Brian, Thanks. Good luck with the 4 volumes. The parts on son Matthew are less transgressive than regressive. I've already taken some heat for reviewing early, but I'm happy that WTV will get a chance to see the review. Let me know what an old WTV hand thinks about Table. Tom
Thanks, Lori. Yes, the Times was generous with the words. Nice links too in the online edition. I've read maybe not even half of Vmann's work, but what I realized too late--and maybe too simple--is that this new one combines two fundamental sides of WTV: the researching, data-gathering obsessive in CIA Dave, the searching, experience-gathering obsessive in son Matthew. WTV says M is the real hero of the novel...but not for me. Matthew would never have written A Table for Fortune. A fear that a hundred years from now the word "book" will be archaic. I kind of wish that paragraph about Trump could have been inserted into the review, but then again maybe it would have diminished my "objectivity" in judging the novel. At least readers of Monsterpieces will know where I stand with my harpoon.
I read this in the NYT's minutes before your posted it here, Tom! Bravo for distilling this Vollmann's monsterpiece into a comprehensible analysis. I'm pleased and surprised that the NYT permitted you so many words, but I'm sure that there was much more you could have/wanted to say. Given that this might be Vollmann's final book, given his illness, how do you think it fits into his oeuvre? And, do you think this novel will be remembered one hundred years from now as "the novel" that best reflects how our political greed and hubris destabilized our own country and the American imposed "world order" that we've ineptly grasped to maintain?
Grateful for your review and preordered the book over a year ago. I’ve been reading Vollmann since the 1990’s and while some of his offerings are a bit too offensive and transgressive overall I see him as one of the most gifted and challenging writers of our lifetime. He and I have written each other over the years and his kindness is evident.
In your review you mentioned other novelists who have tried their hand at the CIA. I still wonder what the second part of Mailer’s “Harlot’s Ghost” would have looked like. The page count may have been well over 2, 000. Mailer’s “to be continued” still hangs in the air…
I don't know that you actually had anything to do with this, but can you share any insight/knowledge you have concerning the Times' choice to publish your review of Vollmann's A Table for Fortune nearly seven weeks before it's available for purchase? As a reader, I find this to be quite aggravating.
... but I greatly enjoyed your review, which only increases my interest in this upcoming publication.
I think it may have something to do with the author's terminal illness. Also maybe the fact that The Baffler jumped the claim with a long review. I know it's unusual. Freelancers don't dictate when their work is published. If you've read my note on Substack, you will know that the novel has been promised and delayed several times. Here's an unlikely but possible benefit: the review will encourage the publisher to actually publish when it says it will in August.
Great write-up, Tom! I just discovered this Substack. I too love 'monsterpieces' although Vollmann has always been on my radar I've never taken one of his books on.
A certain paragraph from your review caught my eye:
"Given the density, extent and frequent obscurity of Vollmann’s data in “A Table for Fortune,” a deadline reviewer who wants to eat and sleep cannot fact-check the author’s material and his 150 pages of sources. But I can say that the narrative, though fragmented, is congruent with Tim Weiner’s two histories of the C.I.A. — “Legacy of Ashes” and, more recently, “The Mission.” It also contains granular facts, as well as affecting scenes, that Weiner doesn’t have in his mere 1,200 pages."
I find the question about factuality interesting. To what degree does a work of fiction need to be "true" and what is the lengthy bibliography doing? Is it supporting the work as a fiction or is it making a separate point?
