If, like me, you've never been able to catch William T. Vollmann in person, here's a way to at least grab a copy of one of readings so that you can hear the man for yourself. For a tidy $7.50 (plus another three for S&H), the good folks at Politics & Prose will send you a CD of Vollmann's March reading at the store, the one that The Sacramento News & Review's Ralph Brave descibes in this article:
Lumbering toward the podium set up with a microphone at the back of the bookstore, head jutted forward from his body, the parts of which somehow don't seem to belong together, dressed in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, few sitting in the packed audience at the Politics & Prose Bookstore on upper Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., would have known that this was the National Book Award-winning author they had come to see and hear, William T. Vollmann. Vollmann looks so plain, his dress so casual, that one might have easily mistaken him for the store's janitor, if one noticed him at all.
The people who had come to see him were a diverse sort. Some were state Department and international aid types who had read the author's works about his travels to dangerous places and among the poorest of the poor. Others were college students doing their senior theses on his novel The Royal Family or one of the many others. There were also those who had read only a single Vollmann article, picked up at random in some obscure journal or magazine, but had discovered the best article they'd ever read on that subject, whether that was the war in Bosnia or the life and times of a Thai prostitute. No two people in the audience, it seemed, had read the same Vollmann work.
He opened his reading with an announcement that it would be brief, so as not to bore anyone, and then he would take questions. And everyone was invited afterward to join him for a drink at a nearby bar if they wished. When Vollmann begins reading, there's a wooden quality to his speech, as if it's coming from somewhere within him other than his chest and throat--almost as if, instead, it's coming from his head. There's also a slight hesitation and delay between and before each word comes out, as if even the most common utterance first goes through a filter.
Thanks for the link, Jeff. I have Poor People lined up to read this month.
Posted by: david | April 11, 2007 at 07:34 PM