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If you’re at all a fan of William Vollmann, you’ll want to check out the interview with him in the Summer Rain Taxi. It’s only available in the print edition, so either subscribe or hunt around your local indy bookstores (Rain Taxi is free, so long as you’re lucky enough to live near a bookstore at which it is distributed).
Here’s a snippet:
AE: Would "soft totalitarianism" describe the current situation in the United States? And I can leave this out if you prefer.
WTV: Oh, I don’t care. I’m not afraid. I think I told you that my phone has been tapped since about 2000 and this call’s probably being recorded–not only by you. So what do I care? . . . I don’t know if I told you that I was detained coming across the border–five hours, they called in the FBI. . . . My mail has been opened quite often . . . Often it’s opened with razors . . . It’s almost as if they want to give me some kind of message.
Vollmann also discusses Europe Central and a book he’s working on with Nazi bases on the moon and a "huge black vulture" as President of the United States.
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The word I’m thinking of here is paranoiac. I’ve never understood why anyone would be interested in reading Vollmann, much less why the FBI would investigate him. It reminds me more than anything of the 60s when virtually every phone call would begin with the caller being warned that “the FBI is listening in.” I’m sure our fears then made as much sense as Vollmann’s do today.
To Mr. Milofsky:
1. Have you read a full book by Vollmann? If you have and you’d like to express specific reasons why you disliked it, then I, for one, would be happy to hear it. Blanket generaliations, on the other hand, are the last resort of someone who has little to say.
2. Are you not familiar with Cointelpro or the the FBI’s well-documented history of opening mail?
3. The FBI kept records on Allen Ginsberg, Lillian Hellman and Rebecca West. While the Rain Taxi offers no specific proof other than Vollmann’s words, why wouldn’t they keep a file on Vollmann in these terror-laden times?
dmilofsky,
You don’t think “our fears” in the ’60s made sense?
And, yes, paranoia is a good word. It has definied America for a long time and was crucial to post-WWII American fiction.
Milofsky’s right, chilluns. I think you both missed the joke, but it was a shibboleth of the ’60s to suggest, for the sake of social prestige, that one was being actively monitored by the FBI. This was a parlor game, not an expression of radical anxiety. To assert this isn’t to deny the noxious activity the FBI was, and is, involved in. As an interview gambit it’s perfectly in keeping with the other self-aggrandizing things I’ve read that Mr. Vollmann’s said of himself. Does the FBI “keep a file on” Vollmann? Possibly. The FBI loves to open files. Keeping a file on someone and posting a man down at the junction box to listen in are two different things (though the writers Ed lists are from the days when authors actually had some cultural authority. I suspect the only people keeping a file on Vollmann work for BookScan).
“Often it’s opened with razors.” You do tend to see this sort of loving specificity and attention to detail in dementia, but the guy’s simply a showboat, always has been. I saw him whip out a gravity knife at a reading once, on cue. The crowd gasped. Ooooh. Ahhh. And Vollmann was still arguably a young man back then. He should grow up. To assert this isn’t to deny his literary achievements (though I tend to lean toward Milofsky’s evaluation).
I couldn’t say it better than Jocko has, so I won’t add anything except to say he understood what I was saying exactly. As to the question of whether or not I’d read Vollmann, I’m sorry to say I have. Otherwise, I wouldn’t offer an opinion. In my opinion, he’s verbose and impenetrable.
I can’t speak authoritatively as to whether Vollmann is full of it (or himself) because I don’t know the guy. The most I can say is that from the time I saw him in person and fro what I’ve read by and about him, I tend to believe him.
Also, even if he was a showboat, would he really need to be pulling knives and trumping up FBI wiretaps to prove his credability? After all, he’s already: 1) Fought with the Mujhadeen in Afghanistan, 2) Almost froze to death in the Arctic, 3) Almost been blown up by a land mine in Bosnia, 4) Smoked crack with prostitues in the Tenderloin.
And Jocko, you’re right that given Vollmann’s sales numbers he probably isn’t dangerous as a subversive writer. I think the reason the FBI would have a file on him isn’t for his writing, but for all the other shit he’s been involved in.
Well, I guess I don’t know what the point of posting that little snippet was if it wasn’t simply to demonstrate that Vollmann’s response to a simple and straightforward query not only turned the question around so that it was about him–showboat–but failed to answer it. Or does he later on? We still don’t know about “soft totalitarianism,” just that Chicken Little feels the sky falling on his head.
Fought with the mujahedeen, gone to Bosnia, and oh you left out the skinheads. What does any of this have to do with being a writer? Or, would Vollmann’s intensely overwrought hypographia interest anyone if his subject matter weren’t itself a matter of flashy travelogue?
The point was I thought it was interesting and wanted to give people a little bit of the interview instead of just telling them to subscribe to Rain Taxi.
Also, if you rad the interview you’ll see that he does answer the question. I excerpted it.
“Fought with the mujahedeen, gone to Bosnia, and oh you left out the skinheads. What does any of this have to do with being a writer?” Everything, since this is exactly what Vollmann writes about. Or would you prefer he write about war an dskinheads without having any firsthand knowledge of either?
