/lit/ - Literature

>>22970340
>A squat black telephone, I mean an octopus, the god of our Signal Corps, owns a recess in Berlin (more probably Moscow, which one German general has named the core of the enemy's whole being). Somewhere between steel reefs, a wire wrapped in gutta-percha vibrates: I hereby...zzZZZZZ...the critical situation...a crushing blow. But because these phrases remain unauthenticated (and because the penalty for eavesdropping is death), it's not recommended to press one's ear to the wire, which bristles anyhow with electrified barbs; better to sit obedient, for the wait can't be long; negotiations have failed. Away flees Chamberlain, crying: Peace in our time. France obligingly disinterests herself in the Prague government. Motorized columns roll into snowy Pilsen and keep rolling. Italy foresees adventurism's reward, from which she would rather save herself, but, enthralled by the telephone, she somnambulates straight to the balcony to declare: We cannot change our policy now. We are not prostitutes. The ever-wakeful sleepwalker in Berlin and the soon-to-be-duped realist in the Kremlin get married. This will strike like a bomb! laughs the sleepwalker. All over Europe, telephones begin to ring.
Rate the prose

>>22970427
Definitely good, probably better than anything I've written

>>22970427
Like Pynchon but pleasant to read

>>22970427
Wait, is that from the Vollmann novel, or did you come up with that by yourself?

>>22970439
The novel's opening that is.

>>22970434
Pynchon is also pretty pleasant when he's not being deliberately hard and complex.

>>22970431
Not a high bar I reckon.

>>22970340
I've been reading Seven Dreams books and I'm 1100 pages into Dying Grass now. I like him and look forward to reading more, but I'm not sure I appreciate his enthusiasm for prostitutes and trannies.

I remember tearing up reading chapter zoya kosmodemyanskaya which was weird since it wasn't that sad and I don't usually get that emotional

>>22970727
What a pussy

>>22970427
Sounds fun. Kind of like Pynchon and I like Pynchon so...

>>22970781
Vollmann actually doesn't like Pynchon.

William T. Vollmann stole Alexander Theroux' girlfriend in the 90s

>>22970800
Why? They seem to write in the same general style.

>>22970804
is this real

>>22971974
This is what Vollmann looks like. Before he became a famous author he slept in his work's office and lived on candy bars from the vending machines. You decide for yourself whether he stole someone's girlfriend.

>>22970340
I want to like Vollmann but most of his books pwpuld be twice as good if they were half as long. OP is one of his best bc it's more story collection than novel. I also enjoyed 'Last Stories and Other Stories'.

Got very interested in Europe Central and ordered myself the German translation. It was very cheap and the translation seemed excellent, I guess that the positives should outweigh the loss of reading a translation in this case.

>>22972827
This is the face of one of those dudes who inexplicably pulls art hoes all the time

>>22970340
I just read this last summer after having it laying around for years and it was great. The opening chapter here >>22970427
is kind of pynchonesquely obtuse but most are much more straightforward with what is actually occuring.

>>22971298
I don't know. I read an interview with him where he was asked about his influence on him, and although he was respectful it didn't look like he thought much of him.

>>22970513
I'm planning on starting that series this year as well. Probably going to start with The Ice-Shirt although that seems like one of his more idiosyncratic works. Part of me wants to jump into Fathers and Crows first but I think it would probably better to start with something shorter. Thoughts on the series as a whole?

He made a list of his favorite books in 1993. Once again in 2005 but U can't find that one.

