Along with David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann is one of the most challenging writers of our time. Prolific and idiosyncratic, his many books have been voluminous, strange and award-winning--Europe Central, a novel about violence in the 20th century, won the National Book Award. In his "To the Reader" preface to this lengthy collection of 32 stories, he tells us this is his "final book." Is it?
Entering into the world of a Vollmann story is like looking at an off-putting, shocking and discomforting photograph by Joel-Peter Witkin; both artists draw heavily upon erotica, dreams, hallucinations, violence and death. The collection is organized geographically--Sarajevo, Trieste, Veracruz, Lillehammer--all places Vollmann lived. The stories have an eerie ethnographic feel and ably capture what he experienced in each city. While these works may deal with ghosts, vampires or monsters, they are rooted in a place and the myths, legends, languages that surround it (many of the stories are heavily footnoted). The narratives themselves are interesting, but what's more intriguing is the philosophical mood each conjures, their meditations on existence and perception behind a "wall of ill." Last Stories might be read as an expansive bildungsroman, 30 years of semiautobiographical visions from an exotic writer's mind.
For readers who have felt a bit intimidated by Vollmann's oeuvre, beginning at the end with this collection of smaller bites might be wise. A story here and a story there and before you know it, you'll be a fan. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher