William T. Vollman. www.booksmith.com; 1644 Haight St., SF. (415) 863-8688. Vollman: a rough-edged beast who has been slouching toward some millennial Bethlehem with a kind of monstrous elegance, utter fearlessness, and voracious appetite that one associates with Melville, Whitman, and Pynchon. (Los Angeles Time Book Review). Other adjectives come to mind: prodigious, talented, unconventional, exciting, imaginative. You name it, he's done it! He won both the National Book Critics Circle award in 2005 for Europe Central(fiction) and Critics' award for his Rising Up and Rising Down (non-fiction, 2004). The latter was an all-out investigation into violence. (I wanted to try and figure out what all the excuses for violence might be and how many of them could be justified)
Fonnie escorted him to the event at the Booksmith Wednesday night to read from his latest non-fiction book: Poor People. Vollman is a writer of great accomplishments: 7 novels, 3 collections of short stories, occasional journalism. The three amigos: two Harvard-trained lawyer/friends of Bill and I met him after at the Persian bar across the street, Aub Zam Zam. His fans, including me, surrounded the icon after the reading.
The new book is POOR PEOPLE. In the tradition of James Agee's LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, the book struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery, and its quiet resignation. It is compassionate, scrupulous, intense, fearless, moving. Vollman allows the poor from diverse countries to speak for themselves. 100 photographs--he shot them-- highlight the narrative. Vollman read from the section on Kazakhstan, after a warm welcome from the overflowing crowd.
Poverty is not about doing anything. It's a state of being, not just a monetary state. I decided to ask people why they were poor and what sort of decisions they make. How poor people amortize what they have -- mostly their bodies and their health. I'm going to read part of chapter on Kazakhstan about TCO (Chevron oil consortium) and it's about oil egotism and its effects on the environment (seals, caviar production) and people its hurting and helping...I am ambivalent. Bottom line: everyone here has a meal thanks to the oil in the region.
QUESTION and ANSWER:
Q: Any feeling about changing the world for good-writing fiction or non-fiction?
A: Non-fiction is probably more valuable for changing world, but writing fiction is probably something I'm better at. Unfortunately. (At the bar afterward, the consensus was that fiction can change people --especially children -- one individual at a time.)
Q: What are the root (economic) cause of poverty:
A: Two aspects. 1. The physical economic situation of person. 2. Protection of person involved...I advocate more aid, better directed, tailored to the individual case. Why people are poor varies from region to region. In Latin America, more class hatred. In Japan, more shame. What to do? LISTEN to poor people, try to make a difference. True COMMUNISM never tried. It it were, maybe could work.
Q: (my question 2-pronged). The Cyrillic alphabet is very difficult -- I studied it -- did you learn to say "kak pozivaete" (how are you) in Russian? Which Russian author did you RE-read to prepare you for your trip?
A: Russian rusty over the years (he went to Cornell; took Russian class at Berkeley). My favorite author is Dostoevsky and fave book: The Idiot, which I've read several times.
Q: What about the gap between rich and poor in America?
A: It's tragic, scary, horrible...This country was founded on idea which quickly became a myth: boundless frontier, endless opportunity for anyone who wanted to work. Of course, religious underpinnings are the Protestant thing: success is sign of favor from God, and if you work hard, God will reward you. If you are poor in this country, tend to feel ashamed of self, and bitter because this supposedly finite opportunity has not been made available to you...we are poor in neighbors and community, don't know our neighbors. People who do have a communitarian spirit can help each other.
Q: What are you working on now? I took a trip last fall retracing 1,000-mile trail taken by Chief Joseph along the Snake River and am continuing my seven dreams(?) book.
Many Vollman-lovers/EBAY sellers bought/brought shopping bags filled with his books . He signed POOR PROPLE, our collectively-owned book and we waited for him to join us at Aub Zam Zam, a gorgeious Persian bar across the street. Does anyone remember the former owner Bruno, who 86'd anyone too fastidious about his/her martini? Those were the days! It was a great night and thanks to the Booksmith for hosting this writer, who lives in Sacramento!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment