NP Vollmann's "Europe Central"

[bekah]

At 9:32 PM -0500 6/15/06, rich wrote:
>not to disagree with y'all, I'm re-reading Vasily Grossman's Life 
>and Fate (new translation, published by NYRB)--i couldn't finish 
>Europe Central--too much research imho, a particular vollmann 
>weakness--two different books, no doubt but I don't know, Life and 
>Fate seems more heartfelt to me, less academic, more life.
>
>feel free to disagree
>

I agree that there's  a lot of research although I don't know as I'd 
consider that a weakness.  Pynchon does a quite a lot of it too, 
he's just somewhat more reticent about it.  I'm sure that Vollmann 
knew he's be criticized for including the "Sources"  material.  From 
what I understand he wanted to provide a few more maps and a 
chronology of WWII,  but his editor held firm.  (The good side is 
that Vollmann did his own annotations - no waiting for some ambitious 
master's candidate.)

  In reading,  I only checked the Sources when I was particularly 
curious about something.  His sources are good as far as I know - 
I've read Kershaw's bio of Hitler and know a bit about the 
Shostakovich bio controversy.

If Vollmann is really going to revive the Gods of Norse mythology 
(Wagner and prior)  in order to show the reality of WWII as a  fight 
to the death in a duel of Evil vs Evil for the ring of gold,  he has 
to show where that metaphor is coming from and how it plays out. 
This is the strength of what he's done.

The parables  (paired chapters)  are about the moral decisions that 
historical  individuals had to make in the confrontation.  And this 
is the power of what he's done.

Adding the Kabbalah references and dancing alphabets  *almost* went 
over the top,  but I'd only fault Vollmann for dragging the tale out 
in some sections,  as well as at the end.

Bekah