William T Vollmann Central discussion
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The Rifles
Seven Dreams
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1994 The Rifles (Seven Dreams #6)
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Nathan "N.R."
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Oct 28, 2012 10:32AM
The Rifles is volume six in the Seven Dreams series, but published third.
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A cool book! Cool enough as an intro to his work to hook me, anyway.
Started this the other day—it's hard to put down. About halfway through and everything I initially thought was a little messy is still messy but in an enamoring way.
It is also my introduction to WTV's Seven Dreams. I have to say the explicit intertextuality between them seems like it will only improve the total work when it is complete—some academic or other is going to have a career's worth to dig through.
I just got a copy of this book too. Note that the Brain Pain group will be discussing The Rifles in May-June this year. It will be followed by a discussion of The Dying Grass when that becomes available.
Thanks, Zad, will definitely be weighing in on both of those (pre-ordered TDG a couple months back).Just finished The Rifles today. What an engrossing and satisfying read, not to mention a great introduction to the Seven Dreams. Feels like there is a lot of discourse in here that seems to be applicable to the conception of the project as a whole, and given that it was the third written, it makes sense that Vollmann had really started to bear down on the themes/ideas of contact/history/causality/responsibility. Picked up (the abridged) Rising Up and Rising Down and am gonna chip away at that before a bit of sci-fi (LeGuin & Russ) and then on with The Ice Shirt (which I have a very nice first edition of staring at me while I sleep). Hopefully I'll have knocked out all other three Dreams before The Dying Grass makes its way into my mailbox!
Brain Pain has scheduled a group reading of The Rifles. Beginning soon!!!https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
In other Vollmann=news, The Rifles makes it onto The Guardian's " Top 10 Arctic novels" listicle ::http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016...
"If you like Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis, this is probably your kind of Arctic novel."
I haven't read this one yet, but seeing your post here now N.R. reminded me of the subject matter; I'm reading Simmons' historical fiction horror novel based on the same doomed Franklin expedition. I wonder how these two books would collide if I read one after the other. Ill-advised?
Brian wrote: "I wonder how these two books would collide if I read one after the other. Ill-advised? "There might be some risk ; but I suspect it would be doubly informative. Give it a whirl.