Thanks. An undergrad prof of mine with your last name made me read both Sister Carrie and American Tragedy in one course. Maybe he got me started on long novels. I was reading PDFs six months ago that did not include the notes or sources. I think Vmann did a lot of research, uncovered a lot of facts, and they give his fiction the feel of history, but it's intercut with obvious fiction and the whole, as I say in the review, is an unreliable narrative that may ask us, if the fiction interests us, to look into facts that may not be widely known. One of the best, most instructive political/historical novels I know is Coover's The Public Burning, which has Uncle Sam as a living character. Notice that is said "congruent," a way to avoid page to page judgments of factuality. Welcome to Monsterpieces. Tom
Brian, Thanks. Good luck with the 4 volumes. The parts on son Matthew are less transgressive than regressive. I've already taken some heat for reviewing early, but I'm happy that WTV will get a chance to see the review. Let me know what an old WTV hand thinks about Table. Tom
Thanks, Lori. Yes, the Times was generous with the words. Nice links too in the online edition. I've read maybe not even half of Vmann's work, but what I realized too late--and maybe too simple--is that this new one combines two fundamental sides of WTV: the researching, data-gathering obsessive in CIA Dave, the searching, experience-gathering obsessive in son Matthew. WTV says M is the real hero of the novel...but not for me. Matthew would never have written A Table for Fortune. A fear that a hundred years from now the word "book" will be archaic. I kind of wish that paragraph about Trump could have been inserted into the review, but then again maybe it would have diminished my "objectivity" in judging the novel. At least readers of Monsterpieces will know where I stand with my harpoon.
I read this in the NYT's minutes before your posted it here, Tom! Bravo for distilling this Vollmann's monsterpiece into a comprehensible analysis. I'm pleased and surprised that the NYT permitted you so many words, but I'm sure that there was much more you could have/wanted to say. Given that this might be Vollmann's final book, given his illness, how do you think it fits into his oeuvre? And, do you think this novel will be remembered one hundred years from now as "the novel" that best reflects how our political greed and hubris destabilized our own country and the American imposed "world order" that we've ineptly grasped to maintain?
Tom
Grateful for your review and preordered the book over a year ago. I’ve been reading Vollmann since the 1990’s and while some of his offerings are a bit too offensive and transgressive overall I see him as one of the most gifted and challenging writers of our lifetime. He and I have written each other over the years and his kindness is evident.
In your review you mentioned other novelists who have tried their hand at the CIA. I still wonder what the second part of Mailer’s “Harlot’s Ghost” would have looked like. The page count may have been well over 2, 000. Mailer’s “to be continued” still hangs in the air…
Peace
Brian Clary
Boston
I don't know that you actually had anything to do with this, but can you share any insight/knowledge you have concerning the Times' choice to publish your review of Vollmann's A Table for Fortune nearly seven weeks before it's available for purchase? As a reader, I find this to be quite aggravating.
... but I greatly enjoyed your review, which only increases my interest in this upcoming publication.
I think it may have something to do with the author's terminal illness. Also maybe the fact that The Baffler jumped the claim with a long review. I know it's unusual. Freelancers don't dictate when their work is published. If you've read my note on Substack, you will know that the novel has been promised and delayed several times. Here's an unlikely but possible benefit: the review will encourage the publisher to actually publish when it says it will in August.
Forgot to say thanks.
Great write-up, Tom! I just discovered this Substack. I too love 'monsterpieces' although Vollmann has always been on my radar I've never taken one of his books on.
A certain paragraph from your review caught my eye:
"Given the density, extent and frequent obscurity of Vollmann’s data in “A Table for Fortune,” a deadline reviewer who wants to eat and sleep cannot fact-check the author’s material and his 150 pages of sources. But I can say that the narrative, though fragmented, is congruent with Tim Weiner’s two histories of the C.I.A. — “Legacy of Ashes” and, more recently, “The Mission.” It also contains granular facts, as well as affecting scenes, that Weiner doesn’t have in his mere 1,200 pages."
I find the question about factuality interesting. To what degree does a work of fiction need to be "true" and what is the lengthy bibliography doing? Is it supporting the work as a fiction or is it making a separate point?
Thanks. An undergrad prof of mine with your last name made me read both Sister Carrie and American Tragedy in one course. Maybe he got me started on long novels. I was reading PDFs six months ago that did not include the notes or sources. I think Vmann did a lot of research, uncovered a lot of facts, and they give his fiction the feel of history, but it's intercut with obvious fiction and the whole, as I say in the review, is an unreliable narrative that may ask us, if the fiction interests us, to look into facts that may not be widely known. One of the best, most instructive political/historical novels I know is Coover's The Public Burning, which has Uncle Sam as a living character. Notice that is said "congruent," a way to avoid page to page judgments of factuality. Welcome to Monsterpieces. Tom