William T. Vollmann's Europe Central kind of defies the hack-blogger to come up with funny blogpost headlines about it

We prefer our personal tragedies, because we're all cowards and bastards.

- Europe Central, p 695

So I finished Europe Central on Monday. I can't say I totally loved it. I also can't say I liked it as little as I was afraid I would after the first hundred pages. Nor can I say that every page was of "the most depressing thing ever"-type caliber. I think it's fair to say that my earlier statement--that the words "annoying" and "brilliant" kind of summed up the book--held true through to the end.

And yet for all that I miss the book, already. And while I still think the book would hold up well, if not feel like a very much better novel, during a re-read (a theory that gains some evidence in my much-improved understanding of the novel's opening section when thumbing through it after I'd finished the book) I'm not going to re-read it any time soon. Even though I sort of do want to.

It's not a comforting head-space to be in, when you're in there, in that book. It's definitely not comfort fiction. You don't want to read this book to be happy. The loose trilogy of chapters sort of in the middle, about Vlasov ("Breakout") and Paulus ("The Last Field-Marshal") and Gerstein ("Clean Hands"), those are just incredible chunks of imaginative historical fiction, technically and aesthetically astonishing, but they're not going to make you happy. You should read them, but you should expect it to hurt. And not just in a "Wow that was great story" way but in a sort of deeply and personally felt moral experience sort of way. ("Moral." This book begs us to discuss that word. This book was published at the wrong time for us to truly, deeply discuss that word, though. It's part of a package of religious-type language that's been sort of co-opted, see. Which makes me sad. But.)

And yet, for this notable lack-of-happy quality it's got going on, the book is sort of addictive. You get in there, you start to get the feel for Vollmann's weird prose style, and what he does with all these seemingly random chunks of story, and...I dunno. There's really nothing else I've ever read quite like this book. Even when it doesn't quite make sense, or even when you feel like you've just missed so many things--which unless you're some kind of freak genius I guarantee you're going to miss things in there--you're still kind of unable to consider reading anything but the book, once you get far enough into it. Does that make sense? Or am I generalizing too much?

I'm generalizing too much. Okay. Let's get personal. Look. What I'm trying to say is this: the book, like February, like long winters, sort of fucked me up for a while. This book for me has sort of been my February this year, actually. And I'm really glad to be done with the book, for that; when February ends, I'll be glad in much the same way. And yet, I miss the weight of this book's pages in my hand, and I miss the density of this book's prose in my brain.

Is this what it means, when they say that a book can read the reader?