William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion

by Christopher K. Coffman Boston University (Editor), Daniel Lukes (Editor), Georg Bauer (Contribution by), Carla Bolte (Contribution by), Aaron Chandler (Contribution by)

Overview

"This fascinating, massive, wide-ranging collection that editors Christopher K. Coffman and Daniel Lukes have gathered together into William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion will soon be recognized as one of those rare critical books for which that egregiously overused term 'groundbreaking' is fully justified." —Larry McCaffery, from the preface of William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion

The essays in this collection make a case for regarding William T. Vollmann as the most ambitious, productive, and important living author in the US. His oeuvre includes not only outstanding work in numerous literary genres, but also global reportage, ethical treatises, paintings, photographs, and many other productions. His reputation as a daring traveler and his fascination with life on the margins have earned him an extra-literary renown unequaled in our time. Perhaps most importantly, his work is exceptional in relation to the literary moment. Vollmann is a member of a group of authors who are responding to the skeptical ironies of postmodernism with a reinvigoration of fiction’s affective possibilities and moral sensibilities, but he stands out even among this cohort for his prioritization of moral engagement, historical awareness, and geopolitical scope. Included in this book in addition to twelve scholarly critical essays are reflections on Vollmann by many of his peers, confidantes, and collaborators, including Jonathan Franzen, James Franco, and Michael Glawogger. With a preface by Larry McCaffery and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, this book offers readings of most of Vollmann’s works, includes the first critical engagements with several key titles, and introduces a range of voices from international Vollmann scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611495102
Publisher:	University Press Copublishing Division
Publication date:	12/18/2014
Pages:	382
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Christopher K. Coffman is a lecturer in humanities at Boston University.

Daniel Lukes earned a PhD in comparative literature from New York University.

Table of Contents

Contents


Foreword: The Chrysanthemum and the Flame Thrower
Larry McCaffery

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Lonely Atoms
Christopher K. Coffman

I. Engaging People, Space and Place

Chapter 1: Egalitarian Longings: The Problem with Pity and the Search for Equality in Poor People
Aaron D. Chandler

Interchapter: The World According to William T. Vollmann
Heather Corcoran

Chapter 2: The Poetics and Politics of Zoning, Mythography, and Mestizo Space in Imperial Michael K. Walonen

Interchapter: Vollmann in Russia: On Poor People
Mariya Gusev

Chapter 3: William T. Vollmann’s Search for Truth and Community in Participative Research
Georg Bauer

Intechapter: Palm Trees
Michael Glawogger

II. Engaging Narratives: History, Historiography, Ethics

Chapter 4: Vollmann’s Argall-Text: Neo-Elizabethan Form and the Literalist Past in Seven Dreams
Buell Wisner

Interchapter: Vollmann between the Covers
Carla Bolte

Chapter 5: Writing Europe: Death, History, and the Intersecting Intellectual Worlds of William T. Vollmann and Danilo Kiš
John K. Cox

Chapter 6: Kurt Gerstein and the Tragic Parable of ‘Clean Hands’: The Imaginative Role of Fiction in the Moral Calculus of William T. VollmannBryan M. Santin

Interchapter: Reading Rising Up and Rising Down
James Franco

Chapter 7: The New Universalism and William T. Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down
Okla Elliott

III. Power, Sex, Politics

Chapter 8: Our Oriental Heritage: Seeking the Postcolonial Postmodern in William T. Vollmann’s You Bright and Risen Angels
Miles Liebtag

Interchapter : Piss Lime Vitriol
Jordan A. Rothacker

Chapter 9: William T. Vollmann’s Paradigms of Power
Joshua C. Jensen

Interchapter: The Shattered Object: On Representation versus Self-Representation and Becoming Whole
Melissa Petro

Chapter 10: ‘Strange Hungers’: William T. Vollmann’s Literary Performances of Abject Masculinity
Daniel Lukes

Interchapter: A Friendship
Jonathan Franzen

IV. Methods and Mores: Texts, Paratexts, Aesthetics

Interchapter: William T. Vollmann: Artist’s Books
Priscilla Juvelis

Chapter 11: Imperial Photography
Françoise Palleau-Papin

Interchapter: Against All Loss: On Kissing the Mask
Mary Austin Speaker

Chapter 12: The Ethics of the Archive and the William T. Vollmann Collection
Geoffrey D. Smith

Afterword: Beyond the Book: William T. Vollmann’s End Matter (Appendices, Glossaries and Extra Texts)
Michael Hemmingson

Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

This is a fascinating collection of essays and observations about Vollmann's work and Vollmann the human. It's passionate, wildly eclectic, brilliant and frequently strange — all the things a book about Vollmann should be.

Dave Eggers

Readers need a companion to sift through his [Vollmann's] range of materials and its relationship to style.. . .This critical companion is significant for a number of reasons. First, it makes the world a little less lonesome. Readers of Vollmann now have a book that can be found in the library that will offer them the silent conversation of academic discourse. Too often the academic world is purely professional, but for many it can be a place to connect with other likeminded individuals. This book is the starting point for learning and relationships, to say nothing of careers. Second, this book will help readers form a more nuanced understanding of Vollmann’s work, to look beyond superficial understandings of his public persona and to instead gaze deeply into the man and his work.

Hysterical Realism

William T. Vollmann is the elephant in the room of contemporary American letters, and in this imaginatively organized and edited collection over a dozen academic experts and a few fans and collaborators lay hold of various parts of this literary elephant and describe for us what they’ve found: Vollmann as participant observer, as moral philosopher, as historical novelist, as photographer, as punk; Vollmann and space, and postcolonialism, and sex work, and the archive. Unlike the blind men in the parable, however, they recognize that Vollmann is bigger than the sum of his many parts. A uniquely valuable collection of essays on a writer who deserves and repays all the attention we can give him.

Brian McHale