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Coffman, Christopher K., and Daniel Lukes, eds. 2015. William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion. Newark: University of Delaware Press. $90.00 hc. xvi + 366 pp.
In the preface to William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion, Larry McCaffery outlines the "dichotomy" between Vollmann's "devotion to literar y aestheticism" and his "attention to the grim, often horrific social and political realities he continually returns to" (xiv). This dichotomy is highlighted frequently throughout the volume, but there are those who concede that on occasion the writer's attention to the latter can outweigh his devotion to the former: a book by Vollmann may feel more like "a collection of notes toward a study rather than the study itself " (272), as one of the contributors admits of Kissing the Mask (2007). One of the reasons for this is Vollmann's immense output, which runs to roughly a book a year since the early 1990s, several of which are over a thousand pages long. These factors go a long way to explaining why, despite Europe Central (2005) winning the National Book Award, public acknowledgement of Vollmann's work remains muted, and little critical attention has been devoted to it. As the first significant volume on the author, A Critical Companion is a landmark in Vollmann scholarship.
As much as the sheer volume of writing that Vollmann produces, it is the range of subject matter in his corpus that startles: historical fiction, sociological surveys, entomological allegories, and artist books constitute just a sampling of the kinds of texts to which Vollmann has turned his hand. Such range ensures that the twenty-five pieces offered in this companion are themselves varied and generally absorbing. The editors have organized this material under four thematic headings: "Engaging People, Space, and Place"; "Engaging Narratives: History, Historiography, Ethics"; "Power,...