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Whores for Gloria
With his first three works of fiction—the novels You Bright and Risen Angels and The Ice-Shirt, and the collection The Rainbow Stories—William T. Vollmann announced himself as a writer of rare and ferocious talent, with critics comparing him to William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, and T.C. Boyle. His new novel is the story of Jimmy, who has been deserted by his lover, a prostitute by the name of Gloria. In the despair of his loneliness, and his drunken grief, he reassembles Gloria’s presence out of whatever he can buy from the hookers on the street—the fragments of their lives and dreams, and locks of hair they are willing to share for a price. In his search for these snatches of intimacy he meets the hustlers, drunks, and prostitutes of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Candy, who beats her customers when they ask for it but refuses to let them call her a bitch; Snake, who pimps his wife; Nicole, whose job it is to give men AIDS; Jack, who shoots his woman’s earnings into his arm but still likes Chopin even though he doesn’t have a record player; and Gloria, who may or may not be a figment of Jimmy’s imagination. Vollmann writes with explosive power of the inner city, unflinching in the way he confronts the solitude of the homeless and unloved, the insulted and the injured of skid-row America. His exhilarating, high-voltage style and lyric language touch the heart and retrieve a jubilant integrity from the harsh struggles of his characters. Here is a world of harrowing truth, beautifully expressed by a writer of prodigious gifts.
162 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1991
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3123 people want to read
About the author
William T. Vollmann
99 books1,446 followersWilliam Tanner Vollmann is an American author, journalist, and essayist known for his ambitious and often unconventional literary works. Born on July 28, 1959, in Los Angeles, California, Vollmann has earned a reputation as one of the most prolific and daring writers of his generation.
Vollmann's early life was marked by tragedy; his sister drowned when he was a child, an event that profoundly impacted him and influenced his writing. He attended Deep Springs College, a small, isolated liberal arts college in California, before transferring to Cornell University, where he studied comparative literature. After college, Vollmann spent some time in Afghanistan as a freelance journalist, an experience that would later inform some of his works.
His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), is a sprawling, experimental work that blends fantasy, history, and social commentary. This novel set the tone for much of his later work, characterized by its complexity, depth, and a willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects.
Vollmann's most acclaimed work is The Rainbow Stories (1989), a collection of interlinked short stories that explore the darker sides of human nature. His nonfiction is equally notable, particularly Rising Up and Rising Down (2003), a seven-volume treatise on violence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Over the years, Vollmann has continued to write prolifically, producing novels, short stories, essays, and journalistic pieces. His work often delves into themes of violence, poverty, and the struggles of marginalized people. He has received several awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005 for Europe Central, a novel about the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during World War II.
Vollmann is known for his immersive research methods, often placing himself in dangerous situations to better understand his subjects. Despite his literary success, he remains somewhat of an outsider in the literary world, frequently shunning public appearances and maintaining a low profile.
In addition to his writing, Vollmann is also an accomplished photographer, and his photographs often accompany his written work. Painting is also an art where's working on, celebrating expositions in the United States, showing his paintings. His diverse interests and unflinching approach to his subjects have made him a unique voice in contemporary American literature.
Vollmann's early life was marked by tragedy; his sister drowned when he was a child, an event that profoundly impacted him and influenced his writing. He attended Deep Springs College, a small, isolated liberal arts college in California, before transferring to Cornell University, where he studied comparative literature. After college, Vollmann spent some time in Afghanistan as a freelance journalist, an experience that would later inform some of his works.
His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), is a sprawling, experimental work that blends fantasy, history, and social commentary. This novel set the tone for much of his later work, characterized by its complexity, depth, and a willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects.
Vollmann's most acclaimed work is The Rainbow Stories (1989), a collection of interlinked short stories that explore the darker sides of human nature. His nonfiction is equally notable, particularly Rising Up and Rising Down (2003), a seven-volume treatise on violence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Over the years, Vollmann has continued to write prolifically, producing novels, short stories, essays, and journalistic pieces. His work often delves into themes of violence, poverty, and the struggles of marginalized people. He has received several awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005 for Europe Central, a novel about the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during World War II.
Vollmann is known for his immersive research methods, often placing himself in dangerous situations to better understand his subjects. Despite his literary success, he remains somewhat of an outsider in the literary world, frequently shunning public appearances and maintaining a low profile.
In addition to his writing, Vollmann is also an accomplished photographer, and his photographs often accompany his written work. Painting is also an art where's working on, celebrating expositions in the United States, showing his paintings. His diverse interests and unflinching approach to his subjects have made him a unique voice in contemporary American literature.
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September 3, 2019
4.5 stars
This is my first Vollman; an easy way in I thought because it is short. I should have known better because it raises all sorts of issues and defies neat classification. The novel is a series of vignettes and short chapters. The main protagonist is Jimmy, who is a Vietnam veteran; middle-aged and living in a flophouse, surviving on his regular cheque and spending much time drinking in bars. It is set in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. Jimmy is obsessed with Gloria, who seems to be an idealised woman (possibly a prostitute, or maybe not) who he may or may not have known in his past. He pays a variety of prostitutes; some for sex, others for stories, sad and happy. He starts to build a composite picture of Gloria from stories, memories and individual character traits and physical attributes of the women he meets. He even asks for a lock of hair. Gloria is usually almost within reach for Jimmy, but just beyond what he can conceive and bring to reality. Vollman has done his research, at the back of the book is a glossary of terms (necessary) and he interviewed many prostitutes in the Tenderloin area as part of his research. There are notes on these interviews at the back of the book and these make the book more powerful being authentic voices. There is also a price list for the period 1985-88. We follow Jimmy in his encounters with prostitutes, some of whom are transvestites and transgender. Other characters include the barmaids in various bars, a number of pimps and Code Six, Jimmy’s Vietnam buddy who is even worse off than Jimmy, living in an alley.
This is not a novel in the same genre as American Psycho et al; the difference being that Vollman clearly has great compassion for those who inhabit the world he draws. John Rechy has drawn a comparison with Don Quixote with Gloria as Dulcinea and in an odd sort of way I can understand that.
This is the first of a trilogy and it has been noted that Vollman does seem to focus on prostitution quite a lot. When asked about this he makes a point about it being an intersection between love, sex and money and contends that in terms of our materialistic society prostitutes do openly what the rest of society do covertly and so by looking at them we see ourselves more sharply.
This is in a way a love story; the language is very strong and the descriptions vivid. The women who work as prostitutes are portrayed with understanding and warmth. It is never really clear whether Gloria is real and in some ways Jimmy is also a composite of one of the denizens of the area. It could be a ghost story. It is all the more powerful because of the knowledge that many of the stories Vollman uses are real. Vollman clearly has a strong moral sense. The pimps, although as lost as everyone else, are using the structure and agency society gives them to control the women; backed up of course by physical violence. It is moving and harrowing and very bleak. Vollman leaves open a lot of questions about gender relations and how men and women negotiate relationships. But he does leave the reader with some explanation;
“For we must all build our worlds around us, bravely or dreamily, as long as we can shelter ourselves from the rain, walling ourselves in gorgeously”
This is my first Vollman; an easy way in I thought because it is short. I should have known better because it raises all sorts of issues and defies neat classification. The novel is a series of vignettes and short chapters. The main protagonist is Jimmy, who is a Vietnam veteran; middle-aged and living in a flophouse, surviving on his regular cheque and spending much time drinking in bars. It is set in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. Jimmy is obsessed with Gloria, who seems to be an idealised woman (possibly a prostitute, or maybe not) who he may or may not have known in his past. He pays a variety of prostitutes; some for sex, others for stories, sad and happy. He starts to build a composite picture of Gloria from stories, memories and individual character traits and physical attributes of the women he meets. He even asks for a lock of hair. Gloria is usually almost within reach for Jimmy, but just beyond what he can conceive and bring to reality. Vollman has done his research, at the back of the book is a glossary of terms (necessary) and he interviewed many prostitutes in the Tenderloin area as part of his research. There are notes on these interviews at the back of the book and these make the book more powerful being authentic voices. There is also a price list for the period 1985-88. We follow Jimmy in his encounters with prostitutes, some of whom are transvestites and transgender. Other characters include the barmaids in various bars, a number of pimps and Code Six, Jimmy’s Vietnam buddy who is even worse off than Jimmy, living in an alley.
This is not a novel in the same genre as American Psycho et al; the difference being that Vollman clearly has great compassion for those who inhabit the world he draws. John Rechy has drawn a comparison with Don Quixote with Gloria as Dulcinea and in an odd sort of way I can understand that.
This is the first of a trilogy and it has been noted that Vollman does seem to focus on prostitution quite a lot. When asked about this he makes a point about it being an intersection between love, sex and money and contends that in terms of our materialistic society prostitutes do openly what the rest of society do covertly and so by looking at them we see ourselves more sharply.
This is in a way a love story; the language is very strong and the descriptions vivid. The women who work as prostitutes are portrayed with understanding and warmth. It is never really clear whether Gloria is real and in some ways Jimmy is also a composite of one of the denizens of the area. It could be a ghost story. It is all the more powerful because of the knowledge that many of the stories Vollman uses are real. Vollman clearly has a strong moral sense. The pimps, although as lost as everyone else, are using the structure and agency society gives them to control the women; backed up of course by physical violence. It is moving and harrowing and very bleak. Vollman leaves open a lot of questions about gender relations and how men and women negotiate relationships. But he does leave the reader with some explanation;
“For we must all build our worlds around us, bravely or dreamily, as long as we can shelter ourselves from the rain, walling ourselves in gorgeously”
March 4, 2019
Driving home from a movie last week with my seven year old daughter, I chose the way that took us up 6th Street, across Market and through the heart of San Francisco's Tenderloin. At a stoplight my daughter pointed out the car window at a disheveled, drug-addled man stumbling through pedestrian traffic in bright, mid-afternoon sunshine and asked, "Daddy, how does a person get to be like that man?"
