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freewaygods's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The Sixth Dream is a further experiment in Vollmann’s blending of historical fact and fiction, narrative and autobiography, all melted and frozen together in an Arctic hallucination in a haze of rifle-smoke.
The way that Vollmann weaves his stand-in, Captain Subzero, with the historical Sir John Franklin together is as fascinating as it is skillful. And the way that the novel is structured, framed as it is with the more recent experience of the indigenous peoples in modern Canada (most notably the establishment of Resolute and the forced relocation to Grise Fiord), works to cast the Franklin narrative in a light that reveals it as absurd as Franklin’s soul-twin Captain Subzero is— vainglorious Europeans continually making poor decisions resulting in their deaths. And this is as biting as the ice-winds that ripped across the tundra, because those Europeans and Canadians who make of the Franklin expedition a tragedy rather than farce are the very ones who at best ignore or at worst did and continue to orchestrate the destruction of the indigenous peoples on this continent, particularly those in the areas the novel is concerned with.
I also think the shorter length, in comparison to Fathers and Crows, did a service to The Rifles; it’s exactly as long as it needs to be, with no seal-fat to keep it warm. All in all, the Sixth Dream shows the continued maturation of Vollmann as a writer, as he continues to pioneer his own unparalleled and unique style.
The way that Vollmann weaves his stand-in, Captain Subzero, with the historical Sir John Franklin together is as fascinating as it is skillful. And the way that the novel is structured, framed as it is with the more recent experience of the indigenous peoples in modern Canada (most notably the establishment of Resolute and the forced relocation to Grise Fiord), works to cast the Franklin narrative in a light that reveals it as absurd as Franklin’s soul-twin Captain Subzero is— vainglorious Europeans continually making poor decisions resulting in their deaths. And this is as biting as the ice-winds that ripped across the tundra, because those Europeans and Canadians who make of the Franklin expedition a tragedy rather than farce are the very ones who at best ignore or at worst did and continue to orchestrate the destruction of the indigenous peoples on this continent, particularly those in the areas the novel is concerned with.
I also think the shorter length, in comparison to Fathers and Crows, did a service to The Rifles; it’s exactly as long as it needs to be, with no seal-fat to keep it warm. All in all, the Sixth Dream shows the continued maturation of Vollmann as a writer, as he continues to pioneer his own unparalleled and unique style.
pocket_mouse's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
delore's review against another edition
5.0
I picked this up expecting a short, interesting read that I could essentially breeze through, but it wasn't long before I realised that this was not that kind of book. Wall-to-wall with dense, poetic language and a cast of characters seeming to transform into each other and across historical periods between sentences - the omnipresent chill of this novel struck me as seemingly neverending.
At first, I resented the book for its difficulty. I found the construction of the Franklin/Subzero/I/You protagonist deliberately difficult and not clearly established. The density (i.e. lack of paragraphing) of the text was difficult to swallow; often finding myself zoning out multiple times before making it to the bottom of a single page.
But the thing that kept bringing me back to the book was Vollmann's endless literary inventiveness and the power of the ideas he evoked.
Not too far in, I fortuitously stumbled across an interview with the American broadcaster Michael Silverblatt, where he states:
"The art (as opposed to the technology) of reading requires that you develop a beautiful tolerance for incomprehension. The greatest books are the books that you come to understand more deeply with time, with age, with rereading."
For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, after this point, I really started to pay close attention to the language - using a bookmark, or sometimes even a finger, to focus on each line (and also partly to conceal the daunting volume of those wall-to-wall paragraphs beneath).
Upon doing this, the book became strangely comprehensible.
The once confusing duality of the protagonist(s) revealed itself as a meditation on vicariousness: how the authors attempt to retrace the footsteps of these historical figures (in an attempt to more authentically retell their stories) inadvertently reincarnated them through his own experiences. The poetry of the language went from being inscrutable to transporting - feeling the chill and disorientation of the characters from well beyond the other side of the page.
My favourite section - and perhaps the lynchpin of the novel - was Subzero's experiences in Isachsen: a fraught and nightmarish retelling of the author's own near-death week spent bunkered down on the barren, completely uninhabited island, where the threat of a bead of sweat can mean the difference between life and death. I would argue that this is the only truly 'page-turning' section of the book, but I think it comes at a time when it is both quite rewarding and yet at the same time, quite offputting (given the extreme discomfort and paranoia that it elicits in the reader); suggesting that there is no real escape from Vollmann's invocation of the Arctic wasteland.
'The Rifles' is by no means a straightforward piece of historical fiction -- the language is dense, the landscapes are icy and the characters difficult. But I think this is Vollmann at his most evocative, not to mention his most challenging, and I think it is what he asks from the reader throughout the experience of reading this book that is what makes it so special.
At first, I resented the book for its difficulty. I found the construction of the Franklin/Subzero/I/You protagonist deliberately difficult and not clearly established. The density (i.e. lack of paragraphing) of the text was difficult to swallow; often finding myself zoning out multiple times before making it to the bottom of a single page.
But the thing that kept bringing me back to the book was Vollmann's endless literary inventiveness and the power of the ideas he evoked.
Not too far in, I fortuitously stumbled across an interview with the American broadcaster Michael Silverblatt, where he states:
"The art (as opposed to the technology) of reading requires that you develop a beautiful tolerance for incomprehension. The greatest books are the books that you come to understand more deeply with time, with age, with rereading."
For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, after this point, I really started to pay close attention to the language - using a bookmark, or sometimes even a finger, to focus on each line (and also partly to conceal the daunting volume of those wall-to-wall paragraphs beneath).
Upon doing this, the book became strangely comprehensible.
The once confusing duality of the protagonist(s) revealed itself as a meditation on vicariousness: how the authors attempt to retrace the footsteps of these historical figures (in an attempt to more authentically retell their stories) inadvertently reincarnated them through his own experiences. The poetry of the language went from being inscrutable to transporting - feeling the chill and disorientation of the characters from well beyond the other side of the page.
My favourite section - and perhaps the lynchpin of the novel - was Subzero's experiences in Isachsen: a fraught and nightmarish retelling of the author's own near-death week spent bunkered down on the barren, completely uninhabited island, where the threat of a bead of sweat can mean the difference between life and death. I would argue that this is the only truly 'page-turning' section of the book, but I think it comes at a time when it is both quite rewarding and yet at the same time, quite offputting (given the extreme discomfort and paranoia that it elicits in the reader); suggesting that there is no real escape from Vollmann's invocation of the Arctic wasteland.
'The Rifles' is by no means a straightforward piece of historical fiction -- the language is dense, the landscapes are icy and the characters difficult. But I think this is Vollmann at his most evocative, not to mention his most challenging, and I think it is what he asks from the reader throughout the experience of reading this book that is what makes it so special.
nick_tsreads's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
nealadolph's review against another edition
3.0
William T. Vollmann’s name sounds serious, laden with that extra weight provided by a great germanic name. It’s that second ‘n’, right at the very end, a bit of a surprise for the reader who thinks that one suffices but discovers that they are wrong and that his name, like his identity, would be incomplete without that dual duals in his family name, the one dual in his given name, and that T, like some cross between two great names, the point where they meet, the hint of some great mystery. What could it be the start of? What middle name could fit between these two heavy titles and seem like it deserved to be there?
There are great many mystery’s in Vollmann’s The Rifles as well, and, like his name, this fascinating novel is serious. Perhaps this was the novel that his family tree meant for him to write, or perhaps this is only one of the many novels, written in this style, this approach, that his special name gives him special powers to write in a special way.
It is a story of two very different but alarmingly similar Franklins. The one is Franklin of the famous ill-fated arctic explorer who attempted to find the Northwest Passage and died on the sheets of wintry ice which covered the Canadian Arctic for much of the year in the middle nineteenth century. It is a story of a brave man, to say the least. The second is a second Franklin - a fictional character who lives in New York but has many of the same features as the first. A wife named Jane, an Inuit woman who he falls in love with and attempts to bring home, much to Jane’s disdain. His name is also Subzero for some playful reason, which speaks, in many ways, to the trivial ways in which many people understand life in the Arctic. And there is a third character, the narrator, William the Blind, who may actually be Subzero and who may actually be a separate character, it isn’t easy to tell, but he certainly is a character, even if he is only a narrator.
Vollmann uses these Franklins and his William to look at how little our understanding of the Arctic has changed over the past 150 years, to explore the continuity despite the life-altering changes that have characterized a region that is increasingly globalized, increasingly dependent, increasingly challenged by climate change, increasingly modern, increasingly addicted to rifles and processed foods. It is a complex project, and Vollmann’s goals are plenty, but it is clear by the end that his efforts focus most clearly on the destruction of a massive, sustainable, sophisticated culture by the silly efforts of white men. But this is a big project - one which historians of colonialism have been undertaking for centuries and, with a great deal more fervour, at least four decades. And it is multifaceted in many remarkable ways.
Vollmann recognizes that the heart of the process is irreversible historical change, like the introduction of a thing like The Rifle, or the arrival of boat and it’s people to the land of the Inuit, or the forced relocation of dozens from their ancestral lands to another, more barren, unfamiliar land. Irreversible historical change, it seems. But it isn’t without agency - it is change for a purpose, largely manipulative in nature. Somebody has something to gain. The white man has something to gain and has made it so that the Inuit has everything to lose which they have no already lost. Vollmann seems to understand essential violence in history and the present.
He also understands that the destruction of a culture is much broader in shape than we give it credit, and is a project that requires a good deal of accidental fortune. It is one which is singularly violent to women. It attacks tradition, seeks to alter it benignly and slowly in micro-transactions of human behaviour. It changes land, changes buildings, changes transportation. It alters food stuffs, collapses entire branches of language trees, challenges traditional hierarchies. It makes the environment seem like an enemy and modernity seem like a necessary evil. The destruction of a culture, a process that takes generations and generations, is a project run by many people with many different goals, and at its heart is manipulation and extraction.
