William T Vollmann Central discussion

Post anything you know about Bill's influences here--literary or otherwise.

Two bits of Bill's literary orientation that I know about but have still not read:

The surrealism:
Maldoror & the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont

The Nordic sagas:
The Sagas of Icelanders

These two literary sources combined with a journalistic objectivity (obviously schooled somehow in the New Journalism) I submit accounts for Bill having been able to sidestep the hand-wringing about irony which we see DFW doing so much of the time; that Vollmann successfully made it over the abyss to post-postmodernism.

On the subject of Bill's influences, all I can say is that it's like citing an anthology of world literature. Don't even get me started on the non-fiction ones. One thing that I did find disconcerting was his unabashed appreciation of Kerouac, which he comments on in Riding Towards Everywhere. I guess Pynchon cited him as an influence as well in his introduction for Slow Learner. I've enjoyed a Kerouac novel here and there. Oddly enough The Town and the City was one of my favorites of his, but I wouldn't say that I've felt influenced by him as much as I'd say that I feel that I've simply outgrown him.

From Expelled From Eden:

http://biblioklept.org/2011/09/24/wil...

Prodded by Mr. McCaffery, producing thus.

Eric wrote: "From Expelled From Eden:

http://biblioklept.org/2011/09/24/wil...

Prodded by Mr. McCaffery, producing thus."

Wow, a well-read man. Thank you.

He likes Tolstoy a lot; many of his "sprawling" historical/epic fictions are in the mode of War and Peace.
As was said, his non-historical fiction is influenced by Kerouac, and I sense a lot of Jean Genet in a book like Whores for Gloria.
He has professed his love for Yukio Mishima, although I'm not sure where Mishima squares into his work; perhaps it's simply the tone of detachment/disgust.
And although it would be faux pas for him to say, he, along with every other writer of revisionist historical fiction, is is influenced by Thomas Pynchon, John Barth and William S. Burroughs.

Eric wrote: "From Expelled From Eden:
http://biblioklept.org/2011/09/24/wil...
Prodded by Mr. McCaffery, producing thus."

Thanks for the reminder, Eric. I just made a mess of my feed by adding all those damn books. I wonder how many of them are good.

A list of books (selected, but the majority (all?) of what will be of interest to the crowd here) which are listed in Larry McCaffery’s “A William T. Vollmann Chronology,” pp387ff of Expelled from Eden. Consider them Bill’s influences.

See also “William T. Vollmann’s Favorite ‘Contemporary’ Books” (taken from a 1990 interview with McCaffery) from Eden reproduced by bibliokept here:
http://biblioklept.org/2011/09/24/wil...


East of Eden
Ovid's Metamorphoses
The Tale of Genji
Grænlendinga saga
Kanami Kiyotsugu (Noh playwright)
The Prince
Ignatius Loyola's The Spiritual Exercises
Shakespeare
Japanese Ukiyo (wood-block prints)
Gibbon's The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
William Blake's Songs of Innocence
Wordsworth, Coleridge, other British poets
Blake's Songs of Experience, Europe, The First Book of Urizen
Wordsworth & Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads & W's Preface thereto.
Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket & Related Tales
Das Kapital
Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth
War and Peace
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Idiot (cf The Royal Family)
Maldoror
Percival Lowell's Mars & Mars And Its Canals
Well's The War of the Worlds
Burroughs, his early pulp novels
The Brothers Karamazov
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
Treasure Island
H.R. Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, She, Allan Quatermain
Anthony Hope (The Prisoner of Zenda)
Knut Hamsun's Mysteries & Hunger
The Winning of Barbara Worth by Harold Lloyd Bell
Rev. Silas T. Rand's compilation of Micmac legends
The Jungle Book other Kipling books
HG Well's The Time Machine
Crane's Maggie & George's Mother
Frank Norris (McTeague), Jack London (Before Adam), other naturalists
John Muir's First Summer in the Sierras
Doyle's The Lost World
A Princess of Mars
The Tractatus of Wittgenstein
Burroughs' Pellucidar
The Grapes of Wrath
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Orwell's Homage to Catalonia & The Road to Wigan Pier
Shostakovich's String Quartet, No. 1
Philosophical Investigations
The Golden Age of American sci-fi: Sturgeon, van Vogt, Heinlein, Bradbury.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Koestler's Darkness at Noon
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Kawabata's Snow Country
Mishima's Confessions of a Mask
Mark Rothko's color fields
Post-War American sci-fi: Sturgeon, Dick, Blish, Heinlein, Bester
William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
The Vinland Sagas
Dick's The Man in the High Castle & Martian Time-Slip
Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy
Blish's Cities in Flight
Slaughterhouse-Five
Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions
Experimental sci-fi by Dick, Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Joanna Russ, Delany, Thomas Disch, Roger Zelazny
Kawakata's House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories
Kipling, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Stephen Crane.
Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (cf The Atlas)
Penguin’s Writers from the Other Europe series.
George Konrad's The Case Worker
Dante's Purgatorio
Ken Miller
Vollmann had not read Gravity's Rainbow until after Angels had been written/published.

