William T. Vollmann

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William T. Vollmann
Born (1959-07-28) July 28, 1959 (age 53)
Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation novelist, journalist, short story writer, essayist
Nationality American
Period 1987–present
Genres Literary fiction, historical fiction
Subjects War, violence, science, human compassion

William Tanner Vollmann (born July 28, 1959, Los Angeles, California) is an American novelist, journalist, short story writer, and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction for the novel Europe Central.[2] He lives in Sacramento, California, with his wife and daughter.[3]

Contents

Biography[edit]

William Vollmann was born in Los Angeles and lived there for five years. He attended public high school in Bloomington, Indiana, and has also lived in New Hampshire, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area. His father was Thomas E. Vollmann, a business professor at Indiana University. William T. Vollmann lives in Sacramento, California, with his wife, who is a radiation oncologist, and their daughter.[4] When he was nine years old, Vollmann's six-year-old sister drowned in a pond while under his supervision, and he felt responsible for her death.[5] According to him, this loss has influenced much of his work.[6]

Vollmann studied at Deep Springs College, and completed a B.A., summa cum laude, in comparative literature at Cornell University.

After graduation, Vollmann went on to the University of California, Berkeley, on a fellowship for a doctoral program in comparative literature. He dropped out after one year to engage in life rather than study texts.

Career[edit]

Vollmann worked odd jobs, including as a secretary at an insurance company, and saved up enough money to go to Afghanistan in 1982. His experiences traveling with the mujahideen, then engaged in warfare with the Soviet Union, inspired his first non-fiction book, An Afghanistan Picture Show, or, How I Saved the World, which was not published until 1992.

Upon his return to the USA, Vollmann started work as a computer programmer; he had virtually no experience with computers. According to a New York Times Magazine profile by the novelist Madison Smartt Bell, for a year Vollmann wrote much of his first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels, after hours on office computers, and subsisted on candy bars from vending machines and hiding from the janitorial staff.[7]

In addition to full-length (and notably lengthy) books, Vollmann has written articles and had stories published in Harper's, Playboy, Conjunctions, Spin Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, Gear, and Granta. He has also contributed to The New York Times Book Review. Vollmann identifies as a "hack journalist;" he often does travel writing and reportage while doing research for his larger fiction or non-fiction projects. Both genres have a hybridized and journalistic feel.[according to whom?]

In November 2003 (after many delays), his book Rising Up and Rising Down was published. It is a 3,300-page, heavily illustrated, seven-volume treatise on violence. It was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A single-volume condensed version was published at the end of the following year by Ecco Press. Vollmann justified the abridgment, saying, "I did it for the money."[8] Rising Up and Rising Down represents more than 20 years of work in which he tries to establish a moral calculus to consider the causes[according to whom?], effects, and ethics of violence. Vollmann based it on his reporting from places of warfare, including Cambodia, Somalia, and Iraq.

Vollmann's other works often deal with the settlement of North America (as in Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes, a cycle of seven novels); or stories of people (often prostitutes) on the margins of war, poverty, and hope. His novel Europe Central (2005) follows the trajectories of a wide range of characters (including the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich) caught up in the fighting between Germany and the Soviet Union. It won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction.

In 2008, Vollmann was awarded a five-year fellowship/grant from the Strauss Living Award, which provides $50,000 a year, tax free. In 2009, Vollmann published Imperial, a nonfiction account of life in Imperial County, California, on the border of Mexico.[9] In 2010, Vollmann published a critical study of Japanese Noh Theater, entitled Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater.[10]

As of 2007, Vollmann was writing ghost and supernatural stories for a collection to be published by Viking ("Widow’s Weeds" was published in AGNI #66 in 2007).[11] He was also working on the fourth and fifth volumes of the Seven Dreams series. In interviews, he has mentioned a book about abortion called The Shame of Our Youth, as well as a study on rape cases in court.[12]

Vollmann's papers were acquired by the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library of Ohio State University.[13]

Studies[edit]

Full-length critical essays about Vollman's work have been published in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, BookForum, Open Letters Monthly, and Science Fiction Studies. In 2010, the German magazine 032c dedicated 40 pages of its 19th issue to Vollmann, and featured a rare interview with the author in addition to reprinted texts.[14]

Michael Hemmingson co-edited, with Larry McCaffery, Expelled from Eden: A WTV Reader (NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004) and published William T. Vollmann: A Critical Study and Seven Interviews (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co) in 2009.

Bibliography[edit]

Novels & Collections[edit]

Seven Dreams series[edit]

Main article: Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes

The "Prostitution Trilogy"[edit]

Non-fiction[edit]

Unpublished and Rare Works[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ by Biblioklept (2011-09-24). "William T. Vollmann’s Favorite "Contemporary" Books". biblioklept. Retrieved 2012-08-01. 
  2. ^ "National Book Awards – 2005". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
    (With acceptance speech by Vollmann, introduction by Andre Dubus III, essay by Tom LeClair from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog, and other material.)
  3. ^ Yudt, Dennis (November 8, 2010). "William T. Vollmann: Darkness and Light". Midtown Monthly. Retrieved June 28, 2011. 
  4. ^ Braverman, Kate (2005). "An Interview with William T. Vollmann". Retrieved August 9, 2012. 
  5. ^ Bell, Madison Smartt (fall 2000). "William T. Vollmann, The Art of Fiction No. 163". The Paris Review, no. 156. Retrieved August 9, 2012. 
  6. ^ Interview: "William T. Vollman", KCRW, 11 April 2004
  7. ^ Bell, Madison Smartt (1994-02-06). "WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 2008-01-03. 
  8. ^ [1], New York Times
  9. ^ Ross, Steven. "A MODEST IMPERIALIST: William T. Vollmann". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2012-08-01. 
  10. ^ "Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater". Amazon.com. c. 2009. Retrieved July 26, 2009. 
  11. ^ "AGNI 66 Table of Contents (2007)". AGNI Online. Boston University. c. 2008. Retrieved July 26, 2009. 
  12. ^ William T. Vollmann: A Critical Study and Seven Interviews. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2009
  13. ^ "William T. Vollmann papers", Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, Ohio State University
  14. ^ "William T. Vollmann Against the Tyrannical World", 032c, issue 19 (Summer 2010).
  15. ^ http://www.vice.com/read/the-forgetful-ghost-0000300-v19n10
  16. ^ "You could see the prostitute novels as a trilogy of which this would be the third book." http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/620/the-art-of-fiction-no-163-william-t-vollmann
  17. ^ Hemmingson, Michael A., "William T. Vollmann: A Critical Study and Seven Interviews" (McFarland, 2009), p. 63
  18. ^ William T. Vollmann: A Critical Study and Seven Interviews - Michael A. Hemmingson - Google Books. Books.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-08-01. 
  19. ^ Interviewed by Madison Smartt Bell. "The Art of Fiction No. 163, William T. Vollmann". Paris Review. Retrieved 2012-08-01.  This was submitted to Steven Moore at Dalkey Archive Press circa 1990; Moore liked it, but publisher John O'Brien turned it down.
  20. ^ Interview by Terri Saul Tags: William T. Vollmann. "A Day at William T. Vollmann’s Studio". Quarterly Conversation. Retrieved 2012-08-01. 

External links[edit]

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