Europe Central

[bekah]

At 3:53 AM +0000 5/29/06, mikebailey at speakeasy.net wrote:
>Would you be willing to post your impressions of Europe Central?


I don't do this type of thing well but here goes -

Europe Central is long (752 pages of text plus another 50 pages of 
notes and source material) but well,  well worth the read and I think 
that many on this list would appreciate it.  Vollman writes his own 
kind of incredibly dense and powerful  prose.  It can be 
overwhelmingly intense at times and then mellow out, almost lyrically 
turning,  somehow,  into a fugue.  It can be truly exhausting to read 
a book about a war written with the same intensity as a  symphony 
with the same theme.    Somehow that was my reaction and it seems 
very appropriate because one of the numerous main characters is a 
Russian composer named  Dimitri Shostakovich and Vollmann describes 
Shostakovich's music in detail (and never,  ever,  boringly).   Also, 
there are many interwoven allusions to Wagner's The Ring . 
(Mythologizing WWII?)

To me,  the book was redolent of DeLillo's scope (Underworld), 
McCarthy's intensity (Blood Meridian),  Bulgakov's magic  (Master and 
Margarita) and TPR's  research and subject-matter (M&D, and GR)..  In 
fact,  there are direct allusions to GR.    (How's that for a single 
book?)    Yet Vollmann maintains his own style throughout.

Structurally,  the book is different and possibly "meaningful"?.  The 
tome (truly!)   is comprised of  36 chapters ranging between 5 and 
100 + pages each.   In the Table of Contents Vollmann graphically 
pairs the chapters  under the heading "Pincer Movements"  because the 
two conjoining  chapters are related. somehow although one is about 
a USSR incident or person and the other is about something in 
Germany.    Combined for a whole work,  the chapters don't all really 
mesh together like a conventional novel although they are all 
definitely linked in numerous ways.
The intro chapter is about the technology and hardware impacting both 
Germany and the USSR.

In the first chapter of main narrative,  Vollmann uses the term 
"parable" more than once  and I suppose that's a good term for what 
he's working toward.   Many of the  chapters (most ?  all?)   pose a 
moral dilemma and decision (I don't know about the lesson part of a 
parable.  Existential lessons?   ??  Thematically,  I  got the 
impression of larger-than-life mythologies and  memory vs forgetting, 
love,   loyalty,   being an artist through the purges of  Stalin's 
regime,  being a commander after Hitler lost Stalingrad,   the 
historical and individual consequences of moral acts,  and so on. 

The remaining chapters  occur in varied places in Russia and  Germany 
from the days of Lenin through the  aftermath of WWII,  the Cold War 
and further.   The focus is WWII itself, it's foreshadowing and it's 
aftermath.  Some of the most interesting chapters took place at the 
actual war fronts,  in Hitler's residences,   in Moscow  for 
Shostakavich's dealings with Stalin,  and in Germany for the 
retribution of the  Red Guillotine (Hilde Benjamin).   Every chapter 
has its own narrator, mostly first person and frequently omniscient. 
Shostakovich has more than one chapter,  I think three?

The major characters and events are historical and the book is 
incredibly well researched although Vollmann says in his notes that 
he has taken some poetic license with the central triangular love 
affair.     Other characters include Krupskaya (Lenin's wife),  Van 
Paulus (a very loyal German general),  Adolph Hitler,  Elena 
Konstantinovskaya  (a translator),  Roman Karmen (Russian 
film-maker),  Kåthe Kollwitz (German artist),   Kurt Gerstein (a 
not-so-loyal German general)  General A.A. Vlasov (a Russian spy/ 
traitor?)  and  Van Cliburn (an American pianist). 


That's as good as I can do for this book.  It's deserves more.

Bekah
hoping someone will have read it or be inspired to read it