What is /lit's/ view on Vollman's work

>>8500305
Unbearable. He should have become a programmer or something.

>>8500305
he's amazing. loved atlas, Europe central, 13 stories and his 2spooky4u ghost stories.

>>8500320
you haven't read him. pleb detected

>>8500305
It was the typical beginner's blowjob, with both its charms and its faults.

vollman refuses to engage with the internet and consciously sets his books before the internet age to avoid having to write about it

to me that signifies a failure to engage with the modern world around him - which isn't bad inherently, but he wants to write books about the modern experience, but chooses to eschew a major part of it. that's silly and i think it just means he doesn't understand the world we live in as much as he'd like the reader to think

his books are quite ambitious

>>8500326
Not true, though I've abandoned everything I've started reading by him. Excepting Pynchon and Barth, I don't like maximalists.

Vollmann is perhaps the 2nd or third greatest author, but you have to meet his books on their terms.

I read the Ice Shirt in about 2 weeks. The Atlas is what I'm reading now.
With the Ice Shirt it seemed to demand that I read the entire section without stopping and so each era of the history existed as a single tale to me. The exploration of Vineland and Freydis's meetings with blueshirt gave me nightmares. You really have to let it be all you're reading when you read that one.

The Atlas, like it says, is something to keep around and thumbed through on occasion, maybe between other books.

That's what I think of him. But maybe I'm just a moron.

>>8500343
living author*

>>8500343
you're not a moron you just need to read more

vollman brings nothing new to the table in terms of narrating history

he's unlikely to rank even in the top ~500 if you had to do a silly ranking game.

>>8500349
You're probably right. I'm very young and impressionable

Reminder that vollman wants to be the little girl
http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/2013/11/14/william-t-vollman-crossdresser/

>>8500367
who doesnt want to be a woman?

>>8500346
whose the 1st greatest living author in your opinion?

>>8500373
Don Delillo, though you wouldn't know it from his last few books. Him or Pynchon, but like I said above I am young and impressionable and like to pad my opinions with this disclaimer.

>>8500334
i think what you just posted is retarded, he obviously works under the "write what you know" motto, his works are basicalle gonzo journalism and fiction so why would he write about the internet when he knows shit about it

>Most significant for Vollmann’s productivity, and peace of mind, was his studio’s lack of an Internet connection. In fact, Vollmann never uses the Internet. “I tried ordering from Amazon once,” he told me. “I was almost all the way through and then they wanted my e-mail. I couldn’t do it.”

he's better than cormac mccorncob and that's all that matters

>>8500369
Then why can't I find many good books with well written female characters, let alone main characters.

If you really want to be the girl you need to practice being in her mindset. Write in nothing but a female perspective for 20 years. Then, and only then, will you become the little girl.

>>8500382
yes im well aware.

the problem is the internet is just the major form of communication today. you can debate on whether the internet itself is important or different in kind from what came before, but to ignore how people communicate is stupid when you're talking about, you know, the modern world. vollman wants to write about the late 20th/early 21st century but he doesn't want to actually say anything relevant to this time period.

I thought You Bright and Risen Angels was great, I'm finishing up Europe Central right now and it's pretty good. I like Risen Angels more though as of right now anyway.

>>8500401
Risen Angels, The Rifles and Europe Central are his only books worth reading

>>8500422
lmao okaaaay bud. what's wrong with his other books?

>>8500439
genre thrash

>>8500453
hahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahhhhahhhahhahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahhhhahhhah kill yourself

>>8500439
They're all either fetish books about hookers, longwinded period pieces about some obscure bit of history no one cares about, or, worst of all, nonfiction.

>>8500305
>spoonfeed me
kys

>>8500462
>i cant defend my meme homo lala prancing author

too boring to be lit
too loose with the truth to be consider analytic
essentially pseud bait

He's great. You have to be in the mood for him, though. I've read The Ice-Shirt, Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs, Whores for Gloria and the first 200 pages of Europe Central (I had just finished M&D and then started Europe Central and wasn't prepared - I plan on returning to it soon). He's very good, very weird. I like his prose most of the time, though his early stuff can be overwrought. But when he gets it right, it's some of my favorite nonconventional prose.