After ten years of living in San Francisco, I realize that I inhabit a real-life version of China Miéville's The City & the City. Chronic homelessness, agressive panhandling and shuck-and-jive pageantry have become a part of the city's backdrop and are now nearly unrecognizable in their individuality; so much so that you can tell a local from a tourist because the local isn't just ignoring that plea for money, they just don't see that person anymore . Six years ago when my family moved to the place where I currently reside there was a white homeless man with a shopping cart in front of our house, standing at the stairs as if he was expecting our arrival. His long unkempt hair had tangled itself into some unintentional version of dreadlocks; his unwashed clothes and strong scent of booze, urine and shopping cart filth was not the neighborhood welcome we had anticipated. Over the first few weeks after moving-in we would see him rambling down the street with his cart, talking incoherently to himself, sometimes sleeping off a high on the sidewalk. He soon became a recognizable and colorful feature of the neighborhood - we noticed that he defended the trash and recycle bins from other homeless men in some type of inscrutable turf claimstaking. We began to refer to him as Dread (shorthand for his hairstyle), and his sidewalk sleeping, public urinating presence became something of a landmark - like a friendly feral cat or a derelict car we wondered when would be towed. His life story, and basically his humanity, had been subsumed by my family's need to create order from his chaos, and by doing so, erase him. Six years later, I couldn't tell you how frequently he is on the street. Occasionally I will see a tourist on Fillmore Street walk in a wide parabola while looking at a human on the ground. My Miéville veil will drop and I will think to myself, "Oh, it's just Dread." And my culpability in de-humanizing this person is complete. He just doesn't even register anymore.
So my daughter's question, like so much unwitting wisdom of children, was a much needed bolt of reality. I tried to look at the man on 6th Street through her eyes, and then answered, "A life of bad choices." But that was the cop-out to a question I was not educated enough to properly answer. And then, that same day, GR chum N.R. Gaddis recommended Vollmann's "Whores for Gloria". Serendipity doesn't even begin to tell the story.
Vollmann doesn't write about the denizens of San Francisco's Tenderloin district, he channels them like a medium. "I hate myself hate myself HATE myself! thegirl shouted, but everybody in the bar including Jimmy again pretended not to hear because it might be her self-hatred was the base of her integrity which everyone had to have..." Vollmann's characters are richly portrayed, hopeless of outlook, helpless in changing the trajectory of their lives. Jimmy, the main character of the novel, spends his days trying to exorcise his demon, Gloria. From one carnal episode to the next; employing prostitutes to relay their memories (whether happy or sad), even gathering locks of hooker hair to create a voodoo version of his savior yields predictable results. "The problem he said to himself is how can I put one foot ahead of the other day after day for the rest of my life?" Vollmann's prose is taut, gritty, vivid. Flop-house hotel rooms ooze disease, and meticulous descriptions of hooker lesion filled, track-marked bodies read like a health clinic's cautionary pamphlet.
And so Vollmann has taught me, convinced me, that there is no one answer to my daughter's question. He is clear, however, to let the reader know that whatever path brings a person to the Tenderloin of human existence - once you have crossed that Rubicon - you have entered the world where Gloria is the protagonist, and you are forever her whore. In one of Jimmy's few clear moments, he reflects, "Here we have the Whore of Hell: Abandon hope all ye who enter her."
After ten years of living in San Francisco, I realize that I inhabit a real-life version of China Miéville's The City & the City. Chronic homelessness, agressive panhandling and shuck-and-jive pageantry have become a part of the city's backdrop and are now nearly unrecognizable in their individuality; so much so that you can tell a local from a tourist because the local isn't just ignoring that plea for money, they just don't see that person anymore . Six years ago when my family moved to the place where I currently reside there was a white homeless man with a shopping cart in front of our house, standing at the stairs as if he was expecting our arrival. His long unkempt hair had tangled itself into some unintentional version of dreadlocks; his unwashed clothes and strong scent of booze, urine and shopping cart filth was not the neighborhood welcome we had anticipated. Over the first few weeks after moving-in we would see him rambling down the street with his cart, talking incoherently to himself, sometimes sleeping off a high on the sidewalk. He soon became a recognizable and colorful feature of the neighborhood - we noticed that he defended the trash and recycle bins from other homeless men in some type of inscrutable turf claimstaking. We began to refer to him as Dread (shorthand for his hairstyle), and his sidewalk sleeping, public urinating presence became something of a landmark - like a friendly feral cat or a derelict car we wondered when would be towed. His life story, and basically his humanity, had been subsumed by my family's need to create order from his chaos, and by doing so, erase him. Six years later, I couldn't tell you how frequently he is on the street. Occasionally I will see a tourist on Fillmore Street walk in a wide parabola while looking at a human on the ground. My Miéville veil will drop and I will think to myself, "Oh, it's just Dread." And my culpability in de-humanizing this person is complete. He just doesn't even register anymore.
So my daughter's question, like so much unwitting wisdom of children, was a much needed bolt of reality. I tried to look at the man on 6th Street through her eyes, and then answered, "A life of bad choices." But that was the cop-out to a question I was not educated enough to properly answer. And then, that same day, GR chum N.R. Gaddis recommended Vollmann's "Whores for Gloria". Serendipity doesn't even begin to tell the story.
Vollmann doesn't write about the denizens of San Francisco's Tenderloin district, he channels them like a medium. "I hate myself hate myself HATE myself! thegirl shouted, but everybody in the bar including Jimmy again pretended not to hear because it might be her self-hatred was the base of her integrity which everyone had to have..." Vollmann's characters are richly portrayed, hopeless of outlook, helpless in changing the trajectory of their lives. Jimmy, the main character of the novel, spends his days trying to exorcise his demon, Gloria. From one carnal episode to the next; employing prostitutes to relay their memories (whether happy or sad), even gathering locks of hooker hair to create a voodoo version of his savior yields predictable results. "The problem he said to himself is how can I put one foot ahead of the other day after day for the rest of my life?" Vollmann's prose is taut, gritty, vivid. Flop-house hotel rooms ooze disease, and meticulous descriptions of hooker lesion filled, track-marked bodies read like a health clinic's cautionary pamphlet.
And so Vollmann has taught me, convinced me, that there is no one answer to my daughter's question. He is clear, however, to let the reader know that whatever path brings a person to the Tenderloin of human existence - once you have crossed that Rubicon - you have entered the world where Gloria is the protagonist, and you are forever her whore. In one of Jimmy's few clear moments, he reflects, "Here we have the Whore of Hell: Abandon hope all ye who enter her."
July 10, 2025
If Bukowski's alter ego Hank Chinaski was a skint emotionally troubled Vietnan vet living in San Francisco surrounded by lowlifes, pimps and drug addicts then he could have been Jimmy because Jimmy loves to drink and fuck and lives in cheap lodgings where his bed has seen better days and loves a certain four letter c word that ends in t but sometimes he likes the whores who have cocks too and he loves fat asses hanging out and sometimes his whores have boils and lesions between their legs and don't smell too good but it's OK because neither does Jimmy and he is thinking and dreaming of his one true love Gloria who might not even be real but he is obsessed by her anyway and pays his whores to tell him stories about their lives, sometimes happy ones sometimes dreadfully sad ones, and then he takes these stories and reimagines them as Gloria's life and likes to tell people about Gloria in bars but they ain't that interested and I've just realised I've been writing in the style of Vollmann's narrative but I've got this far so I may as well carry on, so Jimmy is a guy who is sad and lonely and clearly got fucked good and proper by the Vietnam War but his country couldn't give a monkeys about him and I was just hoping to God that he didn't end up down some disease infested alleyway beaten to death or found hanging because he can't take it anymore but I guess as long as he gets his measly welfare checks and there is Gloria and her stories and her hair and his whores—he gets whores to cut bits of their hair off so he can believe it's Gloria's and even gets a pimp to make a wig for him that he treats as treasure—although this doesn't end well—he will have something to live for. This felt very much like a novel from the underground scene of the early 90s and whether or not Gloria is a figment of Jimmy's imagination; whether or not he is re-creating parts of her or somebody else from his hazy past, or if she really is the beautiful love he once cherished and lost—did they share a childhood together? get married? have a baby?—Vollmann's big theme on the search for love and redemption pretty much destroyed me as Jimmy turns to his daydreams and fantasies as an antidote to his despairing, squalid and self-destructive gritty reality. I've heard Vollmann named along the same lines as the likes of John Barth and William Gaddis but Whores for Gloria felt more like an experimental Hubert Selby Jr.
February 15, 2013
Gloria, Gloria, Gloria
Bill rang me and said do you want to come and meet Jimmy, so I said yes, I’d heard so much about him from Bill, he was going to write a piece, an article or a story about him for some magazine, he was infatuated with some whore, an ex-girlfriend, Gloria, who’d just up and disappeared six months ago, Bill didn’t know whether she was dead or in prison or had gone back to her family to have a baby, Bill had never even met her or seen a photo, all he had to go on was a description from Jimmy, none of the other whores in the ‘Loin remembered her, they’d all arrived since she’d left, once Bill even speculated that she might never have existed, and Jimmy heard about it, and next time he saw him, he punched him in the side of the jaw and loosened a tooth, though they’re good friends now, well good enough to have a drink with and to introduce me to, though as the editor of the novel he was supposed to be writing (I didn't "officially" know about the article) I had to pay of course, not that Bill needed or wanted an editor, he just got me for free, and I had a modest expense account.
We were supposed to meet him at the Black Rose, but he wasn’t there, so we went on a virtual bar crawl, HaRa, Summer Place, Nite Cap, and the Geary Club, nobody had seen him, so I said why don’t we check if he’s at home, it was almost noon and I was ready for a drink, I hadn’t had one since I downed a couple of Bloody Mary’s in the hotel bar for breakfast. We ran into Pearl in the lobby of Jimmy’s building, but she hadn’t seen him yet, so we walked up three flights of stairs until we got to his floor and located room 19, the door was open and the light was on, so we walked in, when this beautiful tall amazonian woman with a great shock of long hair, says, what the fuck are you doing here, we’re looking for Jimmy, we said, well he’s not here, do you know where he is then, no, she said, but if you see him first, tell him I’m looking for him, and if he’s with some whore, he’d better watch his back. Who the fuck are you then, Bill asked, unusually cocky for the writer Bill I knew. Only Jimmy needs to know that, and he’s smart enough to work it out himself. She turned around and continued to unload groceries out of plastic bags into the pantry. Go on, you two can fuck off. She was beautiful, but she had a foul mouth.
We went back to the Black Rose and sure enough, there was Jimmy, sitting at a table, half a Bud in his hand, but it wasn’t his first of the day, he looked like he’d been drinking all day or had started last night and hadn’t stopped. He was talking to a big-breasted whore named Luna, who looked pretty good for her age, behind her sunglasses, we sat with them for five or six rounds, while Jimmy’s head set more and more into his folded arms on the table, all the time calling Luna Gloria, and insisting that she wear a wig he’d brought along in a plastic shopping bag.
To be honest, Bill and I totally forgot to mention the woman in his room, we’d got to talking as soon as we arrived, then some other girls arrived and asked both of us if we wanted to go upstairs, we both said yes, I thought Bill was going to fuck his girl, the younger of the two, but he reckoned afterwards, all he did was talk to her with a recorder going the whole time. My whore, a melancholy one, was an ex-med student who wanted to be a writer, so she was all over me when she found out what I did, she sat me down on the red velvet couch, unbuttoned my shirt and flung it over the side chair, I struggled to get my trousers off, but she stopped me as she crept onto my lap and started to play with my hair, which I hate being messed up, then she ran her hands over my chest, I’m still pretty fit for my age, and she squeezed me, while my grin struggled not to become a grimace, then suddenly, Jesus, fuck, what did you do? I looked down at my left nipple and she had run a six inch safety pin through the soft flesh at its base and closed it before I even knew what was happening. A trickle of blood emerged from the puncture mark at each end, but once the initial shock wore off, it didn’t seem to hurt at all. Still, I wasn’t about to have the other one done. Come on, put your shirt back on and have another drink with me, big boy.
We went back downstairs to our table, from which Jimmy and Luna had departed. I ordered another round of drinks, and the German beer wench asked if I wanted to get a drink for Jimmy and Luna, they were just in the alleyway. I took their drinks out, but the two of them were busily fucking against the wall of the Chinese Restaurant next door.
I put their drinks on the pavement, and returned inside to our table. By this time Bill had come down, we were both thinking it was time to go, he said he wanted to transcribe his tape, I didn’t believe him until later when I saw the transcript of what happened that day. Then there was a commotion at the front door. The woman from Jimmy’s room had arrived and knocked over somebody’s bourbon. The German woman panicked behind the bar, scheiss, Gloria, she said, I thought you were dead. She didn’t bother to return the greeting, she just said, where the fuck is Jimmy, the German hesitated to answer, but her eyes gave her away, they had unknowingly pointed towards the alley, so Gloria went out into the alley and past the Chinese restaurant, not knowing that she would find not just Jimmy, but Jimmy flatbacking Luna on the hood of a car. She wasn’t to know that the whole time he fucked her, he was saying, Gloria, Gloria, Gloria. And that’s just about all I can remember.
Bill rang me and said do you want to come and meet Jimmy, so I said yes, I’d heard so much about him from Bill, he was going to write a piece, an article or a story about him for some magazine, he was infatuated with some whore, an ex-girlfriend, Gloria, who’d just up and disappeared six months ago, Bill didn’t know whether she was dead or in prison or had gone back to her family to have a baby, Bill had never even met her or seen a photo, all he had to go on was a description from Jimmy, none of the other whores in the ‘Loin remembered her, they’d all arrived since she’d left, once Bill even speculated that she might never have existed, and Jimmy heard about it, and next time he saw him, he punched him in the side of the jaw and loosened a tooth, though they’re good friends now, well good enough to have a drink with and to introduce me to, though as the editor of the novel he was supposed to be writing (I didn't "officially" know about the article) I had to pay of course, not that Bill needed or wanted an editor, he just got me for free, and I had a modest expense account.
We were supposed to meet him at the Black Rose, but he wasn’t there, so we went on a virtual bar crawl, HaRa, Summer Place, Nite Cap, and the Geary Club, nobody had seen him, so I said why don’t we check if he’s at home, it was almost noon and I was ready for a drink, I hadn’t had one since I downed a couple of Bloody Mary’s in the hotel bar for breakfast. We ran into Pearl in the lobby of Jimmy’s building, but she hadn’t seen him yet, so we walked up three flights of stairs until we got to his floor and located room 19, the door was open and the light was on, so we walked in, when this beautiful tall amazonian woman with a great shock of long hair, says, what the fuck are you doing here, we’re looking for Jimmy, we said, well he’s not here, do you know where he is then, no, she said, but if you see him first, tell him I’m looking for him, and if he’s with some whore, he’d better watch his back. Who the fuck are you then, Bill asked, unusually cocky for the writer Bill I knew. Only Jimmy needs to know that, and he’s smart enough to work it out himself. She turned around and continued to unload groceries out of plastic bags into the pantry. Go on, you two can fuck off. She was beautiful, but she had a foul mouth.
We went back to the Black Rose and sure enough, there was Jimmy, sitting at a table, half a Bud in his hand, but it wasn’t his first of the day, he looked like he’d been drinking all day or had started last night and hadn’t stopped. He was talking to a big-breasted whore named Luna, who looked pretty good for her age, behind her sunglasses, we sat with them for five or six rounds, while Jimmy’s head set more and more into his folded arms on the table, all the time calling Luna Gloria, and insisting that she wear a wig he’d brought along in a plastic shopping bag.
To be honest, Bill and I totally forgot to mention the woman in his room, we’d got to talking as soon as we arrived, then some other girls arrived and asked both of us if we wanted to go upstairs, we both said yes, I thought Bill was going to fuck his girl, the younger of the two, but he reckoned afterwards, all he did was talk to her with a recorder going the whole time. My whore, a melancholy one, was an ex-med student who wanted to be a writer, so she was all over me when she found out what I did, she sat me down on the red velvet couch, unbuttoned my shirt and flung it over the side chair, I struggled to get my trousers off, but she stopped me as she crept onto my lap and started to play with my hair, which I hate being messed up, then she ran her hands over my chest, I’m still pretty fit for my age, and she squeezed me, while my grin struggled not to become a grimace, then suddenly, Jesus, fuck, what did you do? I looked down at my left nipple and she had run a six inch safety pin through the soft flesh at its base and closed it before I even knew what was happening. A trickle of blood emerged from the puncture mark at each end, but once the initial shock wore off, it didn’t seem to hurt at all. Still, I wasn’t about to have the other one done. Come on, put your shirt back on and have another drink with me, big boy.
We went back downstairs to our table, from which Jimmy and Luna had departed. I ordered another round of drinks, and the German beer wench asked if I wanted to get a drink for Jimmy and Luna, they were just in the alleyway. I took their drinks out, but the two of them were busily fucking against the wall of the Chinese Restaurant next door.
I put their drinks on the pavement, and returned inside to our table. By this time Bill had come down, we were both thinking it was time to go, he said he wanted to transcribe his tape, I didn’t believe him until later when I saw the transcript of what happened that day. Then there was a commotion at the front door. The woman from Jimmy’s room had arrived and knocked over somebody’s bourbon. The German woman panicked behind the bar, scheiss, Gloria, she said, I thought you were dead. She didn’t bother to return the greeting, she just said, where the fuck is Jimmy, the German hesitated to answer, but her eyes gave her away, they had unknowingly pointed towards the alley, so Gloria went out into the alley and past the Chinese restaurant, not knowing that she would find not just Jimmy, but Jimmy flatbacking Luna on the hood of a car. She wasn’t to know that the whole time he fucked her, he was saying, Gloria, Gloria, Gloria. And that’s just about all I can remember.
May 11, 2015
Here we have a novel or novella about unhappy love and those who are bound in peculiarly painful kinds of loneliness. Here is a story about religious devotion to an ideal, and a kind of Mother Mary made of scraps one might assemble scouring the shores of hell. Or a Mary Magdalene and her seven demons stitched together out of pieces of other people's sad stories. Here we have a novella about those made to sin by the need of money. Here we have a novel about what's washed up when we send people to kill other people in far away wars and leave them in the wind when they return, leave them to waste when they return. A novella about America and its cruelty. Here we have a novel or novella about being locked out of Paradise. Hell is on earth and the residents of hell look a lot like you and me. Here on earth we trade each other our sufferings and loneliness as bone-currency while the hot wind howls our voices down.
June 17, 2016
I did it! I really did it! I finally managed to not helicopter a book by Vollmann across the room after the first thirty-odd pages or so. Despite the rabid adulation on the GR from his (admittedly) small number of unwavering acolytes, something about his prose style has never clicked with me. Again and again I found his run-on sentences too unwieldy and stilted as they clunked along the page, regurgitating a Mulligan stew of overly self-serious authorial asides and (admittedly) erudite annotations-- and any semblance of editing be damned! However this trim bit of social-realist/surrealist nasty managed to keep my attention for the several hours it took to thumb through its 138 pages. And, yes, I was impressed with Vollmann's handling of his subject matter, utilizing the oral accounts of actual female and transgender prostitutes to present an unflinching panorama of their wretched existence in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. With his obvious deep well of compassion for his "whores", Vollmann strives through art to offer their experiences a level of dignity that the real world can't be bothered to give. This range of sad, irreverent, angry and pragmatic voices is filtered into the framework of a quest narrative featuring a barely functional Vietnam veteran that hopelessly seeks to fill a goddess-sized hole in his perverted soul that he has named Gloria. A grungy but humane jumble of the erotic and the repugnant, this first of Vollmann's so-called "Prostitution Trilogy" offers enough textual richness to keep many well-meaning undergrads happy as they fumble overeagerly with queer, marxist, post-colonial and feminist theory.
Read
August 21, 2016It is difficult to not resort to the man, his biography, his researches, when reading Vollmann's work on the Tenderloin and its prostitutes. One comes to feel at home, belonging here, among our nation's caste-offs, our prostitutes and pimps and homeless and drunks and transvestites.
Jimmy knows his whores. He pays for the stories that they might tell him, first the happy ones and, when those run short, the sad ones. With the addition of a lock of whore's hair he turns these stories into his goddess, Gloria. Jimmy's imaginative work is Vollmann's own; from dirt and filth, art creates Gloria.
Vollmann writes of sadness. But this is the sadness of a search for salvation, not a nihilism, not a conversion to a righteousness. Rather his stories of the underworld, the forgotten and persecuted--the law and its shadowy endeavors of entrapment constantly shade and threaten the lives of our non-heroes--shine a narrative light on what most would rather have left unremarked. Vollmann rewrites the stories of Jesus's ministry in Galilee among the outcasts, the beggars, the prostitutes, the forsaken. If the kingdom of heaven is for the least of us, Vollmann's world is the coming of that kingdom.
Whores for Gloria, despite its slim size, is an excellent showcase for what Vollmann can do.
Jimmy knows his whores. He pays for the stories that they might tell him, first the happy ones and, when those run short, the sad ones. With the addition of a lock of whore's hair he turns these stories into his goddess, Gloria. Jimmy's imaginative work is Vollmann's own; from dirt and filth, art creates Gloria.
Vollmann writes of sadness. But this is the sadness of a search for salvation, not a nihilism, not a conversion to a righteousness. Rather his stories of the underworld, the forgotten and persecuted--the law and its shadowy endeavors of entrapment constantly shade and threaten the lives of our non-heroes--shine a narrative light on what most would rather have left unremarked. Vollmann rewrites the stories of Jesus's ministry in Galilee among the outcasts, the beggars, the prostitutes, the forsaken. If the kingdom of heaven is for the least of us, Vollmann's world is the coming of that kingdom.
