Background
Vollmann, William Tanner was born on July 28, 1959 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
(In this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann ...)
In this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century. Assembling a composite portrait of these two warring leviathans and the terrible age they defined, the narrative intertwines experiences both real and fictional—a young German who joins the SS to expose its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich laboring under Stalinist oppression. Through these and other lives, Vollmann offers a daring and mesmerizing perspective on human actions during wartime.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143036599/?tag=2022091-20
(With the same panoramic vision and mythic sensibility he ...)
With the same panoramic vision and mythic sensibility he brought to The Ice-Shirt, William T. Vollmann continues his hugely original fictional history of the clash of Indians and Europeans in the New World. It is 400 years ago, and the ?Black Gowns,? French Jesuit priests, are beginning their descent into the forests of Canada, eagerly seeking to convert the Huron--and courting martyrdom at the hands of the rival Iroquois. Through the eyes of these vastly different peoples--particularly through those of the grimly pious Father Jean de Brebeuf and the Indian prophetess Born Underwater--Vollmann reconstructs America?s past as tragedy, nightmare, and bloody spectacle. In the process, he does nothing less than reinvent the American novel as well.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014016717X/?tag=2022091-20
(Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and the Revolutions of ...)
Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Vollmann, William T. ( Author ) Paperback Feb- 2007 Paperback Feb- 01- 2007
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AUQT40G/?tag=2022091-20
(The man and the idea that created modern science, as seen...)
The man and the idea that created modern science, as seen by one of today's most celebrated writers. In 1543, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus lay on his deathbed, his just-published masterpiece On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in his hands. At that time, religious doctrine and common sense dictated that the earth ruled the universe, with the sun, moon, planets, and stars all rotating around it. By putting the sun at the center of that cosmology, his book fomented another kind of revolution—a scientific one—that would lead to a completely new view of the universe, and humanity's place in it. As contemporary cosmologists explore the universe's vastness and the nearly insignificant role we play in it, the repercussions from Copernicus's radical step continue to resound. With the energetic prose and powerful intelligence for which he is known, William T. Vollmann provides an enlightening and readable explication not only of Copernicus's book but also of Copernicus's epoch, and the momentous clash between the two. 20 diagrams.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393059693/?tag=2022091-20
( Twenty-three years in the making, Rising Up and Rising...)
Twenty-three years in the making, Rising Up and Rising Down (the original, published by McSweeney's in October 2003, spans seven volumes) is a rich amalgam of historical analysis, contemporary case studies, anecdotes, essays, theory, charts, graphs, photographs and drawings. Convinced that there is "a finite number of excuses" for violence and that some excuses "are more valid than others," Vollmann spent two decades consulting hundreds of sources, scrutinizing the thinking of philosophers, theologians, tyrants, warlords, military strategists, activists and pacifists. He also visited more than a dozen countries and war zones to witness violence firsthand -- sometimes barely escaping with his life. Vollmann makes deft use of these tools and experiences to create his Moral Calculus, a structured decision-making system designed to help the reader decide when violence is justifiable and when it is not.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060548193/?tag=2022091-20
(From the acclaimed author of The Rainbow Stories, The Ice...)
From the acclaimed author of The Rainbow Stories, The Ice Shirt, and Fathers and Crows comes this fever dream of a novel about an alcoholic Vietnam veteran, Jimmy, who devotes his government check and his waking hours to the search for a beautiful and majestic street whore, a woman who may or may not exist save in Jimmy's rambling dreams. Gloria's image seems distilled from memory and fantasy and the fragments of whatever Jimmy can buy from the other whores: their sex, their stories--all the unavailing dreams of love and salvation among the drinkers and addicts who haunt San Francisco's Tenderloin District.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140231579/?tag=2022091-20
(In the jungles of South America, on the ice fields of Ala...)