>>8500392
that's like asking Stephen King to write comedy because life is funny

>>8501838
you dont have to engage with the modern world. but thats what vollman wants to do but he wants to do it while ignoring the actual modern world.

He's like Borge. He has a great idea that worms into his head and he'll repeat that ad infinitum.

Last Stories was great, but halfway through you realise it's the same three stories over and over again. His historical fiction series seems to have the same issue, though I've only picked up the Dying Grass War.

>>8500382
He tries to be as broad as Pynchon as a writer but fails because he can't grow as a human being and write about the 21st century like Pynchon 's son

>>8500305
He's a dick sucker.

ITT people that have never read vollmann

his nonfiction is his strength. he spends so much time researching his works (both fiction and non). I think i remember seeing he called Imperial his Moby Dick.

just because ur a basement dwelling weeb that spends 16 hours a day on the internet doesn't mean everyone else is. Obviously most of his fiction deals with the underbelly of society- drug addicts, poor, pimps, prostitutes, criminals. And he does research them these people aren't sitting around on pinterest all day...

and anyhow most of his works are set before the internet..

>>8502776
was supposed to link >>8501879

>>8500305
I've never read anything by him, and nothing I've seen about his work here or elsewhere has convinced me to change that. He comes off like a less engaging gen x Pynchon, and the journalist writer thing tends to be a huge red flag for me.

>>8502776
you've never read vollman

praising vollman is like praising bukowski

also re:
>and anyhow most of his works are set before the internet..

see:>>8500334

>vollman refuses to engage with the internet and consciously sets his books before the internet age to avoid having to write about it

and besides, https://newrepublic.com/article/118748/william-t-vollmanns-dangerously-uncorrupted-literary-mind

google exists you know

vollmann very famously hates/is obsessed with the internet lol

>>8502841
I have read a lot of vollman. good job not responding to anything i said. vollman doesn;t wanna "engage with the modern world" engaging with the modern world isnt writing about whores and pimps.

where should he insert his modern age musings in the Seven Dreams series?

His nonfiction is what drew me in.. his writings on violence is one of the best nonfictions ive read

>>8502841
Pynchon has one (shitty) work that references the internet. Where's the criticism for him?

>>8502822

>he comes off

kill yourself

>>8502884
pynchon isnt that good either. better than vollman though, that's for sure.

pynchon obviously has very different goals.

>>8502884

if you think vollman is setting out to write historical fiction you're severely misguided

>>8502907
christ, youre an idiot

>>8502916
it's abundantly clearly you haven't actually read anything by vollman. just go back to skimming wikipedia and posting on r/books

>>8502920
I've read Rising Up, Imperial, Atlas, Europe Central, The Royal Family, and Argall. Nice try though- maybe if you keep saying I've never read him you can convince yourself it's true and that you are the only person here who fully understands Vollman's mediocrity.

unibomber

>>8502884
Two. ARPAnet is in IV.

>Vollman

Destined to join the meme pantheon of DFW, Jamba Juice, Pinecone, and Gass.

>>8503473
Nah. He'll always be a second string me like de

>>8500305
He's awful. Such a try-hard edgelord. I'll just let this evaluation say it best.

>Third-rate Pynchon desperate to impress with quantity rather than quality. Critics taken in by sheer volume... Grist for dissertation mills, intends not to be read but admired, motivated by the same incessant logorrhea as David Kirby and Albert Goldbarth in poetry. Consistent strain of misogynist sadomasochism overlooked by awed critics. Hunting down prostitutes (especially Southeast Asian prostitutes) has been uber-nerdish preoccupation, both in life and writing. Stepped into the breach left by Pynchon's long silences, determined to churn out a full Pynchon a year. Encapsulates ethical vacuity of American fiction after the collapse of 1970s postmodernism. Any moral meaning is buried in indigestible compendiums of graceless sentences. His few readable pieces are those heavily edited by conventional magazines (such as his Taliban piece edited 40 times by the New Yorker). Intentionally kills narrative with digression, to prove his superiority over other writers. His travel books follow Orientalist conventions--the coy outsiderness--despite his radical pomo self-image.

vollmann is great. everyone talking shit has never read him and it shows. Pretty sad actually.