Tadeusz Konwicki, A Dreambook for Our Time
Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji
Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Lautreamont, Maldoror
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
Tolstoy, War and Peace
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
Hemingway, Islands in the Stream
The Poetic Edda
The tales of Chekhov
The tales of Hawthorne
Njal’s Saga
Sigrid Unset, Kristin Lavransdatter
Melville, The Piazza Tales
London, Martin Eden
Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch
The poems of Emily Dickinson
Faulkner, Pylon and The Sound and the Fury
Homer, the Odyssey and the Iliad
Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
Heidegger, Being and Time
Poe, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym
Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes
Blake, Songs of Experience and Experience
Gyorgi Konrad, The Loser
Issac B. Singer, The Family Moskas
Bruno Schultz, The Street of Crocodiles
Malraux, Anti-Memoirs
The poems of Lorca
The poems of Mandelstam
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
The tales of D.H. Lawrence
T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Ivan Ilich, Tools for Conviviality
Mishima, the Sea of Fertility tetraology
Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw
The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders

Vollmann then writes:
>Doubtless some people will want to complain about the women, blacks, reds, whites, blues and greens I left out, but I don’t really give a damn.

>The beauty in these books would flourish more widely if the following social changes were made:

>1. Abolish television, because it has no reverence for time.

>2. Abolish the automobile, because it has no reverence for space.

>3. Make citizenship contingent on literacy in every sense. Thus, politicians who do not write every word of their speeches should be thrown out of office in disgrace. Writers who require editors to make their books “good” should be depublished.

>4. Teach reverence for all beauty, including that of the word.

Rate his taste

>>22973251
*I can't find that one

>>22972912
Each book is completely different and he experiments with something new every time, so far The Rifles is the only one where experiment didn't result in good reading (maybe I just got confused too easily) but even then the book had brilliant parts.
At the opening of The Ice-Shirt a promise: I have dreamed seven dreams, corresponding to the seven ages of Vineland the Good. Each is darker than the last.
And it's true. The Natives are completely fucked over, worse and worse in each book, but while there's sympathy for the victims of European greed, the way he depicts the Natives shows that they're in no way innocent in any of it.
Argall is a book that I would compare to Pynchon's Mason & Dixon with how it's written in the vernacular of the time-period it depicts. The research he did for each of these books is staggering and they alone would be enough for a writer's entire career, yet somehow they don't even take up half of his published works.
Vollmann is an absolute madman.

>>22973278
He is definitely the most erudite and big brained writer in America, possibly ever. His writing leaves something to be desired though. I don't sense a Great artist while reading his work.

>>22970513
I appreciate his enthusiasm for prostitutes but not for trannies.

>>22973251
>Islands in the Stream

What a strange pick. It almost feels like he’s going for some type of contrarian hipster credit with that one. I also guess he doesn’t like Blake’s Songs of Innocence. All in all a good list as pretty much any writer will have

>>22973278
I started Fathers and Crows but dropped it, not because it was bad but because I wanted to read another book eagerly. I never picked it back up for some reason but I need to. It was very good but kinda confusing in the beginning until you got what Vollman was doing. The time stream (or whatever it’s called) and all the little cuts took forever to start to form into a cohesive whole. I really want to check out some of the other books in the series as well. I’m certainly no expert but I’d recommend new readers of F&C to have patience as the beginning is a probably a filter for many but it does eventually streamline from what I’ve seen

>>22972912
What’s an ice shirt?
t. ESL

>>22973300
This is explained in the book. There are many kinds of metaphysical shirts, you're probably most familiar with the bear-shirt (berserk)

>>22973301
Is this from the third policeman? I remember something similar when the protagonist enters the house.

>>22973251
>>22973254
Is it this one?
https://web.archive.org/web/20060508132549/https://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails.asp?z=y&cid=1425883#interview

>>22973323
Maybe. I remember one where the list was a lot longer and included a lot of his 1993 picks.

>>22973323
>it took decades of hard work for me to get where I am today: in the gutter
Based

>>22973326
I found a longer list but it’s from a 1990 interview.
https://biblioklept.org/2011/09/24/william-t-vollmanns-favorite-contemporary-books/

Some GR user made just the list of titles here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1077935-bill-s-influences

>>22973323
>B = alien (to me ) world
So the American South is alien to him but not imperial Russia? Interesting

>>22973343
Maybe I am misremembering.