This reproduces nearly everything listed in the Chronology. I may have made a few errors or committed a few unintended omissions. Expelled is recommended for both Vollmann noobies and scholars alike. And at US$2.00+shipping, it's a steal.

Snow Country is the first Kawabata I read and still my favorite.

I have The Songs of Maldoror sitting on my shelf - time to read it...

Received a copy of A Tomb for Boris Davidovich today. Looking forward to seeing how his work influences Bill's...

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "A list of books (selected, but the majority (all?) of what will be of interest to the crowd here) which are listed in Larry McCaffery’s “A William T. Vollmann Chronology,” pp387ff of Expelled from ..."

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich will be read/discussed this month over in the Dalkey Archive Press group.

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Jim wrote: "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich will be read/discussed this month over in the Dalkey Archive Press group."

I will be rectifying this over-sized lack in my reading. Bill's Afterword for the 2001 Dalkey edition is also available in Expelled from Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader. Also the Europe Central dedication :: "This book is dedicated to the memory of Danilo Kiš, whose masterpiece A Tomb for Boris Davidovich kept me company for many years while I was preparing to write this books."

[and as a tip of the hat to Friend Jonathan, and in a spirit very Voll=mann=aical, I quote John Barth about epigraphs, "But to preface a text with an epigraph from [or dedication to] a superior author in the same genre is to remind the reader that he might better spend his time with that author than with you."]

Also, Bill read everything from Penguin's Roth-edited Writers from the Other Europe :: https://www.librarything.com/publishe...

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Jim wrote: "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich will be read/discussed this month over in the Dalkey Archive Press group."

I will be rectifying this over-sized lack in my reading. Bill's Afterword for th..."

hat tipping noticed and slight suspicious squint of eyes given in return

And am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on DK - I have to say, however, I had forgotten that my first exposure to WTV was this afterword, and I confess to not having been very impressed...

Jonathan wrote: "I had forgotten that my first exposure to WTV was this afterword, and I confess to not having been very impressed... "

I recently read his introduction to Dirty Snow and was bored silly. Perhaps because he was writing about a book I wasn't interested in rather than himself inwhich I do have some interest. ; )

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "I recently read his introduction to Dirty Snow and was bored silly. Perhaps because he was writing about a book I wasn't interested in rather than himself inwhich I do have some interest. ; ) "

Well, that's unfortunate - I picked that book up specifically because of the Vollmann introduction. I haven't gotten to it yet, but am sorry to hear it bored you silly.

Ronald wrote: "Well, that's unfortunate - I picked that book up specifically because of the Vollmann introduction. I haven't gotten to it yet, but am sorry to hear it bored you silly."

It had an awful lot of character discussion in it. Which would be of a great deal more interest I'm sure had I read the book. And I do suspect that the book is quite good, if you go for that kind of thing ; one of the better examples of its genre?

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "It had an awful lot of character discussion in it. Which would be of a great deal more interest I'm sure had I read the book. And I do suspect that the book is quite good, if you go for that kind of thing ; one of the better examples of its genre?"

Yeah, it's supposed to be. I suppose I'll read the book itself first and then read his introduction - maybe I'll like it more than you did.

ETA - Actually, I went and looked it up, and it's an Afterword anyways, so I suppose I'll just read it in the order prescribed.