Europe Central

This is an important book for Americans to read, if only because it at least opens the possibility that in times of immediate, palpable terror, people--all people--will make moral accommodations in order to survive. Vollman asks us to imagine a world divided in two, bounded on each side by a murderous monster. The citizens of Europe Central can choose to side with Hitler or Stalin. There is no other choice on offer except death. Only D.D. Shostakovich, the nominal hero of the story, is crafty enough to keep the monsters at bay, although in the end even he must succumb to the demands of The Party. As for complaints about the tedious lengths to which Vollman goes to take us through the ins and outs of Shostakovich's love of music (and the unattainable Elena, love of his life) in the face of unbelievable official pressure to conform to the needs of the State, I will say only in his defense that Vollman does his level best to make us feel what it is like to actually be in that mental meat-grinder. Regarding the presentation of the story, I was at first put off by Vollman's coyness about revealing the narrator of each story. But after a while I decided that it was a cautionary exercise for the reader: When reading history, we may not always know who is telling the story, but it is essential to at least ask the question--because when it comes to history, all narrators are unreliable and self-serving. To repeat: As an earlier reviewer points out, this book is essential reading for Americans who want to believe in "good wars" fought for the "right" motives. In a world ruled by bloodthirsty madmen, there is no such thing as "good."

Delighted to see the National Book Award so well awarded! Vollmann has emerged as a major literary force! For those of us who have immersed ourselves in large chunks of RISING UP AND RISING DOWN, EUROPE CENTRAL confirms the perception of an extraordinary mind coupled with remarkable literary skills. What's more, there's a person behind the prose: a person who puts himself in harms way repeatedly, then comes home to write and write and write about it in ways that at once save the rest of us some of the pain and danger of violence and evil, while forcing us to confront the danger and the pain if only vicariously. As impressive as anything else about EUROPE CENTRAL is its innovative form. Vollmann has stretched the genre of the novel in ways hardly touched by so-called "historical novels" or by the non-fiction "novels" of Truman Capote or Norman Mailer, or the "new journalism" of Tom Wolfe or Hunter Thompson. The mixing of fact and fiction here is utterly unique and truly dazzling. The footnotes are essential and informative, yet the prose can roll on altogether without them if one so chooses. One comes away from the experience of reading Vollmann with a renewed sense of the intensity that is possible at the point where acute consciousness meets moral compromise in a world very much out of joint. At a time in America when cook book catechisms pretend to substitute for morality, this plunge into the moral ambiguities and historical crises of mid-20th century Europe can only remind us of what a callow country we occupy. I find it refreshing and inspiring to find a sensibility so steeped in European history and culture, even as Vollmann's voice is so singly American. With the exception of writers like Paul Berman and Tony Judt, very few in this country can communicate, in gripping, non-academic prose, the complexities and historical cross-currents that make European consciousness so much richer--if more troubled--than our own. Tip: before diving into this text that will keep you seated for hours and hours, go out and stock up on lots of Shostakovich. Let his clamorous (a)tonalities play as the theme music for your reading. Try it. You'll love/hate it. Jay Ogilvy, Orinda, California

First, "Europe Central" is not a work for those who need linear narrative structure - "plot" in the conventional sense - unambiguous authorial "voice", and all the trappings of popular, realist fiction. Vollmann writes in a stylistic mode that is simultaneously impressionistic and expressionistic - jarring "realist" imagery juxtaposed against swirling emotions that flow around, between and through the multitude of characterizations (not "characters") that populate the work. Readers unaccustomed to the styles of high modernist and post-modernist fiction such as the works of Thomas Pynchon, Antonio Lobos Antunes or Juan Goytisolo will find themselves struggling continually and probably find the novel impenetrable. For the rest of us, "Europe Central" is a much-needed antidote to the American exceptionalist, "Good War" nostalgia that informs so many American accounts of the 20th century. The corollary of this perspective is to simultaneously anthropomorphize "Europe" and dehumanize "Europeans" in an attempt to contrast them unfavorably to "America" and "Americans". Indeed, this is precisely the discourse that we currently hear so frequently from various corners of our much-benighted country. In this respect, "Europe Central" succeeds in many of the same ways that the recent film "Downfall" succeeds: i.e., by humanizing the protoganists of some of the world's most catastrophic events and forcing the reader / viewer to ask the question, "In similar circumstances would I have felt or acted any differently?" What dismays many readers is precisely the discomfort of having to "read" through the authorial perspective of narrators whose moral positions are not clear-cut, who are compromised by their proximity to or intimate involvement in actions that "history" has labeled attrocities or war crimes. The present response of denial and disbelief of many Americans to U.S. military attrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq underscores this quite strongly. Apart from the politics of "Europe Central" - which should not be construed in knee-jerk fashion as "leftist" or "fascist" (though it is interesting how the work will no doubt attract both epithets) - the novel is stylistically rich and exhibits the kind of virtuosity that is rarely encountered these days, at least in terms of the scope of Vollmann's intent. I personally found the book both very difficult and very exhilirating to read. You may be an experienced reader but the unfamiliarity of the narrative terrain, the twists and turns, the strange background and place names, the polymorphous characterizations, the polysynchronic narrative structure, will all contribute to a challenging read. I strongly recommend the book to readers who like to work hard at their reading. I also recommend it to those, like me, who find the current "America" / "American" realities disorienting and depressing.

Nowhere, not on the cover, not on the front page, or any other page of this book, does it say that EUROPE CENTRAL is a novel, but it is--if not the Great American Novel (and how could it be, since it takes place in Europe, and features only one American character)--the greatest literary novel ever written by an American. Vollman's book is about war, about force and resistance and the ethical calculus where good and evil interlock around a fractal boundary, and most of all about love: the often heart-rending, sometimes adulterous but possibly redeeming affair between each one of us and our ideals. Vollman's writing is a prism that fractures the gray light of moral ambiguity into a rainbow of vibrating, painful to look at, never before seen colors; reading this book is like drowning, then suddenly discovering you can breathe under water. And what sights! What sounds! What horrors, what beauties, what joys! You can survive forty years in the desert on this one book. Vollman calls them "parables", mere "stories," but they contain the greatest historical writing, the greatest war reporting, the greatest music and film criticism, and the most terrifying death scene (which takes place in bed) I've ever come across. Read it and see. Truly see.