Whores for Gloria, despite its slim size, is an excellent showcase for what Vollmann can do.
January 13, 2019
Whores for Gloria is about Jimmy, an ex-soldier who cashes in his SSI checks only to spend them – after paying his rent at the hotel – on whores. Vollmann weaves a captivating and most disturbing tale that captures the grittiness and vulgarity of street prostitution and the frightening and depressing reality around it.
Jimmy is on the lookout for Gloria, who appears to be a figment of his imagination, and it’s never clear if Jimmy is high, psychotic, mentally handicapped or whatever, but this doesn’t matter because Vollmann shifts the focus from Jimmy to Jimmy’s desire for Gloria, and how the prostitutes fill that void in strange and unusual ways.
If literature is indeed the search for truth, or, as I like to think of it, creative documentation of the truth, then Vollmann has done street prostitution literary justice. While some scenes and the syntax did occasionally turn my stomach, I’m not naïve enough to deny the ugliness of reality depicted in this novella. Vollmann’s writing is gritty, depicting the essence of the story through intricate scenes where monologue, dialogue, and atmosphere demand the reader’s attention.
The only qualm I do have is the premise of Jimmy seeking Gloria, which seemed to be the catalyst for this documentary-like story. I would like to know more as to why Vollmann used this angle since I feel the story would have had a more powerful effect if Jimmy wasn’t himself as run down as the whores depicted. In any event, it’s a strong story with some disturbing scenes and characters.
Vollmann is definitely a writer with a distinctive, edgy style who does not shy away from grim subjects. Whores for Gloria is the first part of the Prostitution Trilogy, not a trilogy per se in terms of connectedness but a trilogy in terms of theme only.
Jimmy is on the lookout for Gloria, who appears to be a figment of his imagination, and it’s never clear if Jimmy is high, psychotic, mentally handicapped or whatever, but this doesn’t matter because Vollmann shifts the focus from Jimmy to Jimmy’s desire for Gloria, and how the prostitutes fill that void in strange and unusual ways.
If literature is indeed the search for truth, or, as I like to think of it, creative documentation of the truth, then Vollmann has done street prostitution literary justice. While some scenes and the syntax did occasionally turn my stomach, I’m not naïve enough to deny the ugliness of reality depicted in this novella. Vollmann’s writing is gritty, depicting the essence of the story through intricate scenes where monologue, dialogue, and atmosphere demand the reader’s attention.
Melissa held the grating open for him. The lobby was old-style marble, but as soon as they went upstairs everything was dark and shabby and stinking. Melissa took him around the corner for a minute and stood thinking and then led Jimmy to the elevator. Jimmy’s dick was hard. They went down together in the little steel cage, neither saying a thing because they both had exactly what they wanted and then the cage stopped and they were in the basement. Melissa led him into the laundry room. -Close the door, said Jimmy, but Melissa wouldn’t because she was afraid of him.
You remind me of Gloria, said Jimmy. -Who’s Gloria? said Melissa. -Oh she used to live here, Jimmy lied; she moved out about three weeks ago. Have you seen her? -No, Melissa said. I’ve never seen her.
The only qualm I do have is the premise of Jimmy seeking Gloria, which seemed to be the catalyst for this documentary-like story. I would like to know more as to why Vollmann used this angle since I feel the story would have had a more powerful effect if Jimmy wasn’t himself as run down as the whores depicted. In any event, it’s a strong story with some disturbing scenes and characters.
Vollmann is definitely a writer with a distinctive, edgy style who does not shy away from grim subjects. Whores for Gloria is the first part of the Prostitution Trilogy, not a trilogy per se in terms of connectedness but a trilogy in terms of theme only.
October 24, 2015
Jimmy's Tricky Tenderloin
or
Flatbacked in the Financial District
"...and she fixed her huge pupils on him she was not even thinking of the money for the moment but the thrill of making him see her as she wanted to be for all those lonely men whose greed of lust was nothing but an aching prayer for beauty..."
-- William T Vollmann, Whores for Gloria
Not an easy read. I picked up 'Whores for Gloria' at City Lights last time I was in San Francisco. Paid full price. Figured it was a book about the City, and I was all for buying a bit a piece of the grit lit of the city. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my experience with this funky little novel is similar to my entire experience with Vollmann. It remained a big to do, a far orbit, and even when I was doing it, it was slow and deliberate. It was a thin novel, but no cinch. Not a quick roll or one night read-and-bed. It is an almost documentary exploration of the pimping and prostitution of the Tenderloin neighborhood (btw, pretty close to where I was staying at the time I purchased this novel). It is gritty and funky. But it ends up also being a fantasy or perhaps a dark phantasm. The narrator, the stand-in for Vollmann, is a guy named Jimmy who is sleeping with whores and collecting their stories (and hair) trying to conjure up/evoke/summon Gloria (G.L.O.R.I.A.) the missing love of his life, his past, his innocence. It really is a trip of a novel, just not one I would send home, hand-in-hand, with my mother to her punch and book club. This isn't a novel for the many unwashed, but for those chosen few who appreciate Vollmann's depth and the sad honesty of curiosity about the Earths's many far corners and the unnoticed low cracks of the world. If this corner or that crack is your game, your fix, your drug, then this is certainly one amazing dark crack to start with.
or
Flatbacked in the Financial District
"...and she fixed her huge pupils on him she was not even thinking of the money for the moment but the thrill of making him see her as she wanted to be for all those lonely men whose greed of lust was nothing but an aching prayer for beauty..."
-- William T Vollmann, Whores for Gloria
Not an easy read. I picked up 'Whores for Gloria' at City Lights last time I was in San Francisco. Paid full price. Figured it was a book about the City, and I was all for buying a bit a piece of the grit lit of the city. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my experience with this funky little novel is similar to my entire experience with Vollmann. It remained a big to do, a far orbit, and even when I was doing it, it was slow and deliberate. It was a thin novel, but no cinch. Not a quick roll or one night read-and-bed. It is an almost documentary exploration of the pimping and prostitution of the Tenderloin neighborhood (btw, pretty close to where I was staying at the time I purchased this novel). It is gritty and funky. But it ends up also being a fantasy or perhaps a dark phantasm. The narrator, the stand-in for Vollmann, is a guy named Jimmy who is sleeping with whores and collecting their stories (and hair) trying to conjure up/evoke/summon Gloria (G.L.O.R.I.A.) the missing love of his life, his past, his innocence. It really is a trip of a novel, just not one I would send home, hand-in-hand, with my mother to her punch and book club. This isn't a novel for the many unwashed, but for those chosen few who appreciate Vollmann's depth and the sad honesty of curiosity about the Earths's many far corners and the unnoticed low cracks of the world. If this corner or that crack is your game, your fix, your drug, then this is certainly one amazing dark crack to start with.
August 19, 2014
Virgil stopped, retreating the few steps. "This. You do not see?"
"Yes. I see…"
A hand clasped about my shoulder, "But you see the drugs, human bodies bought and sold, the frenzy of blight. You see through the eyes of a Parole Officer. You see guns, knives, prostitution, rapes, muggings, death. You should have never taken that job…"
"It was all I could find. And only eighteen months before leaving. I did it different. More their friend. They knew I was on their side. I grew up in a neighborhood where I could talk their talk. Most believed I understood. I was more successful…I…"
"So? Why stop here? Now?"
"Well. Because. I mean since…"
"You stopped here witnessing human beings abandoning themselves, abandoning each other. Objects to be used to douse temporarily the heat of desires, the pawing hunger of gratification. Confusing what they need from whom they are. Then, there is the theft of hope. How far away is it, I ask you, please put down the book for just a moment, your free market trade world. The large corporations, their viewpoint of their competitors, customers, employees, is, using one of your days passwords established to mean nothing while sounding like something, 'trending', towards this?"
"Whore's, drug dealers, criminals who have the power to make their actions legal. Their needs exist as the only needs, consequences never considered. But. But."
"Yes your book you snuck in here,"
"But, I just finished it. There was nowhere to put it."
"Why not drop it?"
"I knew I wanted to come back to it, that it might be pertinent to…to this walk. I know how ridiculous this must seem to hold any writer …I mean after what you accomplished, what you wrote, sir."
"Please call me Virgil."
"Yes. Of course. May I call you Vir., or V.?"
"Virgil will do. As will this book you read. Written by a Mister Vollmann?"
"You heard of him."
"Not in my time but in yours."
"Any chance of … "
"Of a what?"
"An autograph?"
"I don't think so. But maybe your Mister Vollmann. He seems quite worthy. The Royal Family also was a master work."
"Not ancient greek though."
"He writes in the poetry of despair. It is quite an accomplishment. Then there is the haunting he conjures up. He is not shy is he? Using prostitutes and their customers, johns, their merciless obsessions, exploits, to convey the despair of isolation nearing complete in its fold. Certainly there will be those who consider it disgusting, a ploy for the author to confess his own obsessions mixing Mister Vollmann up with his narrator. The only person you see, on this level, who except for a few isolated events seeks relationship, is our John. The ghastly tale here is the woman, Gloria, does not exist. His love is entailed in the porous web of his imagination. His life since returning from the VietNam War, suffering from rampant alcoholism, has been built around widening Gloria's existence. Attempting to move her from the abstract into the concrete. Using what he can get from the women working the streets for the brutality of their own survival, to buffer this relationship that has no chance to be. The bitter sadness of this expands poetry, its metaphorical message, its ghostly prophecies. You shouldn't have to carry books with you. In our age, though ancient as you call it, we had other ways of reading and discussing books. Have you ever heard of something named Goodreads."
"Yes. Yes Virg. I mean Virgil. Sir. We have such a thing."
"Then you will understand my five star rating."
"I gave it the same."
"You will have to excuse me now. I must be getting back to enter the rating and pass it along to my contemporaries. We discuss your Mister Vollmann frequently.
"Yes. I see…"
A hand clasped about my shoulder, "But you see the drugs, human bodies bought and sold, the frenzy of blight. You see through the eyes of a Parole Officer. You see guns, knives, prostitution, rapes, muggings, death. You should have never taken that job…"
"It was all I could find. And only eighteen months before leaving. I did it different. More their friend. They knew I was on their side. I grew up in a neighborhood where I could talk their talk. Most believed I understood. I was more successful…I…"
"So? Why stop here? Now?"
