Whores for Gloria

I read an interview with Mr. Vollman, I think a couple years ago, I can't quote directly but he said he thought that prostitutes were very spiritual people. They save marriages, they provide comfort to the loneliest, most desperate among us. In practically the same breath he observed that they spread disease and sometimes rob their johns. That kind of duality is at the heart of much of Vollman's writing. On the surface, Whores for Gloria is one desperate, delusional man, so eager for even the illusion of relatedness that he attempts to recreate Gloria with bits and pieces of other prostitutes. It isn't fully clear if Gloria herself was ever real, but regardless, it is now a quest to fill that void collage style with physical samples, such as hair clippings, as well as emotional artifacts. The most poignant scene may be the protagonist hiring a prostitute, and wanting nothing more than to hear happy childhood memories. The prostitute complies as best she can but, story after story, the narratives veer into disturbing material. The hardest thing for the human to do is to hold opposite opinions about one thing at the same time. The more intelligent and observant one is, the more painfully aware of the absurdity of this task, the more painfully aware of the mental contortions necessary to maintain the illusion of meaning. This is where the magic lies in true artistc genius, such as a Thelonius Monk solo or, in this case, Vollman's writing. I've never read anything that better communicates simultaneous beauty and ugliness. And no better forum than gutter sex, which Vollman renders both repulsive and compelling. And he doesn't do it by being overly clever. He does it through the chaos of brute honesty. Whatever compositional gymnastics go into the writing, the end product is very readable and deceptively simple.

William T. Vollmann, Whores for Gloria (Pantheon, 1991) Published just as Vollmann was beginning to make a name for himself as a critical darling, Whores for Gloria propelled him into the world of underground literature with a fervor rarely seen. What separates the now-towering Vollmann from his flash-in-the-pan contemporaries is that Vollmann's shock-value work actually has some real meat to it. Whores for Gloria is the story of Jimmy, a drunkard who lives in San Francisco's Tenderloin district and pines for Gloria. We have no idea who Gloria really is, and we often get the idea that Jimmy doesn't, either. In an effort to rebuild his memories of Gloria in his mind, Jimmy begins paying the area's hookers to tell him stories of their childhoods, which Jimmy then maps onto himself and Gloria, attempting to make her (or his vision of her) achieve flesh-and-blood status. As the title is likely to convey, Whores for Gloria is not a suitable-for-all-audiences kind of book. However, one isn't going to get the prurient-interest-for-the-sake-of-prurient-interest writing one finds in such authors as Dennis Cooper or Matthew Stokoe; what Vollmann has penned here is a surprisingly subtle mystery novel disguised as a slice-of-life drama so embraced by the other authors mentioned above. The best comparison I can make to this book is to the better novels of Joyce Carol Oates; it seems to me that those who enjoy Oates' take on the disintegration of the psyche will also get a kick out of Vollmann. This one deserves the hype. *** ½

I've read that Vollman is the next great American novelist and you can certainly compare him to Pynchon. I wouldn't go quite so far as that, but he certainly has an evocative, if sometimes difficult to follow prose style, that one will either find very annoying or very gratifying, depending how well you get into his groove. This novel or novella is quite good. Vollman depicts a very gritty, grimy, and sometimes gross Tenderloin district in San Francisco known for it's prostitutes, strip clubs, and other nefarious goings on. The story is about Jimmy, a low life, down and out, alcoholic who is in love with a prostitute named Gloria. The catch is Jimmy is so addled by the end of the novel we never really know whether Gloria is real or a figment of Jimmy's imagination. In some ways Gloria is an amalgamation of a number of street girls that Jimmy congregates with. Whatever the case, the story is compelling - the way watching a train wreck is compelling.

Jimmy spends his social security checks on booze and prostitutes, whose stories become more important than their favors. Minimal, nervous and often funny. What the reader actually see of Jimmy 's life is like a wrinkled piece of saran wrap, stretched over a bowl of something slimey, churning,and threatening to overflow; as, almost against your will, Vollmann's elegant spellbinding prose pulls you closer and closer. Beware --this isn't for everyone. It's impolite, gross, nasty, violent. But author Vollmann,who often writes about prostitutes, is himself a little like the stereotypical "whore with the heart of gold." In his very refusal to turn away from ugliness, he reveals a rare beauty.