Well, gee

So I'm reading The Rainbow Stories by everybody's favorite crackhead William T. Vollmann, and I have to say that for as often as his writing can be dull or overblown or whatever (his stance on editor intervention--namely that it's got no business messing with his work--can sometimes seem like pointed pigheadedness when you're stuck in a quagmire of whatever he's going on about), he's just as often worth reading, though (in my experience) rarely for stunning, jaw-dropping, chilling moments of beauty and truth, but more for the overall adventurousness and expansiveness and inquisitiveness of long stretches of his work; like enjoying the parts and the flow of the equation on the left side of the equals sign rather than what pops out on the right side of the function; but then just now I finished the "Blue Wallet" chapter of Rainbow, and oh my, that final moment right there is a grade-A prime cut moment, the kind of thing that makes you get up out of your chair and get on the internet so you can point to it with both hands and say, "Look. Look, friends. Look."