Vollmann's Daunting Doorstoppers - anyone read all those?

[Otto]

''Europe Central'' gives us 37 stories, five of them more than 50
pages long, to represent Central European fanaticism and to recover
little-known acts of conscientious resistance to Nazi and Communist
totalitarianism. What sets ''Europe Central'' apart from Vollmann's
other large-scale historical productions is its strong narrative
lines. The pieces are dated and arranged chronologically to give the
book a plot that arcs from prewar political machinations to Germany's
surge east to Russia's counteroffensive, and that ends with cold war
politics in divided Berlin.

Stories about Shostakovich and his intimates or rivals -- his lover
Elena Konstantinovskaya; her husband, Roman Karmen; the poet Anna
Akhmatova -- recur often enough to make the collection a suspenseful
near novel about the composer and his times. Shostakovich is so
fascinating -- in his musical ideas, his often failed defenses against
Stalinist demands, his nearly suicidal wit and his bumbling speech --
that you may be tempted to skip the intervening stories to see how his
treacherous life turns out. Vollmann's pell-mell telling of
Shostakovich's last years -- 1943 to 1975 -- in the almost 110-page
story called ''Opus 110'' is a tour de force. As the composer jams the
horrible sounds of his life into his summary opus, Vollmann compacts
the themes and motifs of his book into its emotional climax.

Review by TOM LECLAIR, April 3, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/books/review/03LECLAIR.html


I've finished it.

"Europe Central" is a wonderful novel which definitely belongs to the
wider Pynchon-canon.

Otto