My review of William T. Vollmann’s Poor People appears in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Book Review.
[UPDATE: See also David Ulin’s interview with Vollmann.]
© 2007, Edward Champion. All rights reserved.
My review of William T. Vollmann’s Poor People appears in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Book Review.
[UPDATE: See also David Ulin’s interview with Vollmann.]
© 2007, Edward Champion. All rights reserved.
You heard it here first, my boy: William T. Vollman will win the Nobel Prize in Literature in the year 2019. And no less than a month after Vollman accepts his award, David F. Wallace will pen an ambiguously hostile review of the prize-winning speech.
Very interesting review, Ed — much better than Janet Maslin’s take in the NYT last week. It was useful to read a mixed-to-negative review by someone who I know is intellectually sympathic to Wild Bill’s angle of attack.
I got a copy of Poor People but will read it mainly as a Vollmann completist — flipping through, it appears too anecdotal and quirky to be more than a footnote to his career. I wish Vollmann would drop these side projects — I’m also thinking of last year’s Cupernicus project and the forthcoming book on Japanese Noh theater — and focus on completing the Seven Dreams and his history of the Imperial Valley, which at least sounds promising.
Don’t know if it’ll happen in 2019, but I would not be surprised if Vollmann wins the Nobel — I’m not sure there’s another lliving American writer with a better claim on it (since Pynchon’s never going to get it).
Excellent Ed! i can’t wait to crack open my print version tomorrow morning.