William T. Vollmann A Critical Companion [Paperback]

Readers need a companion to sift through his [Vollmann's] range of materials and its relationship to style. . . .This critical companion is significant for a number of reasons. First, it makes the world a little less lonesome. Readers of Vollmann now have a book that can be found in the library that will offer them the silent conversation of academic discourse. Too often the academic world is purely professional, but for many it can be a place to connect with other likeminded individuals. This book is the starting point for learning and relationships, to say nothing of careers. Second, this book will help readers form a more nuanced understanding of Vollmanns work, to look beyond superficial understandings of his public persona and to instead gaze deeply into the man and his work.William T. Vollmann is the elephant in the room of contemporary American letters, and in this imaginatively organized and edited collection over a dozen academic experts and a few fans and collaborators lay hold of various parts of this literary elephant and describe for us what theyve found: Vollmann as participant observer, as moral philosopher, as historical novelist, as photographer, as punk; Vollmann and space, and postcolonialism, and sex work, and the archive. Unlike the blind men in the parable, however, they recognize that Vollmann is bigger than the sum of his many parts. A uniquely valuable collection of essays on a writer who deserves and repays all the attention we can give him.This is a fascinating collection of essays and observations about Vollmann's work and Vollmann the human. It's passionate, wildly eclectic, brilliant and frequently strange -- all the things a book about Vollmann should be.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 not only includes outstanding work in numerous literary genres, but also global reportage, ethical treatises, paintings, phl£*