Europe Central

I'm a little more than halfway through William T. Vollmann's National Book Award-winning Europe Central, and it's pretty great so far.

To be fair, I had my doubts about this book going in. After all, owing to what he saw as a lack of accessibility, Vollmann himself thought he had virtually no chance to win the award. When a guy like Vollmann is calling his own work inaccessible, well . . .

Not only that, but I figured I had this book pretty squarely pegged going in. In Europe Central, we have a man who is known for running around warzones and witnessing horrible things writing about perhaps the biggest meat grinder of the 20th century. So my assumption was that this was going to be a book heavy on gore and warfare. Not that I'm wholly adverse to reading a book like that, but it's probably not among the things I'm most interested in. Still, I heaved Vollmann's tome and got ready for a long, hard battle.

Boy was I ever wrong.

Easily the biggest, most welcome surprise about Europe Central is the amount of art criticism Vollmann manages to work--compellingly, I might add--into the plot. Anyone who has been following this book at all knows that Shostakovich figures pretty heavily. What you might not know is that Vollmann provides brilliant readings of at least three of his major works (his first piano sonata, his eighth string quartet, and his seventh symphony), and neatly folds said readings into a gripping love triangle.

But, as they say, there's much, much more. Early on, Vollmann provides a wonderful account of German Expressionist Käthe Kollwiz's travel to Soviet Russia (in the 1920s) for an exhibition of her art as Communist propaganda. Like with Shostakovich's music, Vollmann provides beautiful evocations of Kollwitz's paintings, as well as showing how she, as an artist, fits into the greater narrative he is trying to create.

I've also found readings of Wagner's Ring Cycle and Russian filmmaker Roman Karman's work.

All this is not to say that Vollmann does not get into the meat of the war, so to speak. The middle portion of the book (the part I'm in right now--perhaps 260 through 620) does shead the more cultural elements to deal directly with the fighting ot he war. Still, judging from the table of contents, it does look like we'll be returning to the artists. Moreover, even in these war parts, Vollmann is showing a very light touch with the carnage he chooses to bring in. These war-based elements are more about intriguing character studies against the backdrop of the Central European conflict than simply documenting the carnage.

Previous readings.

Note: In an attempt to shake things up around here, I'll be discussing what I read, as I read it, for the foreseeable future. In other words, expect more of this.

Comments

[susan]

Good. I find myself hopefully not boring readers with a weeks-long discussion of a single book, but realize that immediate reactions, whether on writing, plot, voice, etc. are not only truer to reaction, but change as one goes deeper into the book. Many wonderful tidbits are lost and forgotten by the time the book is closed.