Brain Pain discussion

Argall is the third volume in William T. Vollmann’s, Seven Dreams series.


Wikipedia page for Vollmann:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_...


Wikipedia page for Argall:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argall:_...


Wikipedia page for Seven Dreams series:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dr...


Interview in the Paris Review, Fall 2000:

http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...



Feel free to use this thread to ask questions and post links to resources for William T. Vollmann and Argall.

Also, if you’ve written a review of the book, please post a link to share with the group.

Here is Vollmann's strange, hilarious review of his own book:

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/...

Sosen wrote: "Here is Vollmann's strange, hilarious review of his own book"

One of my favorites.

There is a sentence excised from the LA Times piece (for ideological reasons) which I've included in my Argall review by way of the Expelled From Eden reader. Which Review link I'll gladly post :: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... [written during those heady days of the censorship battles, so it's a bit dated]

Also, maybe Argall is my favorite of the Dreams so far. I'm not sure.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Also, maybe Argall is my favorite of the Dreams so far. I'm not sure..."

I liked The Ice Shirt very much, and had a mixed reaction to Fathers and Crows. Argall is engaging my interest right from the start, so I'm looking forward to this dream.

I wasn't planning to read this, but then I read Vollman's self-review and now I have to read the book.

I'll be running behind y'all, catching up & posting here in a week or two. . .

According to The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture (of which I sampled a few pages at Google Books), "Walnut Milk" was quite a delicacy among Powhatans, but it was produced from a kind of Hazelnut. The English used the term "Walnut" in reference to several species of nuts, but the nut we call "Walnut" today is an English walnut, not indigenous to the Americas, only imported at a later date.

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*Not related to the above*
Also, the following is a bit of trivia, and not a spoiler, as it's not a significant plot point to the book.
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Interestingly, Vollmann refers in the book to transmission of Syphilis from the English to the Powhatan Indians. This may well be correct, but if so it's an odd case, as Syphilis was most likely original to the Americas, transmitted to the Europeans after Columbus's first voyage, and first exhibited in a European outbreak in 1494. Now it appears that a little over a century later, the English are spreading the disease in the Americas, perhaps to a tribe that was previously unaffected, or one that was not as widely affected? Or, Vollmann is writing based on what the English colonists themselves believed to be the case, when the history of syphilis was not known or understood. (Even today, the origin is disputed, though the weight of evidence suggests and American origin).

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And by the way, Vollmann *really* did his research!