Europe Central

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Thanks, Bekah.  Your description actually makes me want to tackle the book.  I've mostly just heard diatribes against it.  In the mean time, I'm considering embarking on a Vonnegut binge.  I'd read Cat's Cradle years ago, but never went further.  I'm starting with Slaughterhouse 5.  Anyone have any opinions on Vonnegut's works?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>Sent: May 29, 2006 6:42 PM
>To: mikebailey at speakeasy.net, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Europe Central
>
>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
>