Would anyone recommend this guy? I'm interested in reading Rising up and Rising down.

>Inb4 tranny faggot

Okay but what are his books like?

generic lib pleasing shiz like his most acclaimed book is:
>fascism bad, communism bad
like wow man u dunked on the two bads of liberalism in a ww2 novel for boomers! stunning and brave, vollman.

>>24540471 (OP)
all i know about him is that he went to deep springs, is probably someone important's child, and that i can't bring myself to read his prose.

read gariella lutz instead.

>>24540471 (OP)
I read the Rainbow Stories and bits of one or two other things.

I think when it comes to putting his nose somewhere interesting and then writing down what's in front of it he's not at all bad. All the unfiltered stuff rang true to me. He went out and talked to all sorts of weird demi-monde desperados and losers and he conveys their world pretty well.

But when he tries to be an artist and work the material into something more than just a series of snapshots . . . not so good.

His forte is as a journalist, not a novelist or short story writer. That's OK, though. So few journalists are anything other than execrable that even a half-decent one is a pleasant exception.

>>24540471 (OP)
>Would anyone recommend this guy?
Yes, he's written many interesting and ambitious works.
>Okay but what are his books like?
Grab a copy of The Atlas and find out.

>>24540492
No idea why Europe Central is his popular novel; Vollmann writes a good sentence but that book is otherwise entirely superfluous (esp. as anyone who reaches for it has probably already read GR, Catch-22, etc). I had a lot more fun with The Rifles even though it's arguably not a great book, which leads me to recommend whichever of the "Seven Dreams" appeals most to the OP, should he want to read this guy.

>>24540662
yeah, that makes a lot of sense, i really relate to his journalistic style of getting in the thick of it, i've done the same a few times in my life, you feel as though you're traveling to the world of the dead and bringing back treasure, or at least information. my place was the ghetto. his place seemed similar. he's leading the pack when it comes to the sort of authentic, human expression we need to feed the coming age of New Sincerity. I am of his tradition, a wannabe poet or novelist, but instead an eye, an eye in an invisible man, who seems to be able to go wheresoever untouched. except by these fucking eyelashes. DAMMIT

>>24540718
>No idea why Europe Central is his popular novel
It won the National Book Award, that's why.

all I know is that he went to my country and wrote a small section in it in one of his non fiction books

>>24540492
>fascism bad, communism bad
Yes, bad things are bad. Did you expect him to be a le heckin' basedment neet because you first heard about him on an obscure subdivision of a Mongolian anime imageboard best known for kiddie porn?

>>24540996
yeah bad things are obviously bad, that's why it's rather tedious to read 800 pages about it. like if the council on foreign relations could read ur book and think "oh ya this rules" one might question if anything of value had been written.

>>24541106
Maybe you should choose a different book then if Europe Central upsets you so much.

I've only read the Ice Shirt but it was good. I want to read Fathers and Crows.

Guy can definitely write

>>24541196
oh "european colonists bad" yeah i already read howard zinn when i was a kid i'm good

>>24541219
The cover literally shows the natives torturing to death a man who only wanted to save their souls

>>24541106
Only someone who has a masturbation problem could write this post and think they were making an interesting, intelligent point.

>>24541245
Retard deleted his post because he got exposed for being retarded lmao

>>24541272
vollman, no one is going to read that shitty new tetralogy you mentally masturbated into existence. nice projection tho.

>>24540996
>a Mongolian anime imageboard best known for kiddie porn
Speaking of, I've always admired Vollmann's afterword to Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night"

>>24541276
kek