Vollmann

[Murthy Yenamandra]

Richard Nance writes, among other things:
> And William Vollmann's name hasn't popped up in all this comparative
> rambling.  Has he just been resolutely dismissed at some prior time? (like I
> said, I'm new around here) Because (to keep with the biological metaphor)
> the guy is a veritable rainforest -- to my mind, at least.  Some people may
> just not be too fond of undergrowth...

Impressed by the raves of Vollmann that I'd seen on pynchon-l, I went to
his reading from The Atlas at the Hungry Mind bookstore here in St. Paul
when he dropped by recently. He was sort of entertaining, but I was
thoroughly unimpressed by the selections I heard and browsed. It's more
fun listening to the rain. He also got into a prolonged and unresolved
(natch!) argument with a woman from the audience about the ethics of his
hanging out with and getting most of his information from the prostitutes
of the world (especially the third).

His series on North America (I don't remember the title) looked more
interesting and I intend to give it a try one of these days (after I
renew Infinite Jest a few more times at the library). Vollmann also said
that he's working on a big non-fiction thing on Violence and its
justifications - that sounds interesting too.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. Email: yenamand at cs.umn.edu
   "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
    swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the
    wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour  
    to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all ..."