William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion

by Georg Bauer (Contributor), Georg Bauer (Contributor), Daniel Lukes (Editor), Daniel Lukes (Editor), Christopher K. Coffman (Editor)

New
Hardcover
2015
$116.51

This book is the first collection of essays on the works of William T. Vollmann. It offers a comprehensive overview of his writings through scholarly essays and nonscholarly reflections that assess his oeuvre in terms of four conceptual categories: social, historical, political, and methodological. Taken together, these pieces place Vollmann among his peers in contemporary North American literature and open up new avenues for readers to negotiate the many challenges and rewards his texts present.

Synopsis

This book is the first collection of essays on the works of William T. Vollmann. It offers a comprehensive overview of his writings through scholarly essays and nonscholarly reflections that assess his oeuvre in terms of four conceptual categories: social, historical, political, and methodological. Taken together, these pieces place Vollmann among his peers in contemporary North American literature and open up new avenues for readers to negotiate the many challenges and rewards his texts present.

$116.51

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Published: 01 Feb 2015
ISBN 10: 1611495105
ISBN 13: 9781611495102

Media Reviews

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 Vollmann's work, to look beyond superficial understandings of his public persona and to instead gaze deeply into the man and his work. * Hysterical Realism *
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 they've 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. -- Brian McHale, Distinguished Arts and Humanities Professor at The Ohio State University, Author of Postmodernist Fiction (1987) and The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism (2015)
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. -- Dave Eggers, Publisher, Rising Up and Rising Down

Author Bio

Christopher K. Coffman is a lecturer in humanities at Boston University. Daniel Lukes earned a PhD in comparative literature from New York University.