"Well. Because. I mean since…"
"You stopped here witnessing human beings abandoning themselves, abandoning each other. Objects to be used to douse temporarily the heat of desires, the pawing hunger of gratification. Confusing what they need from whom they are. Then, there is the theft of hope. How far away is it, I ask you, please put down the book for just a moment, your free market trade world. The large corporations, their viewpoint of their competitors, customers, employees, is, using one of your days passwords established to mean nothing while sounding like something, 'trending', towards this?"
"Whore's, drug dealers, criminals who have the power to make their actions legal. Their needs exist as the only needs, consequences never considered. But. But."
"Yes your book you snuck in here,"
"But, I just finished it. There was nowhere to put it."
"Why not drop it?"
"I knew I wanted to come back to it, that it might be pertinent to…to this walk. I know how ridiculous this must seem to hold any writer …I mean after what you accomplished, what you wrote, sir."
"Please call me Virgil."
"Yes. Of course. May I call you Vir., or V.?"
"Virgil will do. As will this book you read. Written by a Mister Vollmann?"
"You heard of him."
"Not in my time but in yours."
"Any chance of … "
"Of a what?"
"An autograph?"
"I don't think so. But maybe your Mister Vollmann. He seems quite worthy. The Royal Family also was a master work."
"Not ancient greek though."
"He writes in the poetry of despair. It is quite an accomplishment. Then there is the haunting he conjures up. He is not shy is he? Using prostitutes and their customers, johns, their merciless obsessions, exploits, to convey the despair of isolation nearing complete in its fold. Certainly there will be those who consider it disgusting, a ploy for the author to confess his own obsessions mixing Mister Vollmann up with his narrator. The only person you see, on this level, who except for a few isolated events seeks relationship, is our John. The ghastly tale here is the woman, Gloria, does not exist. His love is entailed in the porous web of his imagination. His life since returning from the VietNam War, suffering from rampant alcoholism, has been built around widening Gloria's existence. Attempting to move her from the abstract into the concrete. Using what he can get from the women working the streets for the brutality of their own survival, to buffer this relationship that has no chance to be. The bitter sadness of this expands poetry, its metaphorical message, its ghostly prophecies. You shouldn't have to carry books with you. In our age, though ancient as you call it, we had other ways of reading and discussing books. Have you ever heard of something named Goodreads."
"Yes. Yes Virg. I mean Virgil. Sir. We have such a thing."
"Then you will understand my five star rating."
"I gave it the same."
"You will have to excuse me now. I must be getting back to enter the rating and pass it along to my contemporaries. We discuss your Mister Vollmann frequently.
August 21, 2013
My first Vollmann (in at the shallow end):
Whores for Gloria is the harrowing, episodic story of an alcoholic, mentally disturbed veteran of the Vietnam War, Jimmy, who is trying to fabricate a love he calls Gloria from the clothes, hair, appearances and (the more pleasant, if necessarily quite distant) memories of the most desperate, diseased, sliding-along-the-filthy-bottom-of-the-barrel prostitutes in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. The reader is pulled along in this unspeakably sad quest from one human wreck to the next, each worst than the last. What makes this horror show actually horrible is that Vollmann shows us the dying spark of humanity in each. Then Jimmy transforms the stories and mementos, images and scents into Gloria. After each encounter Gloria becomes more solid, more complete to Jimmy.
For no apparent reason (except, of course, for the purposes of the story), there is a setback, and Gloria makes herself scarce. Jimmy then finds a level below the bottom of the barrel, drinks even more, loses his already tentative hold on reality, and finds himself beaten, stabbed and robbed in the street. At the end of this final transformation Jimmy "realizes" that what he needs in order to bring Gloria back to him and to keep her at his side are memories of pain and torture. (!) Fortunately, the book does not dwell long on this and ends quickly with an unconvincing, but short epilogue.
I found the story to be compelling up until this final "realization", where Vollmann lost me in the last 10 pages. I couldn't see this as anything more than a "shocking" way to end the tale, in other words, just a literary device. But it is a relatively early work (1991) and is an unusually short piece for Vollmann. So it is likely to be not at all representative of Vollmann in his encyclopedic prime. There are some further, though less significant false notes: on occasion it seemed to me that Vollmann crossed the line into sentimentality; and this text is no place for gestures to the literati like "when the names of streets are like Nabokov's wearisome cleverness" (Bill, that is an example of wearisome cleverness!).
All in all, I am impressed with his ability to unblinkingly examine the most miserable of lives and to fully empathize with the human beings whose doom it is to live them. From what little I know about Vollmann's work at this point, precisely this ability breathes life into most of his literary efforts. And I am impressed with the absence of judgment and bitterness in this book. This absence is, I believe, the mark of a man who is trying to understand the world around him instead of projecting himself into that world. A la prochaine , Bill!
Whores for Gloria is the harrowing, episodic story of an alcoholic, mentally disturbed veteran of the Vietnam War, Jimmy, who is trying to fabricate a love he calls Gloria from the clothes, hair, appearances and (the more pleasant, if necessarily quite distant) memories of the most desperate, diseased, sliding-along-the-filthy-bottom-of-the-barrel prostitutes in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. The reader is pulled along in this unspeakably sad quest from one human wreck to the next, each worst than the last. What makes this horror show actually horrible is that Vollmann shows us the dying spark of humanity in each. Then Jimmy transforms the stories and mementos, images and scents into Gloria. After each encounter Gloria becomes more solid, more complete to Jimmy.
For no apparent reason (except, of course, for the purposes of the story), there is a setback, and Gloria makes herself scarce. Jimmy then finds a level below the bottom of the barrel, drinks even more, loses his already tentative hold on reality, and finds himself beaten, stabbed and robbed in the street. At the end of this final transformation Jimmy "realizes" that what he needs in order to bring Gloria back to him and to keep her at his side are memories of pain and torture. (!) Fortunately, the book does not dwell long on this and ends quickly with an unconvincing, but short epilogue.
I found the story to be compelling up until this final "realization", where Vollmann lost me in the last 10 pages. I couldn't see this as anything more than a "shocking" way to end the tale, in other words, just a literary device. But it is a relatively early work (1991) and is an unusually short piece for Vollmann. So it is likely to be not at all representative of Vollmann in his encyclopedic prime. There are some further, though less significant false notes: on occasion it seemed to me that Vollmann crossed the line into sentimentality; and this text is no place for gestures to the literati like "when the names of streets are like Nabokov's wearisome cleverness" (Bill, that is an example of wearisome cleverness!).
All in all, I am impressed with his ability to unblinkingly examine the most miserable of lives and to fully empathize with the human beings whose doom it is to live them. From what little I know about Vollmann's work at this point, precisely this ability breathes life into most of his literary efforts. And I am impressed with the absence of judgment and bitterness in this book. This absence is, I believe, the mark of a man who is trying to understand the world around him instead of projecting himself into that world. A la prochaine , Bill!
Read
April 8, 2023Some thoughts:
1. This is the quickest read WTV has out there (I read it in a few hours), but it is NOT the place to start for newcomers to his work, in my opinion. I think I appreciate it more two reasons: (1) I know the story behind the book; and (2) I am situating it within his whole repertoire and not on its own.
2. It blows my mind that this is the same guy who gave us Fathers and Crows, You Bright and Risen Angels, The Ice-Shirt, Poor People, and Carbon Ideologies (among many others, of course). What can't this guy do?!
3. This one is gritty, grimy, raw--basically I wanted to wash my hands and shower constantly (and not just because of the current COVID-19 pandemic).
4. Beautiful, sprawling sentences bordering on a sort of oxymoronic Baroque minimalism bring a maximalist aesthetic to the hard-boiled mystery form.
5. The simple plot of a poor young man, Jimmy, obsessed with and trying to find a prostitute, Gloria, is the perfect catalyst for the real story behind the book: WTV and photographer friend Ken Miller spent much, much time in the Tenderloin of SF paying prostitutes to tell them stories. As the opening of the book tells us, the stories the ladies tell are all real.
6. WTV's dark humor and sardonic wit are on display here.
1. This is the quickest read WTV has out there (I read it in a few hours), but it is NOT the place to start for newcomers to his work, in my opinion. I think I appreciate it more two reasons: (1) I know the story behind the book; and (2) I am situating it within his whole repertoire and not on its own.
2. It blows my mind that this is the same guy who gave us Fathers and Crows, You Bright and Risen Angels, The Ice-Shirt, Poor People, and Carbon Ideologies (among many others, of course). What can't this guy do?!
3. This one is gritty, grimy, raw--basically I wanted to wash my hands and shower constantly (and not just because of the current COVID-19 pandemic).
4. Beautiful, sprawling sentences bordering on a sort of oxymoronic Baroque minimalism bring a maximalist aesthetic to the hard-boiled mystery form.
5. The simple plot of a poor young man, Jimmy, obsessed with and trying to find a prostitute, Gloria, is the perfect catalyst for the real story behind the book: WTV and photographer friend Ken Miller spent much, much time in the Tenderloin of SF paying prostitutes to tell them stories. As the opening of the book tells us, the stories the ladies tell are all real.
6. WTV's dark humor and sardonic wit are on display here.
June 4, 2018
So good to be back in San Francisco for the summer and reading Vollmann on the madmen and whores of my beloved Tenderloin district.
I felt like this was an updating of Dante's Vita Nova for the blasted blue collar Vietnam generation as they slunk toward the Tenderloin to die in addiction and madness. In light of that it's pretty amazing how tenaciously humankind clings to the dream of love despite PTSD, whoring, drug addiction, abscesses, and the general filth and stink and selfishness of poverty, madness, and addiction. It's quite possible that this melancholy yearning for an impossible love among the mundane trappings of the world has always been the best subject for a work of literature.
So, this is a fine little novel in its own meandering and mysterious way despite its also feeling like a trial run/sketch toward the far more ambitious masterpiece that is The Royal Family.
I felt like this was an updating of Dante's Vita Nova for the blasted blue collar Vietnam generation as they slunk toward the Tenderloin to die in addiction and madness. In light of that it's pretty amazing how tenaciously humankind clings to the dream of love despite PTSD, whoring, drug addiction, abscesses, and the general filth and stink and selfishness of poverty, madness, and addiction. It's quite possible that this melancholy yearning for an impossible love among the mundane trappings of the world has always been the best subject for a work of literature.
So, this is a fine little novel in its own meandering and mysterious way despite its also feeling like a trial run/sketch toward the far more ambitious masterpiece that is The Royal Family.
