William T. Vollmann: A Critical Study and Seven Interviews

Talking bugs, electricity, the founding of empires, hobos, Nazis, whores, violence, drugs, murder, secret cabals, Heaven, Hell - William T. Vollmann is a writer of enormous novels that are stuffed with entire worlds of creation and destruction. This first ever book-length critical study traces his career to date with chapters devoted to each of his novels, as well as his short stories and major nonfiction. Vollmann is a writer of obsessions, and this study concentrates on three of them - freedom, redemption, and prostitution - while arguing that the author that dwells on them is worthy of being called one of our greatest living American writers. Also included are seven interviews spanning the years 1991 - 2007 that reinforce the persistence of Vollmann's attraction to these themes.