Other books he liked are part of a series called Writers from the Other Europe

>>22973343
Why are pynchon kiddies so cringe and insecure? Never seen a more delusional bunch of fans.

>>22970340
He’s apparently friends with Jonathan Franzen, whom I detest. That’s not ideal but he seems interesting.

>>22973251
>>22973323
>>22973343
> Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji
He mentions that one in every interview. He must really love it. There are 4 complete translations of Genji in English, 2 of which came out before 1990: Waley (from the 1920s) and Seidensticker (1976). Which one do you guys think he read?

>>22973443
Waley’s translation is lacking a chapter. Seidensticker‘s translation is the first actually complete English translation.

>>22973390
>Closely Watched Trains
Kubrick sang the praises of the film adaptation of this

>>22973434
What's so bad about Franzen? I've never read him but thought it was funny how he got kicked out of Oprah

>>22973390
>4 Kundera books
come on he is not that good
especially weird because this list >>22973251
is patrician

>>22973731
He put danilo kis in there because he read a lot of him for his research while writing Europe Central. I guess that's why Kundera also features heavily.

>>22973251
>>22973323
DAMN the guy is so fucking cool and well read. You can tell he works on reading and writing for hours and hours every day. Such developed taste and prose. It's no wonder that he has no problem at all getting his crazy long books published.

You see shit like this and it reminds you that you are doing the bare minimum. Like, I've read all of Joyce, Homer, Pynchon, Melville whatever, but it takes years, maybe decades to find all the niche art to fully develop into a unique artist who can just pump out novels. That's why he's good and I fucking suck. Brb leaving 4chan to read some more

>>22973251
>translations
Sad

>>22973742
You’re a retard.

>>22972827
He was somewhat better looking when he was younger before he'd been shot, caught in an explosion, etc.

>>22974376
Why?

>>22974394
Because most of Kis’ work was untranslated until the mid-2000s and Vollmann is a monolingual retard

>>22973443
He said that was his favorite novel ever.

>>22974417
He literally said that in an interview. That he spent a lot of time with kis' work during the writing of Europe Central.

>>22970340
Vollmann is great and has two new books on the horizon, one about the CIA and another related to his other work The Book of Dolores. They would have already been published if he wasn't dropped by his current publisher over issues related to the type of fonts he wanted to use which according to Viking would have drove up the printing costs too much.

>>22974442
Also the CIA book is 1 million words long lol

>>22974442
>another related to his other work The Book of Dolores.
he dressed like a woman again for "research"?

>>22974617
Fucking hell this guy writes a lot.

>>22974372
Grow up

>>22974360
This guy is on a mission. He was almost killed back in the 80s or whatever. He knows his time on this earth is precious, so he works as hard as he can.

>>22974655
Growing up means stop being a retarded monolingual

>>22974701
That's an adolescent concern. Growing up means reading whatever is at your disposal, especially when you're a very busy author. Wasting years and years learning many languages is a fool's errand.

>>22974735
Retarded Amerimutt cope

>>22974737
I'm not American and English isn't even my native language (I can read in 5 languages, currently learning other 2). I just don't see why you would learn Japanese for years and years just so you can have the reading skills of a child. It's too much effort. At that point just read a translation and absorb the essence. It's okay to read translations. Every writer did it.

>>22974758
Simply because you have the reading skills of a child in five languages, does not mean others are similarly situated in your retardation. Pure cope.

>>22974762
No, I read fluently in those languages. Japanese is a different beast and requires lots of effort. Just because you're interested in a book or an author doesn't mean you HAVE to learn the language. That's what a tryhard adolescent would do to prove himself he's better than the other zoomers. In truth, he simply wasted precious time he could've spent reading more books. When you grow up you'll realize this.

>>22973473
It was funnier when he came crawling back to her.

>>22974758
>I just don't see why you would learn Japanese for years and years just so you can have the reading skills of a child.
Sounds like a skill issue. Took me a year to fumble through easy novels. Took me another year to read hard novels fluently. Just because you don't know how to learn a language efficiently doesn't mean others don't.

>>22974765
>ummmm akscrually I read fluently
Stop bringing up Japanese, you fucking retarded weeaboo. You can learn to read advanced French texts in under 2 months, you moron.

>>22974800
I already know how to read French. Your retarded comment extends to Japanese so I'll keep bring it up. Also there are more Japanese books in his first list than French books, has nothing to do with being a "weaboo" on my part.

>>22974830
You genuinely have down syndrome and can’t even maintain a basic conversation by staying on topic.

>>22974799
Just because you have the time to waste and Japanese is a priority for you doesn't mean others have the time or care for it.

>>22974843
I'm staying on topic. You gave Vollmann shit because muh translations. Some of the books he reads are in Japanese. Are they not? Fucking schizo nigger.

>>22974848
Sounds like a mental defect issue.

>>22974859
Just a matter of taste. Not everyone gives a shit about the Japanese language. Shocking, I know.

>>22974857
You’re a retarded loser who fixated on Japanese for no fucking reason, lil bug boy

>>22974874
The reason is there are more Japanese books than French books in his list. Bug boy? There's a faggot above who claims he learned Japanese lmao

>>22974895
Jesus christ you're more retarded than a nigger. What third world African country are you from that you're english education failed you this bad, nigger?

You would all be better off reading more books instead of arguing on 4chan. You will now go read for at least one hour with no distractions or I'm shooting this dog.

>>22974915
Scary picture

>>22974908
>you're english education

>>22974895
Uh-oh, the little weaboo's getting angry. What's your top anime?

>>22974908
>>22974937
Just leave him alone. He's already admitted to trying and failing to learn Japanese. That's probably why he's so obsessed with it. You can tell from his posts it bothers him. No need to waste time arguing with weebs and derailing the thread.

Let's get back to Vollman.

What's everyone's favorite Vollman and why?

>>22974937
the sopranos

>>22974948
I've never tried to learn Japanese but you can't deny there are Japanese books in Vollman's lists. And books originally written in Serbian, French, Polish, Spanish, Old Norse, Czech, Norwegian, Italian, Latin, German, Russian. Can't expect a man to learn all that and still have time to write masterpieces.

My favorite Vollman is The Ice-Shirt. Why? Fuck you, that's why, bucko. I gave you the kino lists and this is how you pay me? Go to hell, you bedeviled Neo-marxists!

>>22974991
Spanish/Italian and French should be easy af for someone of Vollman’s caliber. Hell anyone not specializing in a certain language in PhD programs learns to read French fluently in the last few months of their program for their foreign language exam.

>>22974991
Can you please stop crying and bringing up Japanese and just stick to Vollman?

You're completely derailing an actual nice thread about an author and turning it into a Japanese language thread. Aren't there enough threads for you to troll? If you don't care about actual literature, can't you at least let the ones who want to discuss it have this thread?

>>22975002
you actually think a weeb is going to stop himself from talking about japanese? he's not going to stop

>>22975002
Fuck you, I'm not the problem here. I'm the best poster ITT as a matter of fact, my posts about the lists I found enriched the thread as well as the posterior discussions. When some niggers insult Vollman I will defend him. We can't have "nice thread" when people insult the author with their retarded banalities. Fuck you a million times.
>>22975006
Fuck you too, faggot. Japanese was an example.

>>22975026
Ok, Mr. Japanime has made it pretty clear he wants to troll, derail the thread, and make it about Japanese with his nonstop crying and seething about it and that even when asked he's going to continue bringing it up.

Can we all just agree from here on to ignore him and focus on Vollman. This is honestly a good thread which is rare to find anymore on /lit, so let the weeb have his anime and manga while the rest of us stick with literature.

>>22975037
>This is honestly a good thread
Thanks in large part to my contributions. All was going well before the niggers started to insult Vollmann because he read translations like any other writer ever. I even samefagged to keep the thread enriched and alive. Fuck you, you brainless ingrate for siding with them.

