Discussion - Week One - Europe Central - p. 3 - 98

[Jim]

This discussion covers Steel in Motion –thru– Opus 40, pg. 3 – 98


"beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sleepwalker in Berlin and a realist in the Kremlin"

[Zulfiya]

I found that the opening chapters are quite unusual - they are dense, insightful into the nature of historic events, and very imaginative.
Vollmann portrays the WWII scene as the world of telephone cables, the octopus with black rubbery tentacles.

As a Russian immigrant, I really appreciate the quality of his research (names, time, location, the zeitgeist of these turbulent years - pre-and post revolution). The prose is very dense semantically, but it is also intellectually demanding, and it is a true linguistic pleasure.

[mkfs]

Dense indeed -- I haven't read a book this slowly since The Death of Virgil.

[Zadignose]

With this book and Argall I found that the opening is of a somewhat different character than what follows. The book starts out at it's most nebulous and abstract before settling in to giving us some characters or more specific situations. It's a kind of risky approach for a novelist to take unless he (in this case "he") has already won the trust and indulgence of readers, critics, editors. There's a significant risk of putting off some readers before they go further with it.

One thing that rather quickly becomes obvious and odd about this book is that there is an "I" in it, but that "I" changes a lot, even to the extent of switching sides. It's not consistent even within one chapter. The "I" is most often implied by a "we," or "us." More often than not, "I" seem to be in the Russian camp, but nearly as often "I" am suddenly on the German side. One way or another, though, "I" am part of the culture/society/authority structure of one or the other side of the conflict, but (so far) "I" am never one of the central Europeans, Czech, Pole, Ukrainian or other. Also, so far, "I'm" certainly not a Jew.

(Random Examples from "Woman With Dead Child": "...no one could deny that we were ahead of Berlin." "... On the other side we merely need to quote our Fuhrer's dictum...")

However, the Russian dilemmas are more developed and detailed, and "I" comes out at some points as specifically "Comrade Alexandrov." But clearly Alexandrov is not really the narrative voice consistently throughout, and neither is a fictionalized "Vollmann" (especially as "I" express so many terrible thoughts that the reader and Vollmann would most likely want to disown if we were not forced into an identification with the thinker).

The book, besides being a series of stories and meditations on war, violence, nearly inhuman cultural institutions, etc., also reflects a lot on the situation of the artist. I think Vollmann finds both sympathetic and critical angles on all artists in the text. (Not just artists of course).

I first felt I was meeting Vollmann within the pages of his own book in the person of Roman Karmen. I particularly thought that the young Vollmann of the early Afghanistan experiment was on display when Roman said "I know that it's going to be my task to seek out misery and hopefully to reveal its causes and solutions. So in a sense I want to become the next Kathe Kollwitz. I want to devote my life to women and dead children. But it seems wrong to use them for any purpose, even for the universal good." Yet Roman appears, in many ways, a naive and thoroughly indoctrinated chump, at least at the point in his early career.

Shostakovich, too, is another kind of artist who seems a sort of double for Vollmann at the same time that he may be his antithesis. Vollmann is intimate with him, his rebelliousness and almost cavalier disregard for pragmatic reality is readily displayed, but at the same time he seems weak, contemptible, sissified. Vollmann seems to spend more time mocking and belittling Shostakovich than lionizing him, yet I think there's also a sort of buried admiration and identification for him here.

[LindaH]

Zadignose wrote: "One thing that rather quickly becomes obvious and odd about this book is that there is an "I" in it, but that "I" changes a lot, even to the extent of switching sides. It's not consistent even within one chapter...."

Zadignose's full comment on Vollmann's use of "I" makes me wonder if he isn't slipping on "shirts" or mindsets in order to create the vocabulary. E.g., the anti-Semetic thoughts in the book burning scene. Then I remembered Vollman's dressing up as a woman (Dolores) and found this text online from New York magazine, 2013:

"Dolores is Vollmann’s attempt to try on womanhood. The idea struck him when he was researching Kissing the Mask, a book on Japanese Noh theater, a genre of classical musical drama where men, often wearing masks, play both male and female roles. He wanted to write a novel about a transgender prostitute named Dolores — but Vollmann’s preferred literary strategy is to throw himself headlong into foreign situations and then report his way out. In order to imagine his character, he had to become her."

