Vollmann's Daunting Doorstoppers - anyone read all those?

[Bekah]

I wrote this to the list back in 5/06 - when I'd just finished Europe  
Central and was totally blown away by it.   Sadly, I've not read any  
more of Vollman's work.
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon- 
l&month=0605&msg=101448&keywords=Vollman

**

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 the
Russian composer 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 although 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 Stalin's purges  being a  
German 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 deserves more.

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

On Nov 15, 2008, at 5:18 AM, Otto wrote:

> ''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