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2001 Argall (Seven Dreams #3)
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Nathan "N.R."
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Oct 28, 2012 10:31AM
Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith is the third volume of the Seven Dreams series. It is written in Elizabethan English, with Shakespeare well situated upon the writer's desk.
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One of my favorite Book Reviews. William the Blind reviews Argall for the LA Times:"The Stench of Corpses"
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/...
Nathan "N.R." wrote: "One of my favorite Book Reviews. William the Blind reviews Argall for the LA Times:
"The Stench of Corpses"
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/..."
Can't believe this is actually a thing! What a gas.
"The Stench of Corpses"
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/..."
Can't believe this is actually a thing! What a gas.
How can it be a review if it's written by the author?EDIT: I get it now that I've read it. Haha. Very postmodern, William.
It gave me an internal chuckle or two, but it seems to lack a logical consistency. If 'William the Blind' is writing from the future, then why does he write in an 18th century-ish diction? Whatever. Shit like this is why Vollmann doesn't sell.
I have written something that involves my reading of Argall: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...However, it does not even approach taking on this massive, complex, multi-faceted, mysterious and magickall work. Some issues to be discussed with readers of the Argall-text:
-The construction of the mock Elizabethan language, it's relation to Shakespeare and other contemporary writers, its subversion by Vollmann into something satiric, comical, but also deeply poetic and beautiful. I think William the Blind's Elizabethan rendering is the closest to a dream/night language (akin to a Finnegenean language-world) yet attained in the Seven Dreams.
-The manipulation of font style, size, appearance, etc. which greatly enhances the hermeneutic joy of experiencing Argall. The multiple spellings of place names, proper names (for example Argall, Argull, Argoll, Arkill, etc.), and even basic words are represented in a variety of spellings. The text becomes slippery and evasive and mercurial, changing and mutating before our very eyes as we read- difficult to hold, like images in a Dream...
-The massive endnotes and glossaries, which are endlessly fascinating, a pleasure to peruse, and reveal the depth Vollmann's research and deconstruction of the source texts.
-The time shifts at the end, the road signs, the ethical implications of this particular Symbolic history.
In my opinion this is the most immersive, strange, funny, violent, and Dream-like of the Seven Dreams. This is one hell of a complex and epic book, oceanic in ambition, dense and watery and windy, full of lunar light, forests and muck. I hope to engage some other Vollmannites and readers of Argall, or at least encourage others to give this book a read. There's nothing else like it out there that I've encountered (though I've heard parallels to Barth's Sot-Weed Factor and Pynchon's Mason and Dixon, but I haven't yet read either, so, perhaps someone else can jump in and illuminate things...)
Geoff,the issues you have raised are interesting topics for discussion indeed,why then,have they not found any takers?!I checked the Gr page for Argall & two other known names have read & reviewed it– I guess we'll just have to wait till our dear moderator finds the time to read it...& then we'll have some scintillating "brain-rattling" discussions.
Mala wrote: "Geoff,the issues you have raised are interesting topics for discussion indeed,why then,have they not found any takers?!I checked the Gr page for Argall & two other known names have read & reviewed..."
Yeah that's the chance you take when you read books nobody reads. I'm hoping some adventurous Goodreaders soon take up the task! The Brain Pain group is reading Vollmann right now, maybe I should head over there with my thoughts and questions...
If I remember correctly,BP is not reading Argall this yr. I do hope you got all your notes jotted down,they'll come handy next yr.
Geoff wrote: " The Brain Pain group is reading Vollmann right now, maybe I should head over there with my thoughts and questions..."Please do! Right now, the Week Four discussion of The Ice-Shirt consists only of the sound of crickets and melting ice...
I like this review ::by Georges T. Dodds
http://www.sfsite.com/10b/ar162.htm
"The introduction is a bit dense and heavy on convoluted and arcane philosophizing, being a sort of mission statement to the rest of the work, but once Vollman gets down to the business of telling the story, the prose gets easier and the story goes on apace." [I thought the intro gold ; and a bit of a come down when the story started up]
The Rain Taxi review by Jason Picone can also be endorsed ::
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2001wi...
A positive blog post on Argall ::
http://mike.whybark.com/archives/0007...
An essay from The Pocahontas Archive, "The Naked Child Continues Her Somersaults: William T. Vollman's Representations of Pocahontas as Myth in Argall" by Devin Day ::
http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/p...
Also, readers of Argall might avail themselves of Sweet John Smith's bible :: the very Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince ;; a text which is already required reading for all students of political philosophy and those interested in questions of power (alas myself having not yet so avail'd). Machiavel haunts Argall more thoroughly even than Argall himself (his name forever be held distant from all good christians.)
Brain Pain's Vollmann Project continues with Argall. Six weeks scheduled, beginning April 7.https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...
Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Brain Pain's Vollmann Project continues with Argall. Six weeks scheduled, beginning April 7.https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group..."
Reminder, we're starting Argall next Monday over in the Brain Pain group. Schedule and info here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...
As noted, Brain Pain has been reading Argall. I like the following post made by Vollmanniac Larou, providing his thematic sketch of the novel :: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...Especially the genre identification of the four-so-far Dreams :: "Finally, it occurred to me that each volume of Seven Dreams belongs to a different genre, each appropriate to the period it is set in: The Ice-Shirt is a saga, Fathers and Crows is a chronicle, Argall is a picaresque novel (really the only "proper" novel so far, which is probably why I found it the most accessible and easy to read of the bunch) and The Rifles is a travel/exploration diary."
Nathan "N.R." wrote: "...his thematic sketch of the novel..."Yes, this seems like it's getting toward the right thing to say about the Seven Dreams. Also that the narration or voice of each Dream shifts and fits well the particular genre... nice job Larou!
biblioklept asks, "Why the hell did I buy William Vollmann’s Argall?"[book porn warning]
http://biblioklept.org/2016/02/19/why...
I'm not certain, but it may be my favorite Dream.
I'm wondering if he ever gave any interviews about Argall when the book was released? All I ever found was a recording of him at a public reading somewhere, but he doesn't really talk much about the book in any depth.
David wrote: "I'm wondering if he ever gave any interviews about Argall when the book was released? All I ever found was a recording of him at a public reading somewhere, but he doesn't really talk much about th..."Have you seen his self review ?
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/...
Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Have you seen his self review ?http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/... "
I have never seen this. Wow. The closest I have seen to Bill coming out and saying what he actually thinks about SD/The US of A (through satire of course)—really a departure from the Libertarian bent I see ascribed to him by a lot of readers/critics.
At your suggestion I read this great sardonic review yesterday. (I started Argall a few years ago & set it aside. I do expect to go back to it. Someday.)It purports to be a review written 100 years after Vollman's death, but was published in October 2001, less than a months after the September 11 events. I was struck by this phrase towards the conclusion of the review: "what would Vollmann have said about our obliteration of Iraq in 2003,"
Nathan "N.R." wrote: "One of my favorite Book Reviews. William the Blind reviews Argall for the LA Times:
"The Stench of Corpses"
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/..."