Maybe those first-person switches are part of his "preferred literary strategy".

[Zadignose]

I can see that. Your angle on it makes sense.

[LindaH]

Sorry, Zadignose, but you said so many things I want to think about...

Zadignose wrote: "One thing that rather quickly becomes obvious and odd about this book is that there is an "I" in it, but that "I" changes a lot, even to the extent of switching sides. It's not consistent even within one chapter."

It's hard skimming the audible edition; do you recall the chapter wherein "I" is not consistant. I want to pursue the narrator issue, especially when my hc edition arrives. It's a fascinating thing WTV does.

Zadignose wrote: "I first felt I was meeting Vollmann within the pages of his own book in the person of Roman Karmen."

Again, I have to look at the character/person Roman Karmen. Interestingly, to me, I felt Vollmann's presence as author from the beginning, in his exclamations and asides, but clearly there is much more going on. I remember the Karmen quote, but I didn't recognize the bigger connection you bring up. Thanks for that.

[LindaH]

Vollmann's use of the first-person to engage the reader's sensibilities intrigues me. I went back to the first chapter to see how Vollmann plays with voice in these relatively few pages...and switches the narrator midway. At the beginning the narrator is a dutiful communications specialist in a windowless office in Romania. Presumably he has followed the war since 1938 ("Away flees Chamberlain...") up to a pivotal moment in 1945, through his access to the vibrating wires. Now he enthuses about Germany, now Russia, whomever is in power ("One has to be on the watch..."). I, the reader, feel his loyalty crisis. But then, in Part 4, it seems to me, the voice of the author edges in. ("The receiver clamps to a mouth and an ear.") The specialist comments in parentheses: " I thought they were mine." The text moves away from the purview of the specialist. I hear the author predicting the future. ("In spite of mass commitment, there were not enough components.") I hear the author asking questions about WWII. ("What set steel in motion?") The author refers to books that "...survived the war.") The author, not the Romanian specialist, is "...preparing to invade the meaning of Europe." I, the reader, feel Vollmann's momentum, his authority.

Probably spent too much time on this. I guess I was happy to get the print-book...but now back to the audible edition.

[Zadignose]

I'm now referring to my memory rather than the text, but I guess the "I" was inconsistent from the beginning. For a while I was wondering whether the author was making constant use within each chapter, but alternating between chapters. It was when I reached the Kathe Kolwitz chapter that I finally concluded that the narrative voice shifts within chapters as well.

A few things to make clear.

I'm assuming an "I" behind we, us, our, and ours, as well as I, me, my, and mine.

Narrative voices include a presumed Vollmann authorial voice, Alexandrov who is a character that inhabits the story space, maybe some other character or characters, as well as some nebulous entity that seems to have a variable national identity.

But when I say I saw Vollmann in the book in the form of Roman Karmen, I'm not talking about narrative voice or any kind of direct identification. If anything, Vollmann the authorial voice distances himself from Karmen and Shostakovich, they never get to narrate, they are mostly given to us through the impressions they make on others, but Vollmann the human seems to be reflected within them. E.g., young Karmen is a naive idealist ready to plinge into personal danger in the almost childish belief that art serves a real social and humanitarian purpose, never mind that he may be serving a very wicked terrible institution (his idealism blinds him to that). He also wants to somehow comment on violence. I think Vollmann has presented an aspect of himself here.

[LindaH]

Zadignose wrote: "I'm now referring to my memory rather than the text, but I guess the "I" was inconsistent from the beginning. For a while I was wondering whether the author was making constant use within each chap..."

I like your terms, "presumed Vollmann authorial voice" and "Vollmann the human" voice. Also, Woman with Dead Child seems to be the first chapter where the "I" switches sides, but I didn't go back to check. I did find at least five distinct uses of the first person in "Woman" though, not counting its appearance in dialogue:

Kollwitz voice: "What would become of us now? Her only hope was world socialism."

