"This fascinating, massive, wide-ranging collection that editors Christopher K. Coffman and Daniel Lukes have gathered together into William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion will soon be recognized as one of those rare critical books for which that egregiously overused term 'groundbreaking' is fully justified." —Larry McCaffery, from the preface of William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion
The essays in this collection make a case for regarding William T. Vollmann as the most ambitious, productive, and important living author in the US. His oeuvre includes not only outstanding work in numerous literary genres, but also global reportage, ethical treatises, paintings, photographs, and many other productions. His reputation as a daring traveler and his fascination with life on the margins have earned him an extra-literary renown unequaled in our time. Perhaps most importantly, his work is exceptional in relation to the literary moment. Vollmann is a member of a group of authors who are responding to the skeptical ironies of postmodernism with a reinvigoration of fiction’s affective possibilities and moral sensibilities, but he stands out even among this cohort for his prioritization of moral engagement, historical awareness, and geopolitical scope. Included in this book in addition to twelve scholarly critical essays are reflections on Vollmann by many of his peers, confidantes, and collaborators, including Jonathan Franzen, James Franco, and Michael Glawogger. With a preface by Larry McCaffery and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, this book offers readings of most of Vollmann’s works, includes the first critical engagements with several key titles, and introduces a range of voices from international Vollmann scholarship.
Table of Contents:
Contents
Foreword: The Chrysanthemum and the Flame Thrower
Larry McCaffery
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Lonely Atoms
Christopher K. Coffman
I. Engaging People, Space and Place
Chapter 1: Egalitarian Longings: The Problem with Pity and the Search for Equality in Poor People
Aaron D. Chandler
Interchapter: The World According to William T. Vollmann
Heather Corcoran
Chapter 2: The Poetics and Politics of Zoning, Mythography, and Mestizo Space in Imperial Michael K. Walonen
Interchapter: Vollmann in Russia: On Poor People
Mariya Gusev
Chapter 3: William T. Vollmann’s Search for Truth and Community in Participative Research
Georg Bauer
Intechapter: Palm Trees
Michael Glawogger
II. Engaging Narratives: History, Historiography, Ethics
Chapter 4: Vollmann’s Argall-Text: Neo-Elizabethan Form and the Literalist Past in Seven Dreams
Buell Wisner
Interchapter: Vollmann between the Covers
Carla Bolte
Chapter 5: Writing Europe: Death, History, and the Intersecting Intellectual Worlds of William T. Vollmann and Danilo Kiš
John K. Cox
Chapter 6: Kurt Gerstein and the Tragic Parable of ‘Clean Hands’: The Imaginative Role of Fiction in the Moral Calculus of William T. VollmannBryan M. Santin
Interchapter: Reading Rising Up and Rising Down
James Franco
Chapter 7: The New Universalism and William T. Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down
Okla Elliott
III. Power, Sex, Politics
Chapter 8: Our Oriental Heritage: Seeking the Postcolonial Postmodern in William T. Vollmann’s You Bright and Risen Angels
Miles Liebtag
Interchapter : Piss Lime Vitriol
Jordan A. Rothacker
Chapter 9: William T. Vollmann’s Paradigms of Power
Joshua C. Jensen
Interchapter: The Shattered Object: On Representation versus Self-Representation and Becoming Whole
Melissa Petro
Chapter 10: ‘Strange Hungers’: William T. Vollmann’s Literary Performances of Abject Masculinity
Daniel Lukes
Interchapter: A Friendship
Jonathan Franzen
IV. Methods and Mores: Texts, Paratexts, Aesthetics
Interchapter: William T. Vollmann: Artist’s Books
Priscilla Juvelis
Chapter 11: Imperial Photography
Françoise Palleau-Papin
Interchapter: Against All Loss: On Kissing the Mask
Mary Austin Speaker
Chapter 12: The Ethics of the Archive and the William T. Vollmann Collection
Geoffrey D. Smith
Afterword: Beyond the Book: William T. Vollmann’s End Matter (Appendices, Glossaries and Extra Texts)
Michael Hemmingson
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors
