Vollman Reading

This was not the William T. Vollman that fired a starter pistol. This was a Vollman with small eyeglasses (not the bullet-stoppers pictured below), with hair so short it didn't need combing. Perhaps Vollman isn't Vollman anymore. Maybe now he's just Vollman. If so, that still puts him far beyond most of what's out there, but I was hoping for something, well, a little stranger. After all, I had heard so many stories--almost dying in the Arctic, driving over a land mine in Eastern Europe, the carpal tunnel, the stroke.

Early on, Vollman himself told us he didn't write very many happy stories. That much is clear. There's nearly 10,000 pages of proof. What is not clear to me is that the man I saw was the man who writes 10,000 pages of stories that are mostly macabe.

There was a fairly substantial crowd, at least 50. Vollman wore a white shirt with jeans and a red and black checkered vest that looked like wool. Pens poked out from a right-breast pocket. When he spoke, he sounded, well, like you or me. I suppose that's how he should have sounded, but, somehow, I wish he wouldn't have.

He read two entire stories from Europe Central, estimated running time 25:00. They were good, even orally, which I generally find a difficult way to consume literature. Vollman is a very good reader. I counted only one stutter through the entire two stories and his voice was crisp, well-paced, firm. This was the most Vollman that Vollman got.

Both stories dealt with, as Vollman would later put it, "protagonists at a moment of moral decision." They were about the Germans fighting the Russians during World War II, both titled with their protagonist's name, both sounding scholarly and authoritative. They did not sound like fiction. One dealt with a Russian woman, executed by the Germans, martyred, used by the Russians to help win the war. The other dealt with taking responsibility for war crimes, a German colonel who was the only one to accept responsibility at Nuremberg, but for all the wrong reasons.

The book sounds very good, and I would like to toss is onto my TBR stack.

The reading was held in the back of the store among Children's books. It was, to say the least, an interesing juxtaposition, William T. Vollman reading a story about Nazi war crimes beneath an inflatable Walter the Farting Dog. It made me think about what kinds of stories are read to children, and I briefly imagined what a Children's book by Vollman would be like.

In the Q & A, Vollman was terse. Kind but terse. I would have preferred impolite but expansive.  If not that, I would have settled for something of the bizarre, even if it didn't teach me much. These are some things I learned. They are interesting but not, well, interesting.

1. Vollman lives in Sacramento and holds the record for most author appearances at Booksmith.
2. Vollman thinks that the U.S. has not yet approached the level of the Nazis (he emphasized the "yet"), but is disappointed in the American people's general acceptance of Bush's war crimes.
3. Vollman says he would write every day, nonstop, if he could. When asked to elaborate, all he would say is that he finds writing pleasant.
4. Vollman works on multiple projects at once.
5. Vollman is currently working on a book about the experiences of poor people in different countries. He says he asks everyone why they think they are poor, and the answers greatly vary. He says most of the Thais told him it's because they were bad in a previous life. Most of the Mexicans he spoke to told him it was because the rich stole from them.
6. Vollman's editors would not publish Rising Up, Rising Down in the form he wanted it. They said it was too expensive and they wouldn't do it. Vollman would have let it go unpublished if McSweeney's hadn't offered to publish it as he had envisioned.
7. Vollman said he received "decent money" for the abridged Echo version of RURD.
8. Vollman would be interested in seeing someone write a good history of the Iran-Iraq War.
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UPDATE
Ed's in full effect w/r/t the Vollman reading.

UPDATE II
My friend, who had his book signed, reported that Vollman drew a picture of a man sticking a gun to his head on the page facing the autograph. I'll try to get a scan up later if available. (Now this is the kind of shit I was looking for.)

He also reported that a small fracas broke out. Apparently, there was some dude with 3 remaindered Vollman hardcovers that he wanted signed. Disrespectful, to say the least, and the books were probably eBay-bound. The Booksmith's owner balked, and man got angry, and then they threw him out.
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UPDATE III
Tito's in. Quick, name your 5 favorite post-Marx Marxists (and no cheating by claiming that all Marxists are post-Marx).

Comments

[karl]

I was disappointed in the reading. Not with Vollmann, but with the crowd. I got the feeling that a good portion of the people there only knew him through his brief (3000 pages is brief?) association with the McSwnys group. I didn't feel like there were many readers of You bright & risen angels or Rainbow Stories there. One person asked Vollmann why he sounded so academic, which is not something I would ask of someone who routinely refers to prostitutes as whores or has smoked crack.

But then maybe he knew what kind of crowd he was reading for, and toned down the Vollmann persona accordingly.

[Worf Poe]

Re #7 -- Ecco gve him a $125,000 advance for the abridged version.

[Carla]

Bill really dislikes it when you spell his name Vollman (without the second n).

[Mikael Eriksson]

I remember reading a text about afghanistan on the william t vollmann homepage. Since the homepage is currently locked, and I would like to use it in my psychology project, I wonder if anyone knows where to find the unpublished work of william t vollmann that was availeble through the page.