The German nationalist: "Thus runs the Russian view. On the other side we merely need to quote our Fuhrer's dictum...."

The Russian socialist: "...we held our own...without giving ground to the capitalist anaconda which encircled us."

"Vollmann the human" voice(?): "And I've read that....I won't exaggerate...I won't claim...."

"Presumed Vollmann authorial voice"(?):"I've read...in the account of Comrade Alexandrov, to whom I am very close..."

Hope it's okay I used your terms, Z! Do I have those last two reversed?

[Zadignose]

Use the terms as you like, certainly. In my own post above, "Vollmann the human" has no narrative voice. He's the revelation of Vollmann behind the mask of third-person characters. Karmen as Vollmann stand-in never gets to speak to us directly as a narrator, while Vollmann the author slyly disowns him.

[LindaH]

I was thinking of "Vollmann as human" as the writer, and hearing the writer speak directly to the reader. I leaned, certainly prematurely, toward this viiew because of the factual underpinning of the text, along with the author's exhaustive research. Whether or not a writer can have a narrative voice in a work of fiction, is something I will be asking myself as I read on. (Although I feel as if I hear it, if not in the text, then in the structure.)

[Zadignose]

Well one can see it/hear it in action and dialogue presented in the third-person too. I think it's usual to assume that the author can lurk anywhere, behind anything, because he has crafted this work and these words. I just didn't include this as a form of "narration" in the sense that the author comes out and says "I."

[LindaH]

I've been on the internet a lot to understand references in the text. Does anyone familiar with Russian geography and history have comments on the meaning of the "Danube's gates"? I am guessing that the reason a uniformed guard in Leningrad is guarding the Danube's gates is that he is on the lookout for any signs of German sympathizing. The way I came to this conclusion is:

The "Gates of the Danube" label refers to the entry point in Romania from the Black Sea, the place where Germany could access the USSR in 1939. In that year Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler, thus "closing the Danube's gates".

Vollmann has the guard in "You Have Shut the Danube's Gates" being crass and intolerant, in contrast to the elegance and sensitivity of Kathe Kollwitz in the previous chapter, "Woman with Dead Child", with which it is paired.

[mkfs]

Well, I'm a hundred pages in (at page 108 since last Friday), and this book is entirely failing to grab my attention.

It's well-written, and the chapters are interesting as standalone stories, but once I finish a chapter, I don't feel at all compelled to start another.

Probably going to take me a few months to read, unless the train breaks down while I'm reading it or something.

I've been on the internet a lot to understand references in the text.

I stopped reading the footnotes after the fourth chapter. It reminded me too much of reading somebody's homework.

[Zadignose]

Mkfs wrote: "I stopped reading the footnotes after the fourth chapter. It reminded me too much of reading somebody's homework."

Really? But you might miss something. For instance, the death of Kathe Kolwitz and that of her husband are reported only in a footnote.

"Karl, his pratice already banned, will die of old age just as the sleepwalker's tanks glide into Paris. On 23.10.43, the family flat will be destroyed by American bombers. Kathe will die in Saxony, shortly after the firebombing of Dresden. I quote from one of her very last letters: Oh, Lise, being dead must be good, but I am much too much afraid of dying, of being terribly afraid at the moment of death."

(But you may have read that... is that the 4th chapter...?)

[mkfs]

I did read that. And I thought, "so what?"

OK, so I have a historical record of when and how they died. Two people that appear briefly as characters in the novel, and are discarded in favor of other characters, who in turn will be discarded (no doubt with accompanying endnotes to show that yes, Vollman did his research, and wasn't just using his library time to look at lingerie ads in the women's magazines).

[Zadignose]

So, okay, that's not interesting to you. I did care about Kathe, but at the same time I think it says something that in the larger context, her death is not much more than a footnote.

[mkfs]

Kathe was possibly the most interesting character so far. Spending a hundred or so pages on her would have been quite agreeable.

