take that back - there are some wonderful landscape descriptions here - I suspect that the dialogue heavy structure simply makes it feel as though there is minimal description

[Nathan "N.R."]

another. This one with a witty title ::

"'The Dying Grass' Refuses to be Coralled"
http://www.popmatters.com/review/1959...


The thing about technology and the Dreams I recall from some self=description on Bill's part. But it's not in the programmatic sketch included in Eden ; must have been a comment in an interview. In The Ice-Shirt, for instance, iron (the be-all-end-all of technology) plays a pivotal role ; as with rifles in Crows. Kind of thing. The Cloud-Shirt is going to be about that other be-all-end-all technology -- coal/oil/nukes.

[[deleted user]]

Seattle Times Book Review

This line made me laugh:

"Not long after his defeat, Chief Joseph gave a speech in Washington, D.C., pleading for his people’s freedom, in which he famously said “ … it does not require many words to speak the truth.” As Vollmann’s masterpiece shows us, sometimes it does."

[Jonathan]

Is anyone else finding this a little less, i don't know, SOMETHING, than some of the other dreams? I feel the events rushing past but am not getting the same emotional gut-punch I got at times in F&C and The Ice Shirt. Don't get me wrong, what he is doing is incredible, but something about the use of dialogue, and the leaps between voices, is having a paradoxically distancing effect for me...

[Tom]

My gut has been punched plenty hard in several places, hardest so far around p. 800.

But this book isn't as emotionally intense as some of the other dreams -- The Rifles, for example, has an almost feverish quality about it at moments. Because of the huge cast of characters and the decision to stick close to Gen. Howard much of the time, the affect is cooler, less intimate. It's not a problem for me because of all the other compensations of storytelling and structure, but I can see where it would bother some.

That said, I'm about 300 pages from the end, and The Dying Grass is clearly Vollmann's masterpiece novel, a work of massive complexity totally under his control.

[Nathan "N.R."]

Jonathan wrote: "Is anyone else finding this a little less, i don't know, SOMETHING, than some of the other dreams? "

I'm missing the Dream=specific voice -- The Ice-Shirt had the saga voice ; F&C had the Relations voice. But I miss that part in The Dying Grass where William the Blind would have wept over a newly acquired text which would mold the whole of the novel.

[James]

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Jonathan wrote: "Is anyone else finding this a little less, i don't know, SOMETHING, than some of the other dreams? "

I'm missing the Dream=specific voice -- The Ice-Shirt had the saga voice ; F&C..."
Doesn't the formatting give The Dying Grass a specific voice?

Looks like they are sold out of signed copies at Powells now.

[[deleted user]]

His reading tonight at the Seattle library was recorded and will be a podcast. I'll post a link when it's up.

From his talk it seems like there are at least three books before the next Dream. Coal vs Nuclear non-fiction (close to being done), long novel, and a shorter novel.

[Nathan "N.R."]

James wrote: "Doesn't the formatting give The Dying Grass a specific voice?"

Well, yes, but two voices -- the epic mode of the Indian sections and the oral mode of the Bostons. But what I mean is the sort of echo of another text that has recurred within the various Dream Texts. That one thing I thought the Dreams were doing was bringing back lost voices, letting them out to play again. [but I had difficulty getting The Rifles into my schema too]

[Nathan "N.R."]

Greg wrote: "From his talk it seems like there are at least three books before the next Dream. Coal vs Nuclear non-fiction (close to being done), long novel, and a shorter novel.
"

Good to hear that the coal/nuke book is getting closer to finished. From The Cloud-Shirt, an excerpt was pub'd a while back -- http://www.grandstreet.com/gsissues/g... But I've still heard next to nothing about The Poison-Shirt beyond Bill's early indication :: "concerning the Puritans vs. King Philip of Rhode Island," or Captain Cook's voyage to Hawaii. [17th or 18th cent.]

Can't wait to hear what the other two novels will concern themselves with. How You Are maybe one of them? [fingers crossed]

[Geoff]

At first I was thinking the presiding voice was going to be Whitman, because of his imagined dialogue with William the Blind at the beginning of the novel - and with the long prose-poem/line enjambment format I thought I might be onto something but I don't think that's really showed itself to be the case.

[Nathan "N.R."]

Geoff wrote: "At first I was thinking the presiding voice was going to be Whitman"

I kind of wish that Whitman had accompanied us a little further into the novel. Obviously, Bill's writing from source texts and borrowing phrasings from them ; but either there are too many diverse source texts (rather than a single ruling text like the Relations) or else their form of expression doesn't differ so strongly from our own early 21st=cent forms that they would strike us as so remarkable. And Bill has said that he had a hell of a time coming up with sources peculiar to the Nez Perces themselves ; so there's probably a lot more of his own imagination in writing them than there may have been in other Dreams?

[Geoff]

But there is something to be said for the Whitman-like formatting and the relation of the titles of Leaves Of Grass and The Dying Grass. Also, Vollmann's prose here does have something to it that resembles Whitman's civil war poems. But yes, in other Dreams the voice is much more explicitly made to be known, and of course Whitman couldn't serve to speak for the Nez Perces.

[Jonathan]

I plan to read some of Wood's writing (and have linked to a bit in my most recent update) as am interested to see how much of his "voice" is in WTV's writing. My guess from what I have read so far is quite a bit...

[Jonathan]

oh and i'm gonna just leave this here because it seems so odd to have someone writing about WTV as if he is a big literary star...

http://kentnerburn.com/william-vollma...

