I SPEAK, THEREFORE...

"Language is a virus from outer space."
—William S. Burroughs

"The word, although prevalent in our day, has lost its reasoning value, and has value only as an accessory to images. In turn, the word actually evokes images. But it does not evoke the direct images related to my personal experience. Rather, it calls up images from the newspaper or television."
—Jacques Ellul in The Humiliation of the Word

The language of physical therapists is a language of anatomy, a language of movement: musculature, skeletal structure, flexion, extension, rotation.

The language of pastors is a language of theology: atonement, justification, sanctification, repentance, redemption, resurrection, faith, doubt, forgiveness.

The language of barbers is spoken with scissors and hands.

These are languages of specificity. I am a generalist. It is reflected in my education: a bachelor's degree in Liberal Studies. What is a language generalist to do in a world of languages of specificity? If one does not know the vocabulary for a particular language, then how can one speak?

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What about those authors who speak for the dispossessed, neglected, or marginalized? I am thinking of two specific authors. The first is Dave Eggers, who spoke for Valentino Achak Deng in What Is the What? The second is William T. Vollmann, who has spoken for a myriad of different people in both his fiction and nonfiction. I have written previously about What Is the What? and its powerful statement about the human condition. Therefore, I now wish to turn my attention to William T. Vollmann.

Vollmann is getting a lot of attention right now because (1) his most recent nonfiction book, Poor People, has just been published; (2) his last novel, Europe Central, won the National Book Award for fiction; and (3) he is a very prolific writer, well versed in the work of those who proceeded him. This means that the professional envy of many other writers clouds their vision when it concerns the work of Vollmann. This also means that the critics are trying to tear him down to size.

Bookmarks magazine wrote the following about Europe Central [as listed on Amazon.com]:

Most critics praised Vollmann’s twelfth novel, paying homage to his ambitious yet capable grasp of the pivotal political and moral issues of the 20th-century. They hail his dazzling prose, sure command of history, innovation, and copious research, and they proclaim that Europe Central is one of his best (if not the best) works. Reviewers cast an indulgent eye on Europe Central’s shortcomings, though almost all bemoan the ponderous length of the novel and Vollmann’s predilection for hammering his main points ad nauseam. The critics agree: What kept Europe Central from being a tour de force was an editor willing to excise the excess.

The problems with the Bookmarks review are the following:

1. The critics obviously didn't agree. Europe Central won the National Book Award. Enough critics must have thought it a great book to have earned it one of the top awards for literature.
2. Just because a book is "long" doesn't mean that it is, by default, "ponderous." That, however, is one of the most common criticisms of Vollmann: he writes long books. Europe Central was an engrossing, engaging novel that kept me turning the pages. Did it take me a while to get through it? Absolutely. Was it ponderous? Absolutely not. (This is also the charge leveled at other contemporary postmodern authors who tend to tackle philosophical and existential issues—Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo, David Foster Wallace, and Neal Stephenson, for example.
3. Much of Vollmann's work is kaleidoscopic in nature. He doesn't have a "predilection for hammering his main points ad nauseum." He examines the same idea or event from many different angles, with many different voices. The perfect example of this is his collection of short stories The Atlas. Each short story has a "mirror" story in the book, in addition to usually being based upon or echoing a story in one of his other novels or works of nonfiction. He oftentimes creates the same effect in his novels, such as presenting the viewpoints of the indigenous population and the European "invaders" of the New World in the books of the Seven Dreams series.
4. Vollmann writes in the tradition of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. When one is reading Moby Dick, it can feel as though the book contains chapters that are extraneous to the story. That is, until you finish the book. Then the whole of the book is realized. Pieces that perhaps did not seem to fit earlier now do. Most of Vollmann's work, like Moby Dick, is intended to be read again and again. The material also changes as one ages. Life experience affects how one reads a book. I don't read Moby Dick now the same way that I did twenty years ago, and imagine it will also contain richer—and different—meaning for me twenty years from now.

It sickens me that in an MTV, MySpace, YouTube, reality television culture that our attention spans are so short and our tastes so limited that we must be spoonfed. Vollmann does not need an editor to "excise the excess." He needs an intelligent readership. Vollmann, like most serious authors, assumes that his readership is well-versed in literature, history, contemporary politics. Perhaps this is too much to ask of readers today.

I noticed the same problems I found in the Bookmarks review to be present in The New York Times Book Review of Vollmann's Poor People. To be fair, I must admit that I have not yet read this book. I have browsed through it in a bookstore and will be purchasing it soon. From the pieces that I sampled, however, it "feels" and seems to read like many of Vollmann's other works.

In the New York Times review, Vollmann is essentially criticized for the very nature of his book. He is the first to disclose the following, when they apply: (1) he is not an academician; (2) he is oftentimes reliant upon the work of others to use as a "jumping off point," such as Danilo Kis's A Tomb for Boris Davidovich as an inspiration for Europe Central, and, apparently, James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as an inspiration for Poor People—although in this case, to work "against" it; (3) that he oftentimes pays those he interviews for his books, usually because they are extremely poor, and because the money does get them to speak. Vollmann has moved among the poor, prostitutes, fighters in the Bosnian conflict, the mujahadeen fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, drug users, and native peoples. He has done this to write about what it means to be human.

William T. Vollmann has not hidden behind the monitor of his computer screen or the distance that many authors afford themselves. He has lived life, fully and in all its messiness. He has examined and questioned what it means to live that life. He has spoken for those who have no voice, or voices that are silenced or muffled by the powers-that-be. In that sense, he roars like a modern prophet, which is probably why he is really criticized as often and as vociferously as he is.

If you are not up to the challenge of being challenged, of spending a fair amount of time reading and digesting a book, then, by all mean, delve into the fantasy realms created by your Playstation or PC or HDTV. But make sure to leave the William T. Vollmann for me.

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We are worried to speak, for fear that someone else will hear us and mock us. Their laughter paralyzes us.

We are worried to think for ourselves, for fear that we will seem "out of step" with those around us.

Language will break down for each and every one of us. It does. Every moment it fails. It cannot convey our true feelings, our true voice, our true self.

Language spirals inward and collapses. Language spirals outward and scatters.

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