Went to see William T. Vollman read at the UW Bookstore last night. It was free and Jilly was kind enough to clear her night for me. I was hoping Steve or Marty, fellow fans, would come with, but fatherly duties kept them both away.
I nipped in just in time for the reading which was held upstairs near the fiction section. They had arranged the chairs into rows creating an intimate space perfect for the 40 or so people there. Even got a seat (one benefit of going solo)!
After a flattering introduction by a young woman employee of the bookstore, Vollman lumbered his way to the stage. Perhaps he has a limp, perhaps this is just his walk. An unassuming fellow in a green and black checked flanel shirt, he took the podium eyebrows flinching and eyes blinking behind large, nearly rectangular glasses. His rather large and pear shaped dome was shorn in a spiky grown-out crew cut.
He read two passages from his latest work, Riding Toward Everywhere, a song of the open rails–about his adventures alone and with friends “hopping”, hoboing, riding the freights through the “unexplored west”. They were beautiful, lyrical passages in his particular style with his personal revelations and trials. Freights, because they are so heavy, will go a mile out of there way to avoid even the slightest incline and as a result curve and wind there way across the land often far far away from any roads. His description of travelling across Wyoming in one of the passages was particularly beautiful and it was really wonderful to be brought there from the rainy U-district.
After reading, he took questions. I found this moving. He represents a lot to me I guess even though I don’t know too much about him and I have only read The Rifles by him. I know he is a very rare breed of writer and person. Someone who puts himself in dangerous or undesirable places to examine the life there and the humanity. He said it himself in answer to one question about his Europe Central, that he seeks to put himself in the mind and life of people who he cannot understand in order to understand them better. Here is an adventurer of the highest sort.
And I thought that he might be destroyed or burnt out by his wanderings and deep searchings, but here was an erudite man proud of his work, a generous free-spirit and free-thinking man with very definite goals. A very bright man who sees the world very clearly I think. A man of compassion and spirit and pride. A humble, hard-working, driven man. Inspiring.
To another question, he answered that there is a danger in this country that ‘real thought’ will become diminished or imperiled. The question was a complex one about how artists can affect change on the system or alter the status quo and Vollman fielded it in light of our present political climate where you have a political administration (and perhaps system) which threatens ‘real thought’ insofar as people might be afraid for some reason to speak out, to speak their minds.
The imperative is clear though that we must speak and continue to speak our minds.