I mean I get it, there are lots of stories to be told, and he is trying to do a sort of CT-scan slice view of the time period. I just don't think that it works.

[Zulfiya]

Linda wrote: "Vollmann's use of the first-person to engage the reader's sensibilities intrigues me. I went back to the first chapter to see how Vollmann plays with voice in these relatively few pages...and switches the narrator midway. "

Linda and Zadignose,

I really enjoyed reading your comments about the narrator in this novel. It is obvious that Vollmann is playing with the concept of a narrator in modern novel. Instead of one classical unreliable "I-of-the story" narrator, he is, at least, using two or even more - we do not know for sure how many narrators there are in the novel.

By using at least two narrators, he is creating a certain literary paradox. The first person narrator is the one whom we trust implicitly (and here our loyalties are split), but usually this type of a narrator has a limited ability to tell us what is ACTUALLY happening in the story.

In this particular case where narrators are spies, they are more involved with the events that are narrated, but they also acquire the omniscience of the third-person narrator. I find this device with at least two narrators quite intriguing and very inventive.

The tone and the style change significantly from chapter to chapter. Sometimes, the narrative tones are more intimate, sometimes chapters sounds like historical chronicles, and sometimes the sensual trumps the rest. The modality is one of the most nuanced and sometimes it takes an effort to shift my emotional gears.

Firstly, I struggled with it, but with more chapters under belt, I find this tuning in more and more enjoyable.

[LindaH]

Zulfiya, Great to see you here! Vollmann's text is so unconventional, it's helpful AND fun to be in contact with fellow readers.

Your terms "modality" and "tuning in" made me think of the communications specialist in the first chapter. Aren't we too listening in and trying to identify the voice and the bias? Sometimes I will just assume omniscience when suddenly that first person will pop up and make me ask, Who IS this person and what's their agenda?

I've just finished "Breakout" (third week). Worth the trip!

[mkfs]

The tuning idea is pretty good. It certainly captures the flavor of the chapters as they go back and forth between Germany and Russia, back and forth over time. Tuning into tyranny.

[Zulfiya]

Linda wrote: "Your terms "modality" and "tuning in" made me think of the communications specialist in the first chapter"

Linda, you nailed it - ESL, applied linguistics and literary studies :-)

[Zulfiya]

Mkfs wrote: "Tuning into tyranny. "

Tragic but so true, especially nowadays. Every time I read news from Russia, I experience this deja vu feeling. It seems that we live in the post-modern world where the same things happen again, but on a different level - the same type of rhetoric, the same ugly ideas of supremacy and hegemony.
Vollmann captured this world very neatly.

[Glenn]

Mkfs wrote: "Dense indeed -- I haven't read a book this slowly since The Death of Virgil."

Funny you mention The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch. I just did begin Europe Central, first chapter - Steel In Motion - and there are several references like this one: "The ever-wakeful sleepwalker in Berlin . . . " One of Broch's novels, one highly regarded by Milan Kundera, is The Sleepwalkers. I suspect there might be a connection between EC and this novel. Any thoughts?

[Glenn]

Jim wrote: "This discussion covers Steel in Motion –thru– Opus 40, pg. 3 – 98


"beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sleepwalker in Berlin and a realist in the Kremlin""


“As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.” – circa 1870 quote from Comte de Lautréamont. The surrealists picked up on this image in a big way. Does EC connect with surrealism and the surrealists in ways I should be on the look-out for?

[Jim]

Glenn wrote: "Does EC connect with surrealism and the surrealists in ways I should be on the look-out for?..."

Well, technically, that was just me inserting a surreal comment, but yes, I think there's a bit of the surreal in this book, whether intended by Vollmann or not.

[Glenn]

Jim wrote: "Glenn wrote: "Does EC connect with surrealism and the surrealists in ways I should be on the look-out for?..."

Well, technically, that was just me inserting a surreal comment, but yes, I think the..."

