The Modern Novel

Biography

Vollmann is one of those authors, like Joyce Carol Oates, whom it is almost impossible for one person to have read all their work and, if you don’t believe me, check out this website. Though expensive to obtain in its full version and out of print, Rising Up and Rising Down was published in a version of 3,300 pages (yes, three thousand three hundred) pages. Who has read it? Not me, for sure. This is not to say that Vollmann, like Oates, is not worthwhile. They are both incredibly worthwhile and, contrary to what Horace Engdahl may say, both excellent contenders for the Nobel Prize, more so than many of the actual winners. It is just that there is too much when, as I hope this site shows, there are a lot of other worthwhile books to read. But please, please don’t be put off by the quantity as you really should read both Vollmann and Oates if you want to have even the faintest idea of what US literature is about.

William T. Vollmann was born in Los Angeles in 1959. The defining moment in his early life was when he was supervising his six-year old sister when he was nine. He was distracted and she drowned, for which he blamed himself. He attended Deep Springs College and then took a B.A. in comparative literature from Cornell. After working at various odd jobs, he went to Afghanistan and described his experiences in An Afghanistan Picture Show Or How I Saved the World. After studying for a year at Berkeley, he worked as a computer programmer, while writing his first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels: A Cartoon. He has since produced a prodigious amount of work, including the 3,300 page long Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom, and Urgent Means (an abridged version is available). He has been working on a lengthy seven volume novel series on the colonisation of North America, called the Seven Dreams.

His work deals both with the effects of the development of North America by European immigrants as well as the seamy side of life. His work is incredibly ambitious and, while owing much to writers like Thomas Pynchon, very original. He will remain one of the foremost US novelists for some time to come.

Other links

William T. Vollmann
William T. Vollmann
William T. Vollmann
William T. Vollmann
William T. Vollmann
Reading Vollmann
Overrated Writers, Part Three: William Vollmann
William T. Vollmann Channels His Female Alter-Ego Dolores in His First Art Exhibit
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