Plus there is some wonderful passive-aggressive snark in there...damn WTV and his "parachuting in"

[Jonathan]

finally, regarding Wood and Nanny (or "Nannie" as she apparently actually spelled it) - you can read some of their early love letters here

http://www.rosewindpress.com/acontine...

Which gives you more of a sense of what I mean by Wood's voice in the text..

[Nathan "N.R."]

Jonathan wrote: "oh and i'm gonna just leave this here because it seems so odd to have someone writing about WTV as if he is a big literary star..."

I wish him well. His novel (pub'd in 2005) has 280 gr=ratings and 38 reviews. A year after publication, Bill's Last Stories has 95 gr=ratings and 32 reviews. I foresee The Dying Grass eventually slightly outstripping the popularity of Argall :: 152 gr=ratings, 26 reviews.

Meanwhile, his claim that "I think I can go further into their world while keeping a respectful distance than any other writer" may well be true. That 'respectful distance' is what I've called in the Dreams, Vollmann's allowing his characters 'space' (by using the epic mode of characterization).

[Nathan "N.R."]

Geoff wrote: "But there is something to be said for the Whitman-like formatting and the relation of the titles of Leaves Of Grass and The Dying Grass. Also, Vollmann's prose here does have something to it that ..."

I don't know my Whitman well enough!! And a Yes! to Jonathan's note about Wood, which may well be a more controlling locus than I'd noticed so far ; I'll keep my ears peeled.

[Jonathan]

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Geoff wrote: "But there is something to be said for the Whitman-like formatting and the relation of the titles of Leaves Of Grass and The Dying Grass. Also, Vollmann's prose here does have somethi..."

I feel like Wood is someone who would appeal to WTV - not least for his politics (friends with Emma Goldman etc) and his willingness to be open about his sexuality - plus the fact that WTV sees the NP war as a defining moment for Wood, a moment of change and realization etc - and he has a certain "dreamlike" quality to his thinking/imagination which works well with that of the Dreamers and William the Blind...

[James]

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Geoff wrote: "At first I was thinking the presiding voice was going to be Whitman"

I kind of wish that Whitman had accompanied us a little further into the novel. Obviously, Bill's writing from s..."
I actually figured there would be more. He heavily leaned on the Yellow Bear (I think!) biography for the Nez Perce parts from what I remember. Wood obviously is huge and gives the book someone who is grappling with the moral issues. It's interesting to me how Howard's attitude towards African Americans differs from his attitude toward Native Americans down the road. It's almost like his compassion has been exhausted by the end of the NP War.

[Jonathan]

new review out:

http://www.wweek.com/portland/article...

[Tom]

LA Review of Books supposedly has a review called "The Last of the Nez Perce," but when I click on the link at Google, I get a page not found message. I can't find it at the LARB site either -- strange. If anyone comes across a working link, please post it here.

[[deleted user]]

This link worked for me. It gave me a pop up asking to subscribe, but I declined and got to the review:

LA Times Review

[Tom]

Greg wrote: "This link worked for me. It gave me a pop up asking to subscribe, but I declined and got to the review:

LA Times Review"

Thanks -- the site has at least two reviews; here's the other; both are fascinating and very positive:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/ma...

[Ashley]

Ass is fossilized from roadtrip to see Bill in Seattle & Portland but a few items of interest:

Bill said Coal/Nuclear is done but for a few finishing touches. He anticipates a 2017 publication date.

Poison Shirt is still not decided for either King Philip or Hawaii, and will almost certainly be the final dream to be published.

I asked about the two new novels and he told me titles that my mutinous brain lost track of. One is about the "expression of sexuality" though. I inquired about How You Are and it is not any closer to our loving paws, I regret to inform you.

[Chris]

And yet another (glowing) review: https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/ma... This one more insightful than others, coming from the co-editor of a Vollmann Critical Companion.

Still on the trail of the Dying Grass. Just over a quarter of the way through now. Also, for effect, reading some Whitman and listening to Native American songs on vinyl that I dusted off from my record collection. Packed my copy, along with Rifles for Bill to sign in SF the other night, listened to him read ("We Gave Looking Glass an Opportunity" section). Nice treat to read along with him, absorbing the character's voices & thoughts exactly as he intended. He would often look up and outward whenever he read the more distant, secondary or tertiary voices. I wonder what an audio version of this book would be like if multiple voices worked on it. Wanted to ask him a bunch of questions but he was a little under the weather and tired apparently. Plus his minder stood there shuffling us through the book signing process so fast that I could barely talk with him. Anyway, he's so gracious and appreciative of his readers. As I wandered down Haight St. I thought, "I think I just shook hands with a future Nobel Prize winner tonight."

[Geoff]

Beautiful, thanks for sharing!

[Geoff]

I don't know guys, I'm kinda missing the pages-long furious dream sentences we find in YBARA or Fathers & Crows in this one, ya know? I mean, it's still immensely good and all, but - I'm fiendin' for a bit of that manic electric maximalist style now and then, yes?

[Nathan "N.R."]

Geoff wrote: "I don't know guys, I'm kinda missing the pages-long furious dream sentences we find in YBARA or Fathers & Crows in this one, ya know? I mean, it's still immensely good and all, but - I'm fiendin' ..."

I disagree! I think that the page=layout he developed here allows him to return to that ever=ballooning sentence of YBARA ("I kept going over each sentence, seeing how much more I could pack into them" --WTV, paraphrased comment about YBARA); especially in the Nez Perce sections (the White sections are pretty clipped, though). It's just that the sub- and subordinate clauses appear more discrete due to the layout, but the sentences just keep rolling and rolling...

[Geoff]

As soon as I posted that, I felt I had spoken too soon... totally right on there...