Thanks, Jim. Curiously, reading Steel in Motion, with all that metal and technology drowning out humanity reminded me of Man Ray’s art – the row of nails on the bottom of an iron; the woman’s back transformed into a cello; the eye moving back and forth on a metronome. Of course it is too early to tell from just this brief first section but one way to look at the narrative “I” could be as the entire continent of Europe itself speaking.

[mkfs]

Glenn wrote: ".One of Broch's novels, one highly regarded by Milan Kundera, is The Sleepwalkers. I suspect there might be a connection between EC and this novel. Any thoughts?"

Hmm, that is a possibility. I wasn't able to puzzle out why Vollman kept referring to Hitler as "the sleepwalker", or why he chose to focus on that particular quote ("I go the way that Providence dictates, with the assurance of a sleepwalker"). A reference to the great German novel on the decline of modern values would make a lot of sense.

I keep meaning to read The Sleepwalkers. And The Joke, for that matter.

[Glenn]

Mkfs wrote: "Glenn wrote: ".One of Broch's novels, one highly regarded by Milan Kundera, is The Sleepwalkers. I suspect there might be a connection between EC and this novel. Any thoughts?"

Hmm, that is a poss..."

Thanks.

I found this insightful post on that Hitler quote about being a sleepwalker:

I believe that in this context the word providence refers to "divine providence", which in other words could be defined as "the fate determined by God".
"The assurance of a sleepwalker" comes from the fact that sleepwalkers are completely assured of where they are going (i.e. they never doubt or hesitate on the path to follow) however this self-confidence is completely blind. They have no reason to think they are going in the right direction, yet they are completely and definitely sure of the way to follow.

I'll keep my eye out for any connections I can spot between EC and HB's The Sleepwalkers. I'll be posting on this Week One thread over the next week or two.

[Glenn]

Vollman’s language is rich and strawberry cream creamy, language that, without too much ado, could be transcribed into T.S. Elliot-style poetry, in the sense WTV hits themes of damaged humanity, the power of history and fragmentation, and that’s fragmentation as in Dada, as in a Hanna Hoch montage, an art form the sleepwalker Hitler especially despised.

I particularly enjoy WTV's image of those old black telephones having 10 eyes – “that octopus whose ten round eyes, each inscribed with a number, glare through you at the world.” And then linking the telephone with the sleepwalker (Hitler): “The sleepwalker in the Reich Chancellery could tell you (not that he would) they’re his eyes, lidless, oval, which imparts to them a monotonously idiotic or hysterical appearance . . . “. It’s that interplay of objects with the human, as if Hitler is so omnipresent he is looking at all Nazis under his command as well as the entire population of Europe through the 10 eyes of each and every black telephone, 1930s-1940s omnipresent gadget par excellence. “The sleepwalker’s all eyes” Of course Hitler spent many years dedicated to the visual arts, drawing and painting as a near-starving artist in Vienna.

One reason I chose to read EC – this past year I made a close study of 2 books: ‘Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics’ and ‘Schopenhauer, Philosophy and the Arts.” I will be on the look-out for how much the aesthetic dimension and the arts play out in this novel. And since Schopenhauer judged music as the supreme art, all the references WTV will be making to Shostakovich and his music should be particularly provocative.

[Glenn]

A few more reflections on Steel in Motion

So many great references. For example: “Barrage balloons swim in the air, finned and fat like children’s renderings” Bulls-eye! Perfect simile; that is exactly what those barrage balloons looked like, balloon used to defend against aircraft attacks – the cables holding up the balloon would damage enemy aircraft. Here is a great photo of those sky fish: https://www.google.com/search?q=barra...


“Steel imbued with the sleepwalker’s magic sight, illuminates itself as it comes murdering." Again, EC shares much with the photomontage and collage artists like Hannah Höch and John Heartfield. Here are two beauties from Heartfield:
https://www.google.com/search?q=john+...

https://www.google.com/search?q=Heart...

Real emphasis on the intertwining of humans with technologies, like that octopus-telephone. Here is a quote I especially enjoy, “From the anus-mouth behind the dial.” --------- WTV’s soaking the old black telephone for all its worth, telephone as the eyes and anus of Hitler.

