Hey, did I mention that I'm reading more William T. Vollmann? Yeah. I am. Just when I thought I was done with him for a while, too.
At about 350 pages (with 70-ish pages of notes), compared to the 800-page Europe Central, and--for that matter--most other Vollmann books, The Ice-Shirt is bite-sized. A chewy-chunky speculative-historical snack. It's tasty enough, while being far less (for me) emotionally engaging. Which is okay right now. Perfectly fine. Oddly, that's part of why I'm enjoying it as much as I am. He's not so interested here in psychological realism, or getting inside characters' heads. There's not too much digging into the motivations people have for their actions. (Which is not something I'm much feeling up to the task of dealing with, myself, right now.) It seems like Vollmann is more interested in just what happens. What cursory glances there are toward why things happen sort of amount to answering the question "Why does stuff happen?" with the answer "Because." There might be more to it than that--hell, probably is--but that's been my take-away, so far.
Actually it's funny, Vollmann sort of reminds me of Neal Stephenson here. (I'm thinking Cryptonomicon, maybe the religious/historical lecture-ish portions of Snow Crash, and probably, from what I know of it, all of the recent trilogy.) It's not a stylistic or topic-matter comparison. It's more like, I can see the two writers as having similar aims for their fiction. For the reader, approaching these particular books, it's sort of like you have this really psychotic-smart friend, and when your friend gets really crazy-mad interested in stuff, whatever stuff, you get to watch them plow through the stuff they're interested in, and their enthusiasm for their subject gets communicated through their writing, and you can suddenly see how this stuff, that might not normally seem intriguing, really actually sort of is. It's pretty neat.
So I've got about a hundred pages to go. I'm sort of intrigued by Vollmann's writing technique (sort of a "genius-functional" thing). I don't know how much prior writing has been done on the topic. I'll share some thoughts on the subject at a later date.
4 comments:
You really should try out some of WTV's nonhistorical stuff. I recommend the Rainbow Stories to start, followed by The Royal Family.
Funny: I was actually looking for The Royal Family for some reason, the title was stuck in my head, I knew it was non-historical. But the bookstore didn't have it that day and the Seven Dreams stuff seemed suddenly, strangely appealing.
I'll definitely check those two out next go-'round.
Nice to meet you today. I laughed right off the bat (quaint old expression) at the short summary of Norse saga embodied in the title. That's why I love to read that stuff when I have world enough and time (the sort of thing you take on a vacation and deliberately bring nothing else and so you have to read it and it's really really worth it, but slow worth it).
Laura--Nice to meet you too! Thanks for dropping by my little web-place here.
And I know exactly what you mean by "worth it, but slow worth it". Many things I read seem to fall into that category.
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