March 25, 2015
"We all know the story of the whore who, finding her China white to be less and less reliable a friend no matter how much of it she injected into her arm, recalled in desperation the phrase "shooting the shit", and so filled the needel with her own watery excrement and pumped it in, producing magnificent abscesses. Less well known is the tale of the man who decided to kill himself by swallowing his athlete's foot medicine. Loving Gloria, he died in inconceivable agony. When they collected a sample of urine, it melted the plastic cup.-That, it is safe to say, is despair. More obscure still, because fictitious, is the following. All of the whore's tales herein, however, are real."
That is the first page of the novella, Whores For Gloria, and it is one hell of a start to an epic search for love. Yes that's correct, a love story with whores, and druggies, and pimps, and a whole cast of despicable dregs of society.
From the start of the novella, you are drawn up like a drug into a syringe and injected into the Tenderloin, and taken for a very wild ride. You get to learn about how the castaways live their lives from the comfort of your home. How much is real, and how much is made doesn't matter, you will continue to read to find Gloria with Jimmy. You will read to know what horrible, disgusting things some people will go through to get that next high. And sometimes, you may wonder if you would ever go that fair, you begin to question if the stories are real, and you will try and make them fairy tales of horror to comfort yourself.
Reading this was an extreme pleasure, and quick. It is funny to say reading something about drug addicts and whores is a pleasure, but it was. I was able to journey with a man to find the love of his life while living in deplorable conditions. He had true love on his mind, and was going to do absolutely anything to get it.
The details that Vollmann gives in the story are amazing, and it makes you wonder what stories of these did he actually partake in. He completes the story, in my edition, in 138 pages, but damn did if feel like a much longer novel. When reading some of the stories the whores tell Jimmy, your mind will begin to create backgrounds for these women, and you will start to see the journey they made to the Tenderloin, and want to stay until you are finished.
I have read Europe Central and The Ice-Shirt, and I think I am in love with his whore stories, and like a drug, I feel like I need to get back to the Tenderloin with Vollmann.
That is the first page of the novella, Whores For Gloria, and it is one hell of a start to an epic search for love. Yes that's correct, a love story with whores, and druggies, and pimps, and a whole cast of despicable dregs of society.
From the start of the novella, you are drawn up like a drug into a syringe and injected into the Tenderloin, and taken for a very wild ride. You get to learn about how the castaways live their lives from the comfort of your home. How much is real, and how much is made doesn't matter, you will continue to read to find Gloria with Jimmy. You will read to know what horrible, disgusting things some people will go through to get that next high. And sometimes, you may wonder if you would ever go that fair, you begin to question if the stories are real, and you will try and make them fairy tales of horror to comfort yourself.
Reading this was an extreme pleasure, and quick. It is funny to say reading something about drug addicts and whores is a pleasure, but it was. I was able to journey with a man to find the love of his life while living in deplorable conditions. He had true love on his mind, and was going to do absolutely anything to get it.
The details that Vollmann gives in the story are amazing, and it makes you wonder what stories of these did he actually partake in. He completes the story, in my edition, in 138 pages, but damn did if feel like a much longer novel. When reading some of the stories the whores tell Jimmy, your mind will begin to create backgrounds for these women, and you will start to see the journey they made to the Tenderloin, and want to stay until you are finished.
I have read Europe Central and The Ice-Shirt, and I think I am in love with his whore stories, and like a drug, I feel like I need to get back to the Tenderloin with Vollmann.
February 14, 2023
Vollmann scrive divinamente e ce lo dimostra con un romanzo crudo e a tratti cruento ma che regala pagine di rara bellezza.
La storia è quella di Jimmy, reduce del Vietnam, alla ricerca del suo amore perduto Gloria.
Amore che cerca nel sesso a pagamento con un'infinità di prostitute, alle quali chiede sì sesso ma anche di raccontargli le loro storie, per poter carpire da tutte loro quanto basta per dare vita alla storia di Gloria.
A tratti dolce a tratti drammatico, infine tragico.
... E appoggiata contro la parete di marmo di un albergo che un tempo era stato di lusso, si abbassò le spalline del top per mettere in mostra i suoi seni dannatamente belli mentre abbassava il capo con un sorrisetto e alzava un timido braccio come se avesse paura di lui (e sul quel braccio lui scorse una lunga cicatrice rossa che le correva lungo la vena). Il lampione stradale, intanto, incipriava di un bianco intenso la sua nudità e la piega delle labbra le conferiva un'aria da ragazzina poiché le rughe che gli anni avevano seminato intorno alla sua bocca non avevano ancora messo radici profonde, e così lei adesso faceva per lui il suo numero di magia con quegli occhi color nocciola e gli orecchini a forma di guscio di tartaruga che aveva avuto in prestito da Luna. Prenditeli, le aveva detto con sprezzante gentilezza, e tanti saluti, povera, vecchia lurida troia. Eppure adesso, mentre lo fissava con le sue enormi pupille, non pensava affatto al denaro, ma al brivido che le dava l'apparire agli occhi di lui come ciò che lei aspirava a essere per tutti quegli uomini soli il cui desiderio di lussuria altro non era che una struggente richiesta di bellezza. Ma poi lui si spostò un po'. Oh, ti prego, non andartene proprio adesso, figlio di puttana, pensò lei, ti dovrò accalappiare le palle nella stretta delle mie cosce perché ho tanto, tanto bisogno della mia dose.
Poi, una settimana più tardi, quando fu dimesso dal policlinico di San Francisco con abiti di seconda mano e un sacchetto di cibo, comin- ciava a imbrunire e Jimmy, incamminatosi per Ellis Street strascicando i piedi e prendendo a calci vecchi quotidiani, vide un'innocente coppia di neri che si baciavano con grande trasporto davanti a un portone e pensò Com'è triste che gli uomini siano capaci di parlare d'amore alle donne con una voce ferma e profonda come l'immutabile scorrere di un fiume e poi però dimentichino la bellezza del fiume, come ho fatto io, al punto che ora ne sento soltanto il mugghiare che mi rimbomba nelle orecchie come una scarica elettrica.
La storia è quella di Jimmy, reduce del Vietnam, alla ricerca del suo amore perduto Gloria.
Amore che cerca nel sesso a pagamento con un'infinità di prostitute, alle quali chiede sì sesso ma anche di raccontargli le loro storie, per poter carpire da tutte loro quanto basta per dare vita alla storia di Gloria.
A tratti dolce a tratti drammatico, infine tragico.
... E appoggiata contro la parete di marmo di un albergo che un tempo era stato di lusso, si abbassò le spalline del top per mettere in mostra i suoi seni dannatamente belli mentre abbassava il capo con un sorrisetto e alzava un timido braccio come se avesse paura di lui (e sul quel braccio lui scorse una lunga cicatrice rossa che le correva lungo la vena). Il lampione stradale, intanto, incipriava di un bianco intenso la sua nudità e la piega delle labbra le conferiva un'aria da ragazzina poiché le rughe che gli anni avevano seminato intorno alla sua bocca non avevano ancora messo radici profonde, e così lei adesso faceva per lui il suo numero di magia con quegli occhi color nocciola e gli orecchini a forma di guscio di tartaruga che aveva avuto in prestito da Luna. Prenditeli, le aveva detto con sprezzante gentilezza, e tanti saluti, povera, vecchia lurida troia. Eppure adesso, mentre lo fissava con le sue enormi pupille, non pensava affatto al denaro, ma al brivido che le dava l'apparire agli occhi di lui come ciò che lei aspirava a essere per tutti quegli uomini soli il cui desiderio di lussuria altro non era che una struggente richiesta di bellezza. Ma poi lui si spostò un po'. Oh, ti prego, non andartene proprio adesso, figlio di puttana, pensò lei, ti dovrò accalappiare le palle nella stretta delle mie cosce perché ho tanto, tanto bisogno della mia dose.
Poi, una settimana più tardi, quando fu dimesso dal policlinico di San Francisco con abiti di seconda mano e un sacchetto di cibo, comin- ciava a imbrunire e Jimmy, incamminatosi per Ellis Street strascicando i piedi e prendendo a calci vecchi quotidiani, vide un'innocente coppia di neri che si baciavano con grande trasporto davanti a un portone e pensò Com'è triste che gli uomini siano capaci di parlare d'amore alle donne con una voce ferma e profonda come l'immutabile scorrere di un fiume e poi però dimentichino la bellezza del fiume, come ho fatto io, al punto che ora ne sento soltanto il mugghiare che mi rimbomba nelle orecchie come una scarica elettrica.
May 15, 2021
Video Review
Additional points cut from the video review:
While WfG is a creative exercise in writing a protagonist in denial of their ruin, WfG might also be an exploration of crossdressing and transgenderism in sex work in California.
Viewing it from this second perspective, I find the book much more interesting. Firstly for its novelty, secondly for its biographical relevance (see: The Book of Dolores), and thirdly as it gives a rationale for why Jimmy is unaware of his ruin. The story then, would be that Gloria is some kind of psychological projection for Jimmy's questioning sexuality. Or... it's hard to say really, is it his sexuality, or his own sexual persona/image (crossdressing), or Gloria as a sexual persona that he is trying to 'find'?
It might be an excessive conceptual stretch to think this far, given the only vague signs in the book for this actually occurring in the book are his liking of Phyllis and the collecting of body hair (and the wig). Although, given how broken Jimmy seems, it could be closer to the reality of what Vollmann was trying to convey.
I guess this perspective shows that I think that had Vollmann pushed this narrative a bit further into a wider context, I personally might have appreciated it much more. This could all be a personal gripe I have with this, but that's the best that I can explain it.
Additional points cut from the video review:
While WfG is a creative exercise in writing a protagonist in denial of their ruin, WfG might also be an exploration of crossdressing and transgenderism in sex work in California.
Viewing it from this second perspective, I find the book much more interesting. Firstly for its novelty, secondly for its biographical relevance (see: The Book of Dolores), and thirdly as it gives a rationale for why Jimmy is unaware of his ruin. The story then, would be that Gloria is some kind of psychological projection for Jimmy's questioning sexuality. Or... it's hard to say really, is it his sexuality, or his own sexual persona/image (crossdressing), or Gloria as a sexual persona that he is trying to 'find'?
It might be an excessive conceptual stretch to think this far, given the only vague signs in the book for this actually occurring in the book are his liking of Phyllis and the collecting of body hair (and the wig). Although, given how broken Jimmy seems, it could be closer to the reality of what Vollmann was trying to convey.
I guess this perspective shows that I think that had Vollmann pushed this narrative a bit further into a wider context, I personally might have appreciated it much more. This could all be a personal gripe I have with this, but that's the best that I can explain it.
December 21, 2022
Primo capitolo (autonomo) della trilogia Prostitution, Puttane per Gloria non è una raccolta di racconti, non è neppure un romanzo, casomai è una raccolta di episodi frammentari, monologhi registrati su carta, nella periferia notturna e sporca di San Francisco. Camminiamo nelle strade sudice, tra prostituzione e traffici illeciti, nei locali impregnati dall’odore di alcool e fumo, mentre la notte incombe sulle vite di noi emarginati. Al nostro fianco il sorridente Jimmy, reduce del Vietnam, infinitamente innamorato dell’invisibile Gloria, donna che tenta di ricostruire attraverso le storie delle prostitute che incontra. Il valore delle Storie per Vollmann è la possibilità di un’iniziale evasione dal reale e di una conseguente costruzione di un fittizio-reale che lo sostituisca. Ed è proprio attraverso le storie (Vollmann ci dice subito essere autentiche) delle prostitute che Jimmy incontra che il nostro protagonista tenta di ricreare la sua Gloria, di vederla apparirgli davanti agli occhi come un’apparizione divina per poterla finalmente riavere tra le sue braccia.
Vollmann è uno che si sporca le mani, che va sul campo, che ha vissuto davvero in mezzo alle prostitute, che si è appropriato delle loro storie e le getta davanti all’ignaro lettore (soprattutto se contestualizziamo questo romanzo all’anno di uscita 1991); quello di Vollmann non è uno sguardo vouyeristico o critico, è lo sguardo di un umile, di chi si è messo sullo stesso piano degli uomini e delle donne di cui racconta. A Vollmann interessa raccontare in modo anarchico: la sua scrittura sarà lirica quando vorrà, volgare quando vorrà, e non importa se la cronaca non si amalgamerà bene con la fiction, che la ripetitività disturberà il lettore, ciò che emergerà sarà un quadro assolutamente soddisfacente, un libro non incasellabile da nessuna parte, un’esperienza al contempo triste e grottescamente divertente, sicuramente realistica, mai retorica.
Vollmann è uno che si sporca le mani, che va sul campo, che ha vissuto davvero in mezzo alle prostitute, che si è appropriato delle loro storie e le getta davanti all’ignaro lettore (soprattutto se contestualizziamo questo romanzo all’anno di uscita 1991); quello di Vollmann non è uno sguardo vouyeristico o critico, è lo sguardo di un umile, di chi si è messo sullo stesso piano degli uomini e delle donne di cui racconta. A Vollmann interessa raccontare in modo anarchico: la sua scrittura sarà lirica quando vorrà, volgare quando vorrà, e non importa se la cronaca non si amalgamerà bene con la fiction, che la ripetitività disturberà il lettore, ciò che emergerà sarà un quadro assolutamente soddisfacente, un libro non incasellabile da nessuna parte, un’esperienza al contempo triste e grottescamente divertente, sicuramente realistica, mai retorica.
February 6, 2016
Whores for Gloriousness...
(Note: All of the following draws me ineluctably closer to RURD. The RURD is calling. It must be sated. All hail the RURD. Haven't you heard that the RURD is the word?!?)
Jesus Christos' on a giant lower-case 't'! How did Vollmann accomplish this beautiful and terrible feat? This is a crushing book, full of so much empathy that you could practically wring some out and use later it to seem like a swell guy or gal in your real life. In Steven Moore's words, Vollmann's lack of judgement and piousness "makes him a better person than me."
The stories of the whores (his word, not mine, sugar) are excruciating (something I would italicize if I knew html). If they don't affect you, you very likely have one of those blue globes in your ribcage. See past the exactingly frank depictions of sex to a fatalistic story of redemption for the doomed. Is such a thing possible? We're all gonna find out, and far too soon.
(Note: All of the following draws me ineluctably closer to RURD. The RURD is calling. It must be sated. All hail the RURD. Haven't you heard that the RURD is the word?!?)
Jesus Christos' on a giant lower-case 't'! How did Vollmann accomplish this beautiful and terrible feat? This is a crushing book, full of so much empathy that you could practically wring some out and use later it to seem like a swell guy or gal in your real life. In Steven Moore's words, Vollmann's lack of judgement and piousness "makes him a better person than me."
The stories of the whores (his word, not mine, sugar) are excruciating (something I would italicize if I knew html). If they don't affect you, you very likely have one of those blue globes in your ribcage. See past the exactingly frank depictions of sex to a fatalistic story of redemption for the doomed. Is such a thing possible? We're all gonna find out, and far too soon.
June 4, 2025
Jimmy never really recovered from the Vietnam war. He is a drinker, he didn't manage to build a home again, back home in SF. He lives in a cheap hotel in the Tenderloin district, a run-down red-light district and subsists from his pension as a disabled veteran. His only friend Code Six, a comrade from Vietnam, is even worse off and dwells on the streets in this district. Jimmy is a regular in various cheap bars, he knows all the whores on the street, frequenting them often, no matter if they are drug-addicts or transvestites.
And he is in love with Gloria, an ex-girlfriend who left some months ago. Although nobody seems to know her. This love is how he tries to reclaim his life. He does so by building a mental Frankenstein. The whore Gloria is his ideal wife. He frequents whores, imagining that he is spending time with Gloria. Often, he pays them only to tell him stories. He lives through these stories again in his mind, when he's alone again, transposing Gloria in the place of the original storyteller. At times, this illusion gets so real that he believes, she's with him and accompanies him back to his room. All the time, it is clear that there is no Gloria.
Vollmann did extensive research into the matter of this book. He doesn't spare us the unappetizing details of drug-addicted women selling their bodies for the next shot. He writes of abscesses and odours, violence abounds, everybody carries physical and mental injuries. The book even features an annex with average prices for various sexual services in the Tenderloin district, with a special chapter for transsexuals. Jimmy is just one of those lost souls stranded there. Whores for Gloria fits within Vollmann's work focusing on the outcast and the poor. He sheds light on the backs of society, sometimes in fiction as here but also in extensive non-fictional work covering the same topics.
And he is in love with Gloria, an ex-girlfriend who left some months ago. Although nobody seems to know her. This love is how he tries to reclaim his life. He does so by building a mental Frankenstein. The whore Gloria is his ideal wife. He frequents whores, imagining that he is spending time with Gloria. Often, he pays them only to tell him stories. He lives through these stories again in his mind, when he's alone again, transposing Gloria in the place of the original storyteller. At times, this illusion gets so real that he believes, she's with him and accompanies him back to his room. All the time, it is clear that there is no Gloria.
Vollmann did extensive research into the matter of this book. He doesn't spare us the unappetizing details of drug-addicted women selling their bodies for the next shot. He writes of abscesses and odours, violence abounds, everybody carries physical and mental injuries. The book even features an annex with average prices for various sexual services in the Tenderloin district, with a special chapter for transsexuals. Jimmy is just one of those lost souls stranded there. Whores for Gloria fits within Vollmann's work focusing on the outcast and the poor. He sheds light on the backs of society, sometimes in fiction as here but also in extensive non-fictional work covering the same topics.
June 15, 2017
https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/161848...
…I haven’t told the truth for so long now that I’ve given up lying.
William T. Vollmann’s name has come up often and been noticed on lists of books deserving to be remarked upon. For some reason I have resisted reading him, but my being recently compared to him by another writer I am intimate with, I decided to examine a bit of the fuss behind the legend of Vollmann. Whores for Gloria signals my starting point. And what a point it is.
…Virgin Mary candy full of sunlight and ocean fruit…
The narrator’s voice is natural and through the use of no punctuation the dialogue between all the players is easy to discern, understand, and know at all times just who is talking. But the subject matter perhaps excludes too many of us on purpose. And I like it that Vollman’s work is exclusionary. Becomes a sort of fraternity I have been temporarily made member of. In this particular case a membership in what might be referred to as a gutter club. Flying dirt balls of emotion and most certainly a fated dead end. It is obvious to me that Vollmann has studied his whoring subjects well. His disturbed protagonist is named Jimmy.
It isn’t easy for me being this close-up to Vollmann. Too few pages of pure joy, reading pleasures somehow massaging the pain and loss that permeates everything everywhere. Jimmy’s absent love conjured up in real time, futile attempts at recovering some sense of belonging in the world, even in light of his daily encounters with a confounding nature called time. And sadly, time being something apparently needing to end for him.
…alley by alley I will search and destroy…he could not believe that he was actually remembering anything because he had not done that since before he started drinking, and he felt uneasy…
In light of Jimmy’s incessant delusion in his remembrance of his long-lost Gloria the story is as much about forgetting. Fueled by alcohol his escape from the horrors of the Vietnam War seemed to morph into a parallel fantasy regarding the woman of his dreams brought to life through the seedy culture of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
One night Riley hopped a freight into town, and because he had been living the life of himself he was in bad shape.
For me, my first exposure to William T. Vollmann was portend, portend, portend. And for more of that I will be back. Butterfly Stories is calling.
…I haven’t told the truth for so long now that I’ve given up lying.
William T. Vollmann’s name has come up often and been noticed on lists of books deserving to be remarked upon. For some reason I have resisted reading him, but my being recently compared to him by another writer I am intimate with, I decided to examine a bit of the fuss behind the legend of Vollmann. Whores for Gloria signals my starting point. And what a point it is.
…Virgin Mary candy full of sunlight and ocean fruit…
The narrator’s voice is natural and through the use of no punctuation the dialogue between all the players is easy to discern, understand, and know at all times just who is talking. But the subject matter perhaps excludes too many of us on purpose. And I like it that Vollman’s work is exclusionary. Becomes a sort of fraternity I have been temporarily made member of. In this particular case a membership in what might be referred to as a gutter club. Flying dirt balls of emotion and most certainly a fated dead end. It is obvious to me that Vollmann has studied his whoring subjects well. His disturbed protagonist is named Jimmy.
It isn’t easy for me being this close-up to Vollmann. Too few pages of pure joy, reading pleasures somehow massaging the pain and loss that permeates everything everywhere. Jimmy’s absent love conjured up in real time, futile attempts at recovering some sense of belonging in the world, even in light of his daily encounters with a confounding nature called time. And sadly, time being something apparently needing to end for him.
…alley by alley I will search and destroy…he could not believe that he was actually remembering anything because he had not done that since before he started drinking, and he felt uneasy…
In light of Jimmy’s incessant delusion in his remembrance of his long-lost Gloria the story is as much about forgetting. Fueled by alcohol his escape from the horrors of the Vietnam War seemed to morph into a parallel fantasy regarding the woman of his dreams brought to life through the seedy culture of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
One night Riley hopped a freight into town, and because he had been living the life of himself he was in bad shape.
For me, my first exposure to William T. Vollmann was portend, portend, portend. And for more of that I will be back. Butterfly Stories is calling.