Vollmann gets literary respect because he’s a good writer, not because of his life’s exploits. You may not think he’s a good writer, and that’s fine, but a lot of people do and that’s why they read him, not because he’s a daredevil.
We’re getting a little carried away here. Writers since Hemingway have been making exaggerated claims about their derring-do when it comes to war, etc. The only reason we know Vollmann did these things is that he says he did. Or does the mujahadeen keep good records these days? I don’t know if he did or not and I don’t care. As Jocko says, what’s that got to do with his writing? As for writing what you know, Stephen Crane wrote the best novel of the Civil War without having been near a battle field. Case closed on that one. As to the FBI, all sorts of people have dossiers with the bureau. I was investigated by them myself. Big deal, there was nothing to find. I have nothing personal against either Vollmann or his fans, but I think all this grandstanding seems pretty sophomoric, whether it’s true or not. Dashiell Hammett suffered a great deal more than Vollmann during his time, including going to prison, but at least he didn’t go public whining about it. It’s great for writers to have strong political convictions as long as they don’t have to wear them on their sleeves.
I did not read the interview. As you acknowledge in the post, the interview isn’t readily available. I guess you’re going to keep me in suspense. “The point is I thought it was interesting.” So do I, for the reasons I mentioned above. When you post a quotation from an interview without comment, aren’t you inviting people to react to it in a number of different ways? Why did you think it was interesting?
Yes to all dmilofsky says and I’d like to underscore the point you disdain: writing is an imaginative act and while first-hand experience can lend an authoritative air to a work of fiction not only is it unnecessary but what often strikes me about Vollmann’s work is its relatively unauthoritative air. He always conveys a sort of wide-eyed ingenuousness and/or romanticism. In any case, I think you’re wrong about the reasons for his notoriety, or respect if you like: like Burroughs and Genet and Selby and Hunter Thompson and other writers too numerous to mention around whom a sort of personality cult has cohered, Vollmann is a writer who is perhaps mostly admired for all the wrong reasons. I’d say it was too bad, but Vollmann seems to go out of his way–see the quote in question here–to cultivate the Man of Danger persona.
If Vollmann repeatedly mentioned the opened mail and intrusions at nearly every personal appearance, then I’d be inclined to agree and see it as recurrent whining. But Vollmann was asked a question and answered it. This is not what I would call the mark of an exhibitionist, just a guy answering a question. Compare that with, say, JSF constantly whining about how tough it is to be a writer turning out a sophomore work and you see a fundamental difference.
I hardly think that Vollmann’s working methods matter that much. They are inconsequential to what you think of his writing. Just because one writer chooses to experience life and another prefers to conjure it in his imagination before he pens his novel, this is inconsequential. Nor does it matter how much one has suffered. It’s the books themselves that matter, not the way that they’re written. And it would seem that Scott and I love his work, and you two don’t.
But I think you’re making a huge mistake by failing to distinguish between the writer and his work.
Just for the record, Ed, I knew nothing about Vollmann when I read his work and made my judgement based only on that. All of this personal info has come about only through an interview quoted by you and others that I haven’t seen and have no interest in seeing. I agree completely that a writer should be judged only on his work, but Vollmann’s working methods (experiencing the things he writes about) were referenced by others, not me. Tolstoy, for instance, wrote a pretty good novel about the Franco-Russian war sixty years after the fact. Anyway, you’re right about preferences. So let’s just agree to disagree about Vollmann’s worth as a writer.
This topic is pretty dead. Just a couple things.
dmilofsky, in Vollmann’s book on his experiences in Afghanistan, there are reproductions of documents that would lead one to believe that it all is true. Also, we have pretty good proof he was almost blown up in Bosnia. I stress that I don’t respect Vollmann as a writer because he has done some crazy shit, but for the books themselves (in fact, before I read him I was somewhat skeptical as to where his notoriety derived from). And yes, you can write a good book about something you never experienced, but I won’t count it against Vollmann that in interviews he discusses life experiences that are pertinent to the subject-matter of his fiction. Also, not everyone is Tolstoy, and I think there is value to the fact Vollmann has experienced the things he writes about.
Jocko, I agree that a lot of people only know of Vollmann because he’s extreme in many ways. That’s too bad because I think they should read him as well. In my experiences, though, I’ve met a number of people who respect him as a writer. It’s my belief that his true following is a result of the literature, no matter how many people like to read the odd NYTimes piece about his exploits.
Are You Experienced?
As I wait for specific citations of Vollmann’s ‘bad writing’… I’ll throw in my two-cents worth in response to this disucssion at Scott’s … There are four commonly accepted types of experience:physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Given your ow…
I’ve been a pretty serious reader of Vollmann for many years, and have read a lot of interviews with him. This is the first time I can recall him claiming that he’s subject to this kind of harrassment. I can’t remember if it’s in _Rainbow Stories_ or _13 S & 13 E_ (the latter?) where he includes a tongue-in-cheek dedication of one of the stories to the FBI, for keeping him entertained: a friend of his was under investigation for producing child pornography.
Are You Experienced?
As I wait for specific citations of Vollmann’s ‘bad writing’… I’ll throw in my two-cents worth in response to this discussion at Scott’s … There are four commonly accepted types of experience:physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Given your ow…