Vollman and Powers and Pynchon?

[LOT64 at aol.com]

In response to Brad's request for opinions on Vollman:

Its funny, I have heard Vollman interviewed at length on the radio and on a
public tv forum.  The first time I heard him was on the radio, I didn't know
who he was and I found him fascinating.  Most of the discussion was about his
book dealing with the search for the Northwest Passage.  I made a mental note
to find his books and read them.  Unfortunately for me, I tuned in to the
show after the beginning and had to tune out before the end and didn't get
his name.  Then one evening, flicking the channels listlessly, I became
entranced by a strange looking dude in an old field jacket talking to an
interviewer on a UHF channel I barely received.  He was talking about how he
was fired from an office job in San Francisco but he hadn't finished the
novel he was working on and needed the word processor at his office to
finish.  He started hiding in the office and lived under desks and finished
the book by sneaking out at night and doing his typing then.  This time I
wrote down his name.

I immediately got hold of all the books of  his I could find.  I was really
suprised that I couldn't get through any of them.  I'm not putting him down
as a writer, its just that his style or something just did not grab me.  It
was so strange to be so fascinated by Vollman as a talker and yet not be able
to get into his books at all.  I would like to try his book about his
experiences in Afghanistan but haven't been able to find it.  His take on
that book was that here he was going to help the rebels but in his naive
egotism didn't realize that he was just a burden to them.

Any way, perhaps I just tried his books at a time when I wasn't ready to
appreciate them.  It was odd to be so fascinated by a person's spoken
thoughts and so unappreciative of his writings. I will be interested to hear
everyone else's take on Vollman.  I did find the dustcover comparisons to
Pynchon to be false advertising.

Ron Churgin