November 23, 2025
This book hit me harder than I expected. It’s chaotic and abrasive on the surface, but the emotional core felt strangely familiar. It reminded me of moments in my past when I would latch onto people or ideas and obsess over them. Not in a predatory way, but in that desperate, searching way where you try to fill some empty space inside yourself. Jimmy’s fixation on Gloria brought that feeling back. At least in the first half of the book.
Nothing in my life has ever involved the world Vollmann is writing about, but I recognized the emotional impulse behind Jimmy’s behavior. That restless need for connection. The way he keeps chasing something he can’t quite name. Even the moment where he panics over a harmless spot and convinces himself it’s some catastrophic disease felt real. That anxious spiral, that tendency to throw yourself into situations that hurt you because you want to feel something. I understood that.
The sadness of the book also hit me in a broader sense. Vollmann writes about addiction with a kind of blunt compassion, and knowing that he later lost his own daughter to alcoholism makes the story feel even heavier. I’ve seen people I cared about go down tragic paths, and some never found a way back. That part cut deep.
So even though the book is grim and strange, it felt personal in ways I didn’t expect.
The ending absolutely blindsided me. I almost had to start the whole book over. What a ride. Vollmann really knows how to leave you rattled
Nothing in my life has ever involved the world Vollmann is writing about, but I recognized the emotional impulse behind Jimmy’s behavior. That restless need for connection. The way he keeps chasing something he can’t quite name. Even the moment where he panics over a harmless spot and convinces himself it’s some catastrophic disease felt real. That anxious spiral, that tendency to throw yourself into situations that hurt you because you want to feel something. I understood that.
The sadness of the book also hit me in a broader sense. Vollmann writes about addiction with a kind of blunt compassion, and knowing that he later lost his own daughter to alcoholism makes the story feel even heavier. I’ve seen people I cared about go down tragic paths, and some never found a way back. That part cut deep.
So even though the book is grim and strange, it felt personal in ways I didn’t expect.
The ending absolutely blindsided me. I almost had to start the whole book over. What a ride. Vollmann really knows how to leave you rattled
September 3, 2015
If there must be filth in this world I'm going to be part of it -
Vollmann himself is not a whore, more like a humble student of human nature. He writes mainly from the perspective of johns (no one should hold this against him; not all johns are the same; a john may be filled with empathy and complex motives).
*
"We all know the story of the whore who, finding her China white to be less and less reliable a friend now matter how much she injected into her arm, recalled in desperation the phrase 'shooting the shit', and so filled the needle with her own watery excrement and pumped it in, producing magnificent abscesses..."
Well, actually I'd never heard that story before. Depending on your temperament, the above might just seem disgusting in a gratuitous way. This, however, is genuinely poignant:
"...but I don't have any money right now and Luna said softly you don't have to give me any money and Jimmy's jaw fell open - he had never heard such astonishing words in his life!"
Vollmann himself is not a whore, more like a humble student of human nature. He writes mainly from the perspective of johns (no one should hold this against him; not all johns are the same; a john may be filled with empathy and complex motives).
*
"We all know the story of the whore who, finding her China white to be less and less reliable a friend now matter how much she injected into her arm, recalled in desperation the phrase 'shooting the shit', and so filled the needle with her own watery excrement and pumped it in, producing magnificent abscesses..."
Well, actually I'd never heard that story before. Depending on your temperament, the above might just seem disgusting in a gratuitous way. This, however, is genuinely poignant:
"...but I don't have any money right now and Luna said softly you don't have to give me any money and Jimmy's jaw fell open - he had never heard such astonishing words in his life!"
July 9, 2017
Otra incursión de Vollmann en el tema de la prostitución. Emparentada con Historias del Mariposa y La familia real, explora entrecortadamente, a través de diversos episodios, el intento de un hombre en reconstruir la historia de Gloria para así traerla a la vida. Entre el delirio y el reportaje periodístico. Muy Vollmann.
September 21, 2019
Tried very hard to understand the message above all the lurid details of Jimmy and Gloria’s personal sex life. Gloria leaves Jimmy and Jimmy tried to find her in a range of women.
Maybe it’s just me who couldn’t understand.
Maybe it’s just me who couldn’t understand.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 17, 2023
beautiful writing about foul subjects what else is there in the world thats worth any time
August 4, 2025
Listen… I should’ve known what I was getting into based on the circles that discuss this book. It’s very much in the vein of IJ and Naked Lunch stylistically. Both of those have proven very difficult for me to finish and IJ was sadder, more effective. Naked Lunch was funnier. So. This was short. I see the appeal and I get it, but it was not for me. And I have procured two other books by the same author and put them on my kindle. One is nonfiction about nuclear power and the other is this book but 900 pages. Actually both are 900 pages. I do not think either will be seeing me.
March 2, 2023
Μια αντρική ιστορία, που σε όλη την εξιστόρηση της η αντρική ματιά και το βίωμα του συναισθήματος είναι ωμά δοσμένο. Σαν να έχεις δίπλα σου έναν άντρα και σου μιλάει και στα λέει χύμα και τσουβαλάτα χωρίς πολλές κορδέλες, φρου φρου κι αρώματα.
Προτείνεται.
Προτείνεται.
November 19, 2022
«(las putas y los sepultureros son los únicos optimistas perpetuos)».
July 21, 2024
If I loved you hard enough will I be able to see you?
This book exhibits ultimate haunting. It follows a man who is oppressed by the memory of "Gloria". It does not matter who or what "Gloria" was or meant to Jimmy, only that she is no longer there, and so he must start rebuilding her from scratch.
This book will remind you of what it's like to lose someone, something, or some part of you, and how loss is only something you overcome, and you overcome it through acceptance and moving on. Loss is not the place to be running in circles, and it's not the place to experiment with time travel. The more you try to recreate what you had before, the more you will lose her, and yourself.
For we all must build our worlds around us, bravely or dreamily, as long as we can shelter ourselves from the rain, walling ourselves in gorgeously.
This book exhibits ultimate haunting. It follows a man who is oppressed by the memory of "Gloria". It does not matter who or what "Gloria" was or meant to Jimmy, only that she is no longer there, and so he must start rebuilding her from scratch.
This book will remind you of what it's like to lose someone, something, or some part of you, and how loss is only something you overcome, and you overcome it through acceptance and moving on. Loss is not the place to be running in circles, and it's not the place to experiment with time travel. The more you try to recreate what you had before, the more you will lose her, and yourself.
For we all must build our worlds around us, bravely or dreamily, as long as we can shelter ourselves from the rain, walling ourselves in gorgeously.
July 30, 2024
Un romanzo dalla composizione strana, con un protagonista sofferente. Alle spalle, la guerra in Vietnam e la figura misteriosa di Gloria. Jimmy, il protagonista, si premura di dare dei bei ricordi d'infanzia alla Gloria che si inventa, rubandoli alle prostitute che frequenta. Si inserisce in questi ricordi ricreati al fianco di Gloria. Ma Jimmy sta creando o ricreando Gloria? E soprattutto, ha davvero importanza?
Riporto qualche passo particolarmente potente.
C'era una volta un uomo che faceva una telefonata, e l'uomo stava piangendo. Laredo e Leroy erano gli unici ad accorgersi che stava piangendo. La persona a cui stava parlando non lo avrebbe mai saputo. La sua voce era infatti molto bassa, gentile e uniforme. Era paziente e amorevole. Il telefono non gli tremava fra le mani.
Poiché tutti noi, intrepidi o sognatori, siamo costretti a costruirci un mondo intorno, finché ci è possibile, cerchiamo di proteggerci dalla pioggia chiudendoci fra splendide mura.
Proprio così, dolcezza, piccola mia, diceva rivolto a Gloria, io ho te e non sto mentendo, non ti ho mai mentito, ho vissuto così a lungo senza dire la verità che ormai ho perfino smesso di mentire.
Ecco che cosa significa essere bambini, significa fingere. Devi fingere di essere questo, di essere quest'altro, fingere di essere adulto, di non esserlo, fingere di essere qualcun altro. Hai proprio ragione Melissa, sospirò Jimmy rivolto a sé stesso mentre si sedeva sul letto, poi quando si cresce si deve fingere di essere _con_ qualcun altro. Quanti problemi e quanta fatica ci costa ogni minima cosa!
Un uomo in lacrime attraversò la strada. Non si rendeva conto che stava piangendo. Pensava invece di essere felice. Era dunque felice, se credeva di esserlo?
Poi un bel giorno ebbe un'illuminazione. Dunque, vediamo un po', si disse, dato che è tutto un casino, non potrai mai avere ciò che ami se sei costretto a vivere con ciò che non potrai mai amare, quindi se le storie allegre sono tristi, allora le storie tristi devono per forza essere allegre. Questo è ciò che ci rimane: storie tristi.
Riporto qualche passo particolarmente potente.
C'era una volta un uomo che faceva una telefonata, e l'uomo stava piangendo. Laredo e Leroy erano gli unici ad accorgersi che stava piangendo. La persona a cui stava parlando non lo avrebbe mai saputo. La sua voce era infatti molto bassa, gentile e uniforme. Era paziente e amorevole. Il telefono non gli tremava fra le mani.
Poiché tutti noi, intrepidi o sognatori, siamo costretti a costruirci un mondo intorno, finché ci è possibile, cerchiamo di proteggerci dalla pioggia chiudendoci fra splendide mura.
Proprio così, dolcezza, piccola mia, diceva rivolto a Gloria, io ho te e non sto mentendo, non ti ho mai mentito, ho vissuto così a lungo senza dire la verità che ormai ho perfino smesso di mentire.
Ecco che cosa significa essere bambini, significa fingere. Devi fingere di essere questo, di essere quest'altro, fingere di essere adulto, di non esserlo, fingere di essere qualcun altro. Hai proprio ragione Melissa, sospirò Jimmy rivolto a sé stesso mentre si sedeva sul letto, poi quando si cresce si deve fingere di essere _con_ qualcun altro. Quanti problemi e quanta fatica ci costa ogni minima cosa!
Un uomo in lacrime attraversò la strada. Non si rendeva conto che stava piangendo. Pensava invece di essere felice. Era dunque felice, se credeva di esserlo?
Poi un bel giorno ebbe un'illuminazione. Dunque, vediamo un po', si disse, dato che è tutto un casino, non potrai mai avere ciò che ami se sei costretto a vivere con ciò che non potrai mai amare, quindi se le storie allegre sono tristi, allora le storie tristi devono per forza essere allegre. Questo è ciò che ci rimane: storie tristi.
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