Geoff’s Reviews > Last Stories and Other Stories > Status Update

...to the negative critic's credit, I really can't imagine enjoying this as much as I do without having some acquaintance with Bill's body of work. There's just so much Vollmann in each of these stories, it must kinda baffle newbies...

"...when one's brother is a flying decapitated head, there is not much to do but throw oneself into each campaign, trusting in magic all the more..."

Hey New York Times reviewer, I'm about halfway through this and so far I've encountered nothing "boring", "humorless", "indifferent", "unendurable" or "pudding-like"; what I'm saying is that Sonny Figueroa, I am publicly accusing you of philistinism, and am calling you out for a Savage Detectives-type critic vs. artist duel to the death! Swords at sunrise!

"But you're still in your youth, they said. You don't need to get serious yet. Why not run out and play a few pranks? For instance, you could hide in the bed of some lonely widow. Then you could kill her, rape her or both. It's also great fun to come up through the crypt and throw corpse-fat at the altar. Don't get too close or the cross will burn you."

"I confess the possibility that the Trench Ghost lacked any power at all over material things, in which case he was simply an insane hallucinator. But the loneliness of God makes for no story in and of itself. That is why our scribes added people to the Bible."

Cat Goddess was perfect gruesome surrealism.

"And so the shy marble girl found herself another taker; one day James Joyce stepped off his plinth by the Canal Grande, and the newspapers wrote that he had been stolen by a nymphomaniacal American heiress who engaged in untrammeled sexual congress with statues."

"The night skies were dangerous, to be sure, but certain vibrating chords could speed a ship from orbit to orbit; then there were starry tangent courses, and a spiral way, inhabited by a kind of current, which passed through all the Spheres. The mind that believed itself condemned to a stationary or isolated existence committed a crime against itself."

"When she sang, three little beggar-girls who lived in the street began dancing and fanning themselves with branches; and the sky over Trieste became a domed ceiling with a golden snowflake-sun in the center, connected to many crowned Graces who balanced all longings and judgements upon their pretty heads."

Two stories in and this Vollmannite is pleased thus far...