Enough Vollmann Bashing!: A Plea

[Jonathon Sturgeon]

1.  After reading every commercially available work by both Vollmann and
Pynchon (excluding the unabridged _Rising Up and Rising Down_), I can say
with some confidence that the two authors share at best a small set of
thematic and stylistic similarities--similarities shared by many late
20th/early 21st Century American writers.  The differences between the two
are legion.

--First of all, Vollmann writes copious amounts of journalism.  The impact
of this journalism is crucial to understanding the structure/narrative of
his novels.  Vollmann employs a sort of personified vanishing mediator in
all of his novels.  This fact has apparently escaped every single one of his
reviewers.

--Vollmann claims--we have every reason to believe him--not to have read
Pynchon until after writing his first novel (_You Bright and Risen Angels_).

--Vollmann's lists of favorite books (found in the Vollmann Reader) include
a large selection of works from the "Eastern" canon.  This is not to say
that Pynchon doesn't share any of these influences.  I'm only suggesting
that

--Vollmann seems to me to be a sort of Hegelian/Marxist, whereas Pynchon
seems to me more of a (possibly Gnostic) Christian with Anarchist leanings.
Extraordinarily disparate political impressions.

2.  Admission of similarities

--They attended the same college (a generation apart).
--Both are autodidacts, polyglots, polymaths (?)
--Mason & Dixon seems to share some startling thematic similarities with
Seven Dreams.  (This can be explained away, however.  Pynchon clearly began
planning M&D decades earlier/Vollmann, given that M&D wasn't published until
after many of Seven Dreams, could not possibly have been influenced by
Pynchon in this regard.)

3.  I personally think Vollmann shares more in common with someone like
Terrence Malick than TRP.

4.  I would just ask that any contrast/comparison of the two authors remain
civil.  I personally don't find Vollmann-bashing stimulating, inviting, or
even intellectually relevant.  On what theoretical grounds do you even
compare the quality of the two authors?
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