In the jungles of South America, on the ice fields of Alaska, the plains of the Midwest, and the streets of San Francisco, a fearsome battle rages. The insects are vying for world domination; the inventors of electricity stand in evil opposition. Bug , a young man, rebels against his own kind and joins forces with the insects. Wayne, a thug, allies himself with the malevolent forces of electricity and vows to assassinate the preying mantis who tends bar in Oregon. A brusque La Pasionara with the sprightly name of Millie leads an intrepid band of revolutionaries. You Bright and Risen Angels is the work of an extraordinary imagination. In this free-wheeling novel of epic proportions, William T. Vollmann has crafted a biting, hilarious satire of history, technology, politics, and misguided love.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140110879/?tag=2022091-20
( That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William...)
That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asked in cities and villages around the globe. The result of Vollmann's fearless inquiry is a view of poverty unlike any previously offered. Poor People struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery and quiet resignation, allowing the poor to explain the causes and consequences of their impoverishment in their own cultural, social, and religious terms. With intense compassion and a scrupulously unpatronizing eye, Vollmann invites his readers to recognize in our fellow human beings their full dignity, fallibility, pride, and pain, and the power of their hard-fought resilience.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060878843/?tag=2022091-20
(Arelentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivoc...)
Arelentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivocally adventurous examiner of human existence, William T. Vollmann now takes to the rails. In the company of experienced fellow train-hopper Steve, Vollmann trawls the secretive waters of a unique underground lifestyle--subjecting both our national romance with and skepticism about the hobo life to his finely tuned, analytical eye. Carrying on in the footloose tradition of Huckleberry Finn, he offers a moving, strikingly modern vision of the American dream, brilliantly exploring both our deeply ingrained romanticizing of "freedom" and the myriad ways we restrict the very freedoms we profess to admire.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GX3MB4G/?tag=2022091-20
(This stunning new collection of stories confirms William ...)
This stunning new collection of stories confirms William T. Vollmann's growing reputation as the American writer whose books "tower over the work of his contemporaries by virtue of their enormous range, huge ambition, stylistic daring, wide learning, audacious innovation, and sardonic wit" (Washington Post Book World). All these qualities are in evidence in this collection in which the character of the writer and that of some of his intimates - both real and imaginary - surface and resurface in a series of extraordinary situations and encounters. Two astonishing stories frame this collection. The first, "The Ghost of Magnetism, " tells about a young man leaving San Francisco to become a sort of literary hobo living on his freeze-dried memories. The last, "The Grave of Lost Stories, " describes the death of Poe in a fungus-encrusted tomb somewhere deep in the earth. Here is the colorful and disreputable group of people familiar to us from Vollmann's earlier fiction - pimps, tramps, pornographers, witch doctors and massage-parlor girls. Within these stories, Vollmann gives us one of the most searching, bizarre, and subversive views of America today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802133959/?tag=2022091-20
( Arelentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequiv...)
Arelentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivocally adventurous examiner of human existence, William T. Vollmann now takes to the rails. In the company of experienced fellow train-hopper Steve, Vollmann trawls the secretive waters of a unique underground lifestyle—subjecting both our national romance with and skepticism about the hobo life to his finely tuned, analytical eye. Carrying on in the footloose tradition of Huckleberry Finn, he offers a moving, strikingly modern vision of the American dream, brilliantly exploring both our deeply ingrained romanticizing of "freedom" and the myriad ways we restrict the very freedoms we profess to admire.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061256765/?tag=2022091-20
(From a writer who has won comparison with Thomas Pynchon ...)
From a writer who has won comparison with Thomas Pynchon and William S. Burroughs comes thirteen unnerving and often breathtaking stories populated by punks and angels, skinheads and religious assassins, streetwalkers and fetishists--people who live outside the law and and the clear light of the every day. Set in landscapes as diverse as ancient Babylon, India, and the seamy underbelly of San Francisco, these daring and innovative tales are laced with Vollman's fertile imagination. The Rainbow Stories ushers us into a world that bears an awful yet hypnotic resemblance to that of our deepest nightmares, confirming Vollman's reputation as a dark visionary of contemporary fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140171541/?tag=2022091-20
(Never before available in paperback and all but invisible...)
