/lit/ - Literature

William T. Vollmann is the greatest American author of our time. Everything he writes is so erudite and suffused with detail. Having said that, he's never tonally cold or detached – his empathy for the downtrodden, whether it be whores, junkies, skinheads, bums, the global poor, or Native Americans, is what makes him truly rise above his contemporaries.

I recommend starting with The Rainbow Stories, a pretty medium-sized book of short stories about lowlifes and eccentrics that reads like gonzo journalism (and was obviously inspired by real reportage that Vollmann did), and then moving on to whatever interests you – his seven-volume essay on the subject of violence, or his Seven Dreams saga of historical novels about the colonization of North America, or his trilogy of novels about San Francisco prostitutes, or his latest work of nonfiction, a two-volume treatise on climate change. You can't go wrong with Vollmann.

In all seriousness.

What's his best? I've only read Europe Central and The Dying Grass.

>Back in the States, Vollmann took a job as a computer programmer in Silicon Valley, and returned wholeheartedly to the world of daydream. After hours, he slept under his desk, subsisted on candy bars and composed his first novel, the mammoth metafictional fable "You Bright and Risen Angels."

GIT GUD

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