>>22975037
that's probably for the best, he'll crawl back to /a eventually

>>22975065
Retard, go back to your Japanese class.

i told you he wouldn't stop bringing up japanese

>>22973473
He's a reddit author and grabs about his ignorance regarding classic literature.

>>22975074
"You're english education"

>>22975074
he just can't help himself, truly weeb at heart

Alright. I'm going to drop a question and then leave the thread. If Mr. Japanime ruins the thread then I won't be here to see it and if he doesn't I'll catch up with it later.

So how do you think Vollman's daughter's death plays a role in his fiction?

>>22975090
Vollman's favorite book is Tale of Genji
Some nigger above learned Japanese
But somehow I'm the "weeb"

why do weebs keep bringing up japanese at every moment possible? do they think we care about japanese as much as they do?

>>22975095
he's already ruined it, but nice idea

>>22975095
I don't know about his daughter but he's said in many interviews how his sister dying has had a huge impact on him

>>22975095
>So how do you think Vollman's daughter's death plays a role in his fiction?
It has affected greatly. He talks about it in an interview that I'm not going to link because you will insult him either way like the pieces of shit that you are. In another topic, I'm really looking forward to his last volume of Seven Dreams. It's one of the best series ever written.

>>22975105
You ruined it. You insulted Vollman. Don't try to act innocent. It was you and your arrogance.

>>22975115
>his last volume
Hell, I'd be okay with just getting the second to last volume first! There's only five dreams out.

>>22975120
Reminds me GRR Martin's situation, except Vollman works on other actually worthwhile projects. I have no idea how he manages to produce so much quality. Dude's a beast.

>>22975115
>>22975119
what is this weeb seething about? is it because we don't care about japanese? and does he think not caring about japanese is insulting to vollman? i'm so confused.

Thoughts about the Prostitution trilogy? I haven't read it yet

>>22975130
You insulted Vollman because he reads translations and didn't learn Japanese for years like you did. Classic litbro arrogance. Stop derailing the thread with your nonsense now.

>>22975126
>I have no idea how he manages to produce so much quality
Literally just discipline. He's not on his phone or on 4chan for hours each day, he doesn't watch tiktok thots or compilations of cat videos. He goes to hang out with homeless people to write about them, he goes train-hopping to write about train-hopping, he dresses up as a woman to write about trannies, he nearly freezes himself to death to write about Franklin's failed expedition (seriously, reading that part of The Rifles was harrowing)
I should seek out more of his non-fiction, like Imperial and Carbon Ideologies. And I haven't read any of his short stories yet.
>>22975135
Or these, I haven't read these either.

>>22975139
this weeb can't stop himself from bringing up japanese. isn't /a enough for him? why derail a thread about actual literature?

What are you guys' honest thoughts about his transformation into Dolores as a means for creative inspiration?

>>22970340
Vollman is a glowie. He is of the same stock as Matthiessen

>>22975153
He will never be a woman.

>>22975143
I want to read Imperial, too. Apparently he considers it his "Moby Dick". Has anyone read his book on when violence is justified? Is it good or just a meme?

>>22975168
The full monty is pretty much impossible to get your hands on and I don't know if the abridged into a single volume version would do the whole project justice

>>22970340
Whoever’s read some of the Seven Dreams books, can you rank them or give your brief thoughts on each?

>>22970340
Does anyone know where I can download a decent file of the Ice-Shirt? I downloaded this from Anna's but the file is corrupted or whatever

>>22974442
>>22974617
Any sources/details on the CIA book? I google William T Vollman CIA all the results are about how they suspected he was the unabomber haha

>>22975354
I finally bought a copy of his Rainbow Stories after being unable to find it online. I've read the first few in it and they're pretty great, although they mostly just read like that Harper's thing he did recently, without the introspective part though.

>>22972827
He became the girlfriend.

>>22975705
The title of the CIA book is A Table for Fortune.

