William T. Vollmann Part 1

Reading Riding Toward Everywhere at Barnes and Noble in NYC.
Vollmann is a relentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivocally adventurous examiner of human existence. He has investigated the causes and symptoms of humanity's obsession with violence (Rising Up and Rising Down), taken a personal look into the hearts and minds of the world's poorest inhabitants (Poor People), and now turns his attentions to America itself, to our romanticizing of "freedom" and the ways in which we restrict the very freedoms we profess to admire.

For Riding Toward Everywhere, Vollmann himself takes to the rails. His main accomplice is Steve, a captivating fellow trainhopper who expertly accompanies him through the secretive waters of this particular way of life. Vollmann describes the thrill and terror of lying in a trainyard in the dark, avoiding the flickering flashlights of the railroad bulls; the shockingly, gorgeously wild scenery of the American West as seen from a grainer platform; the complicated considerations involved in trying to hop on and off a moving train. It's a dangerous, thrilling, evocative examination of this underground lifestyle, and it is, without a doubt, one of Vollmann's most hauntingly beautiful narratives.

Questioning anything and everything, subjecting both our national romance and our skepticism about hobo life to his finely tuned, analytical eye and the reality of what he actually sees, Vollmann carries on in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn, providing a moving portrait of this strikingly modern vision of the American dream.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=97800...

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• Riding
• Towards
• Everywhere

[smotheredhope]

William T Vollmann is the greatest writer of the 20th century. period

[cfotoole]

I don't mean to denigrate Vollmann's talent, but it's my understanding that he forfeits a large proportion of his books' royalties in order to get the kind of leeway he gets from his editors. A publisher isn't going to give an author free reign based solely on originality or literary merit. They've got to be guaranteed of clearing whatever margin of profit they need. What's extraordinary is that the tradeoff is worth it to Vollmann. Admirable is an understatement.

[twentyarms]

because humanity as a thinking, cultured species (If we have ever earned the title) is rapidly disappearing.

[writer123123456456]

I like his compassion for the dispossessd and for the untouchables in society, the diseased prostitutes and the unrepentant junkies and crackheads, the true lost. He is poet laureate of the unwanted...

[writer123123456456]

I met Vollman in San Francisco in a bar when I was living there. He came up to me in the crowded dark and starting telling about 19 century native peoples in northern Canada or something. I remember thinking, who is this guy? and about how peculiar and cerebral and lonerish he was... he didn't seem to know any one in the bar but he just sort of came up to me and started to tell me all of this researched-sounding esoteria and then he was gone. I met other writers but he most oddball & compelling

[egginajar]

He's the best photographer I have ever seen.

[offbdway]

..couldn't agree with you more. After finishing Europe Central, I haven't been able to get enough of the man, and have found it increasingly difficult to read other authors.

[zapisywacz]

Vollmann - exquisite vocabulary, great research, great travels, literature for connoisseurs. When you're totally jaded, try Vollmann. And I'm writing from Eastern Europe. He's the kind of writer who could write 500 interesting pages about a tree leaf.

But the clip about Vollmann has been watched by 2000 people. Meanwhile a clip about Bukowski by 50.000 people. Rihanna's Umbrella by 2 million people.

[BillMcGee666]

Agreed. He makes the over-hyped Foster Wallace look like an ant. Vollmann is in the same class as Faulker, Hemmingway, and a lot of post-WWII European writers.

The Cloud-Shirt will be out in a few months if all goes well.

[fiddlerfart]

Europe Central is by far the least likable of his works - all work and no glory