>>8500340
this desu.

Dying Grass would have been so much better if he had just structured it as a book and not as some sort of prose painting.

>>8503020
>>8502920
holy fuck. I'm convinced neither of you has has actually read vollman. literally zero sources for any of your claims.

just because of this thread as seeing how no one has actually read him I started Europe central last night. so far so good.

>>8503473
I'd put Gaddis and Dellilo in that pantheon before Gass. Gass doesn't get quite enough discussion on here to be in the pantheon, not to mention the scarcity of his most well known work.

>>8503473
Who is Jamba Juice?

>>8504140
I fucking love jamba juice. too bad all the Canadian locations went out of business after a year lmao. $7 for a drink. get the fuck outta here.

The only thing I read from him is "Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater" which is the only book I've returned to the bookstore. It essentially had nothing to do with Noh or even East Asian concepts of femininity, instead focusing on how Vollman dresses up like a woman sometimes and how he knows a Japanese woman who dresses men up like women sometimes and a woman in LA who does the same.

Wasn't even well-written, dude meanders and speculates then drops hard sources as if his metaphysical bullshit thoughts are in any way supported by them.

>>8504130
That's the point. No one reads Gass, thy just meme the fuck out of the old cunt.

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>>8504140
ya dingus

>>8504176
I'm awaiting the Tunnel in the mail and can't wait to start reading it. The preview on Amazon was really fucking good.

>>8504176
>>8504181
Also I've read books by Joyce and Pynchon and thoroughly enjoyed them. They're both very skilled writers.

>reading his interview with the Paris Review
>"One of the things that I had to do occasionally while I was collecting information for that prostitute story, “Ladies and Red Lights” from The Rainbow Stories, was sit in a corner and pull down my pants and masturbate."

Truly the next Proust.

>>8503597
>Among his notes to his poor Viking editor, Paul Slovak, on being advised to cut his books: "I actually believe I have a shot at winning the Nobel Prize"; "Almost never do I read the final product"; "I believe that this book is worthy of standing in the shadow of Gibbon"; "It should be classed in the canon of great books."

>>8502890
Assmad Volefag.

>>8502884
there was and has been plenty of criticism of Pynchon for Bleeding Edge. it is generally regarded as his weakest effort and has been lambasted here on lit quite often. possibly less so these days, i'm not here as often as i used to be.

as for Vollman, he's a limited mind. he indulges in underbelly activities because his creativity and imagination does not extend beyond the superficial. his prose is also weak.

>>8504375
>his prose is also weak
yeah, youve never read vollman

>>8500305
I have never read Vollman and I don't intend to. This guy comes off as the edgelord's edgelord. (pic related)

His public persona and the topics he writes about all but confirm this suspicion

File: vollmann3.jpg (22KB, 240x319px) Image search: [Google]

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>>8504524
forgot pic

>>8504509
go back to r/books

>>8504535
no

I ordered Europe Central off Amazon because of this thread

>>8504524
if you read his books he's really not edgy. I've never seen this board judge an author so hard by his looks and not actually read him. jesus christ. I'm quitting this board and hanging myself. goodbye all you people, I'm leaving here today. goodbye goodbye goodbye.

>>8504575
I'm reading it now because of this thread lmao. it's good.

>>8504580
>>8504575

Well I think I will also give him a shot. Any recommendations on where to start? I was thinking The Ice-Shirt?

>>8504590
you bright and risen angels or just do Europe central. the last one I read was the Atlas and that's was good too.

>>8504590
I'd go with The Rifles.