“And speaking of the telephone, here is a great quote: “Don’t trust any technicians who assure you that this brain is “neutral” – soon you’ll hear how angrily the receiver jitters in its cradle.” ---- WTV seems to be picking up on that theme from Marshall McLuhan that the media is the message. It is as if in EC the gadgets and steel have a life of their own and are manipulating humans as their pawns.

“Behind the wall, rubberized black tentacles spread across Europe.” Ominous, ominous – 20th century technology as the strangling octopus. Humans stand very little chance.

Looking forward to the next section.

[Glenn]

The Saviors: A Kabbalistic Tale
Compare and Contrast is one of the 12 classic Aristotelian modes and WTV employs the philosopher’s strategy in his comparing Fanya Kaplan with N.K.Krupskaya, women who saw themselves as good Marxist comrades marching shoulder to shoulder with other likeminded comrades toward the land of final synthesis as in Hegel-turned-on-his-head thesis-antithesis-synthesis. And age 28 special for both Ks, Kaplan and Krupskaya, since Krupskaya at age 28 married Lenin and Kaplan at age 28 shot Lenin. And both woman, as per their vintage photos, were stunning as 20 year olds, but, my oh my oh my, did women age quickly back then, especially when sent to prison or Siberia for years of hard labor.

Anyway, WTV packs in the historical facts and lyrical images, as if he successfully stuffs 20 pounds of potatoes into a 10 pound sack, for example, in writing of the last 4 days of Fanya’s life, after she shot Lenin, “a huddle of twenty-four grey subterranean hours like orphaned mice; and in the flesh of every hour a swarm of useless moments like ants whose queen has perished; and within each moment an uncountable multitude of instants resembling starpointed syllables shaken out of words . . ." WOW! Now that’s some creative writing. I read a Paris Review interview where WTV relates at one time in his life he was writing 16 hours a day. Now that’s a writer on fire!

[Jim]

Glenn wrote: " Now that’s a writer on fire! ..."

or crack...

[Glenn]

Jim wrote: "Glenn wrote: " Now that’s a writer on fire! ..."

or crack..."

Ha! Crack or coffee or speed, to be sure. In that interview Vollmann said he wrote so much his hands hurt when he types. He also suffers from carpel tunnel syndrome. He noted that his typing days might soon be over; he will have to do something like dictate and have someone transcribe.

[Glenn]

People stand tall like a certain letter of the alphabet, ideas glow like a letter, words hum like a letter – WTV’s chapter as Kabbalistic tale, for sure. Reminds me of that Georges Perec quote: “Is the aleph that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?” And these Europe Central times are times for men and women of action. As in the action-packed words of Comrade N. V. Krylenko “We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.” Ironically, Comrade Krylenko would himself be shot – I wonder if the masses were impressed.

Anyway, nobody could ever doubt Comrade K was a revolutionary who took his revolution seriously. And equally ironic, through all the revolutionary slaughter, one of Krepskaya’s very favorite books was Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women.’ And that whole scene of Krepskaya meeting Kaplan in the prison cell was quite a stroke of Latin American-style magical realism -- "Then the letters disappeared into the woman's mouth. Krupskaya was speechless. The woman began to glow more and more, until the light from her was as white and pure as a page of the Torah."

[Glenn]

Jim wrote: "Glenn wrote: " Now that’s a writer on fire! ..."

or crack..."

I just did post my review of Europe Central. As you will see if you care to read, I did benefit from our exchange on this book.

I read your review of EC. You gave it less than a top rating. I can appreciate your pointed observations -- there are a lot of pages to turn as WTV really stuffs his sentences. And the return for a reader's time is, well, not exactly light and bliss.

After about 50 pages, I shifted into 'fast read', not exactly speed reading but close. I would slow down when he hit the topics of the arts and music. A fine writer but far from my favorite style - my favorite novels are passionate, intense first-person as in Notes from the Underground or The Big Sleep.