Never before available in paperback and all but invisible for twenty years, a personal account of the origins of America's longest war. In 1982, the young William Vollmann worked odd jobs, including as a secretary at an insurance company, until he'd saved up enough money to go to Afghanistan, where he wanted to join the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets. The resulting book wasn't published until 1992, and Library Journal rated it: "The wrong book written at the wrong time. . . . With the situation in Afghanistan rapidly heading toward resolution . . . libraries may safely skip this." Thirty years later--and with the United States still mired in the longest war of its history--it's time for a reassessment of Vollmann's heartfelt tale of idealism and its terrifying betrayals. An alloy of documentary and autobiographical elements characteristic of Vollmann's later nonfiction, An Afghanistan Picture Show is not a work of conventional reportage; instead, it's an account of a subtle and stubborn consciousness grappling with the limits of will and idealism imposed by violence and chaos.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1612191983/?tag=2022091-20
( Butterfly Stories follows a dizzying cradle-to-grave hu...)
Butterfly Stories follows a dizzying cradle-to-grave hunt for love that takes the narrator from the comfortable confines of suburban America to the killing fields of Cambodia, where he falls in love with Vanna, a prostitute from Phnom Penh. Here, Vollmann's gritty style perfectly serves his examination of sex, violence, and corruption.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0233988084/?tag=2022091-20
(In Argall, the newest novel in his Seven Dreams series, W...)
In Argall, the newest novel in his Seven Dreams series, William T. Vollmann alternates between extravagant Elizabethan language and gritty realism in an attempt to dig beneath the legend surrounding Pocahontas, John Smith, and the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia-as well as the betrayals, disappointments, and atrocities behind it. With the same panoramic vision, mythic sensibility, and stylistic daring that he brought to the previous novels in the Seven Dreams series-hailed upon its inception as "the most important literary project of the '90s" (The Washington Post)-Vollmann continues his hugely original fictional history of the clash of Native Americans and Europeans in the New World. In reconstructing America's past as tragedy, nightmare, and bloody spectacle, Vollmann does nothing less than reinvent the American novel.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0142001503/?tag=2022091-20
(The time is the tenth century A.D. The newcomers are a pr...)
The time is the tenth century A.D. The newcomers are a proud and bloody-minded people whose kings once changed themselves into wolves. The Norse have advanced as implacably as a glacier from Iceland to the wastes of Greenland ?and from there to the place they call ?Vinland the Good.? The natives are a bronze-skinned race who have not yet discovered iron and still see themselves as part of nature. As William T. Vollmann tells the converging stories of these two peoples?and of the Norsewomen Freydis and Gudrid, whose venomous rivalry brings frost into paradise?he creates a tour-de-force of ?speculative history,? a vivid amalgam of Icelandic saga, Inuit creation myth, and contemporary travel writing that yields a new an utterly original vision of our continent and its past.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670832391/?tag=2022091-20
Vollmann, William Tanner was born on July 28, 1959 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Attended, Deep Springs College, California. Bachelor in Comparative Literature, summa cum laude, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Regular contributor New York Times Book Review. Freelance journalist Harper's, Playboy, Conjunctions, Spin Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, Gear, Granta, others.
(From the acclaimed author of The Rainbow Stories, The Ice...)
( Twenty-three years in the making, Rising Up and Rising...)
( Butterfly Stories follows a dizzying cradle-to-grave hu...)
(Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and the Revolutions of ...)
(In the jungles of South America, on the ice fields of Ala...)
(Never before available in paperback and all but invisible...)
(Arelentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivoc...)
( Arelentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequiv...)
(The man and the idea that created modern science, as seen...)
(With the same panoramic vision and mythic sensibility he ...)
(From a writer who has won comparison with Thomas Pynchon ...)
(In Argall, the newest novel in his Seven Dreams series, W...)
(This stunning new collection of stories confirms William ...)
( That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William...)
(In this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann ...)
(William Vollmann's fourth published book.)
(The time is the tenth century A.D. The newcomers are a pr...)
(Book by William T. Vollmann)
Married; 1 child.