Vollmann

[RICHARD ROMEO]

Murthy Yenamandra,writes:  "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."

__________________________

I saw him too in NYC a few weeks back and my impression was just about 
the same.  I really liked Fathers and Crows at the time which I think is 
the 2nd in his North American series (it does have the TRP comparison on 
the back-the time I would read anything that was compared to Pynchon) but 
I probably won't read it again.  The more I know about Vollman, the 
scarier he gets (what's that saying the Saracens have about death from 
afar looks horrible, but  blissful the closer one gets-well Willie is not 
one' of 'em!; maybe it's the geeky haircut.  BTW, Bradford Morrow who 
accompanied him and gave the intro was insufferable...

Did he read the Boxer, the murderous Japanese wife, the blood 
story...pretty worthless stuff.





Richard Romeo

Coordinator of Cooperating Collections

The Foundation Center

212-807-2417

rromeo at fdncenter.org