>>22974915
No please Mr. Vollmann, I'll find your copy of RURD for 2000$. Leave the dog alone.

>>22975354
I believe the ice shirt doesn't have an epub release yet. I think you can find the pdf though.

>>22977037
> I think you can find the pdf though.
Yea, it's what I did.

>>22975275
From worst to best:

The Rifles: good depiction of how the use of rifles led to extreme wastefulness in hunting to the detriment of those tribes for whom hunting was a primary source of sustenance. Good description of what it's like to be fucking cold. Boring relationship stuff. Dan Simmons did a better story about the Franklin expedition, the supernatural stuff excluded.
The Ice-Shirt: fun times with vikings, depicts a reality where mythology and history are not separated. An entertaining read throughout.
Argall: excellent novel about the founding of Jamestown, retelling the story of Pocahontas and John Smith. Named after a man who appears in the pages of the history books as an absolute madman, Argall appears in three of the Seven Dreams books and with good reason. The events of Argall are partially concurrent with Fathers and Crows.
The Dying Grass: an absolute behemoth of a book (1350+ pages), it follows the Nez Perce war from both the US army's and the Indian's side and shows how both sides have people who don't want the war as well as people for whom the wanton murder of unarmed civilians and the raping of women is all they really want out of life. The changes in style whenever the Natives are the POV and when the army are the POV means you never mistake one for the other, their thinking and their language are so different.
Fathers and Crows: easily the best book in the series. Greed and fanaticism on both sides leads to worse and worse results for everyone involved. If you only read one of these books, make it this one.

>>22977444
Damn. I thought The Ice-Shirt was one of the better ones. I like Vikings and stuff. Shame.

>>22977444
Nice post and digits. I posted in this thread that fathers and crows is the one Vollman book I have. I liked it but I had a strong desire to read something else at that moment and I never went back to it. I will though. I’ve always felt that era and setting are often neglected in literature. The Leatherstocking Tales might not be high literature, and may not even be good, but Cooper takes me to a place I really like to see portrayed, that pre colonial era and the rugged outdoors, Native American tribes, and adventure. Mason and Dixon sorta scratches that itch but he’s too…zany; I think that’s the word I’m looking for. It’s a great book but could have been even better IMO if it was toned down.

Anyway, this definitely motivates me to restart Fathers and Crows

>>22977471
Did I say it's a bad book? I don't think I said a single negative thing about it lol

bump

Rare decent thread on /lit/. But where does one start with him?

>>22978621
>where does one start with him?
seconded

>>22978621
You can start at the beginning with You Bright and Risen Angels. Or you can start with Europe Central, which is his most acclaimed novel. You may also consider some of his non-fiction, like Riding Toward Everywhere or Poor People.

>>22978621
>>22978699
>>22978809
Adding to this, he's got a bunch of short story collections, of which The Atlas might be of interest to new readers because it features materials relating to things that he would go on to expand into full novels.

>>22975153
As long as he doesn't sincerely believes you can change your gender.....

>>22977474
As an aside, anon, if you like the precolonial era, Native American tribes, etc., find Allen Eckert's The Winning of America (6 volumes). The first one, The Frontiersmen, reads as if WTV had written it.

Fathers and Crows is a great book.

>>22977474
Adding to say that you definitely need to give Fathers and Crows another chance. If you want to ease yourself in with something smaller The Atlas is a good place to start. It's essentially a collection of short stories relating to his travels around the world. If you want to start even smaller Whores for Gloria is good but only if you are into transgressive literature.

>>22979619
Yeah, I’m planning to start it again soon, it’s in my “read soon” pile. I have nothing bad to say about it from what I’ve read, it’s just that my interest was pulled really strongly towards another book

>>22970340
Currently reading and holy fuck its great
One thing I love is that its made of different and non-related stories set in the same historic moment, so you can read a story a day
p.s. Vollmann rocks

>>22980854
I assume you’re talking about Europe Central?