Vollmann, though, with his second ‘n’ powering his seriousness, doesn’t always communicate this all that well, and one wonders if he gets caught up in some of his writing techniques a bit more than he gets caught up in how clearly he is communicating these incredibly complex ideas. Of course, I’m not saying that he is a bad writer - quite the opposite. I was struck by how easily so much of this read, how swiftly his often beautiful sentences flowed and caught the imagery of the far north. But for a writer like Vollmann it is clear that technical mastery is just as important as the ideas he is trying to show off. And certainly there is a mastery here of many techniques. Stream of consciousness, multiple consciousness, timeshifts and flows and movements. It is all, appropriately, rather like a dream. It is perhaps the most ambitious novel I’ve read in quite some time.
But there is one element that never quite sat well with me, and that is Reepah. You see, she is a love interest of Subzero - the Inuit woman that she brings down to New York - and she seems like a character rather than a person, just as Subzero at times seems like a character rather than a person. It is interesting. A transition from the idea of the noble savage from the 19th century transferred to the presentation of the addicted First Nations of the 20th. It isn’t flattering to either Vollmann or the Franklins or (for that matter) Reepah, and you never get the sense that you are working with a serious, full body of characters.
Perhaps that is the point, though. Again, this is in a series called Seven Dreams, and maybe the looseness of the characters (the Old Franklin being nothing more than a silly, self-important explore, the New Franklin being nothing more than a silly, self-important bleeding heart) is part of that, filling in with the looseness of the time shifts and the place shifts (the far north all looks the same, no? regardless of when and where and how you are there?) but never giving any more than looseness, vagueness, beautiful haziness in a blizzard of time and ideas and consciousness. And certainly none of these characters are made out to be heroes or villains, just perhaps variations of an innocent. I’ll give Vollmann the benefit of the doubt.
Early into the pages of this book I was thinking that this was the best Canadian novel not written by a Canadian that I’ve read, and ranked up there with many of those which are written by Canadians. I think I still stand with that assessment. It is an ambitious work, and it doesn’t always do what it wants to do, but I think it is worth noting how it does and when it does, and admiring its beauty in between.
And do read the footnotes. There are some alarming revelations in there worth every bit of the effort of pushing forward after the conclusion of the Sixth Dream.
There are great many mystery’s in Vollmann’s The Rifles as well, and, like his name, this fascinating novel is serious. Perhaps this was the novel that his family tree meant for him to write, or perhaps this is only one of the many novels, written in this style, this approach, that his special name gives him special powers to write in a special way.
It is a story of two very different but alarmingly similar Franklins. The one is Franklin of the famous ill-fated arctic explorer who attempted to find the Northwest Passage and died on the sheets of wintry ice which covered the Canadian Arctic for much of the year in the middle nineteenth century. It is a story of a brave man, to say the least. The second is a second Franklin - a fictional character who lives in New York but has many of the same features as the first. A wife named Jane, an Inuit woman who he falls in love with and attempts to bring home, much to Jane’s disdain. His name is also Subzero for some playful reason, which speaks, in many ways, to the trivial ways in which many people understand life in the Arctic. And there is a third character, the narrator, William the Blind, who may actually be Subzero and who may actually be a separate character, it isn’t easy to tell, but he certainly is a character, even if he is only a narrator.
Vollmann uses these Franklins and his William to look at how little our understanding of the Arctic has changed over the past 150 years, to explore the continuity despite the life-altering changes that have characterized a region that is increasingly globalized, increasingly dependent, increasingly challenged by climate change, increasingly modern, increasingly addicted to rifles and processed foods. It is a complex project, and Vollmann’s goals are plenty, but it is clear by the end that his efforts focus most clearly on the destruction of a massive, sustainable, sophisticated culture by the silly efforts of white men. But this is a big project - one which historians of colonialism have been undertaking for centuries and, with a great deal more fervour, at least four decades. And it is multifaceted in many remarkable ways.
Vollmann recognizes that the heart of the process is irreversible historical change, like the introduction of a thing like The Rifle, or the arrival of boat and it’s people to the land of the Inuit, or the forced relocation of dozens from their ancestral lands to another, more barren, unfamiliar land. Irreversible historical change, it seems. But it isn’t without agency - it is change for a purpose, largely manipulative in nature. Somebody has something to gain. The white man has something to gain and has made it so that the Inuit has everything to lose which they have no already lost. Vollmann seems to understand essential violence in history and the present.
He also understands that the destruction of a culture is much broader in shape than we give it credit, and is a project that requires a good deal of accidental fortune. It is one which is singularly violent to women. It attacks tradition, seeks to alter it benignly and slowly in micro-transactions of human behaviour. It changes land, changes buildings, changes transportation. It alters food stuffs, collapses entire branches of language trees, challenges traditional hierarchies. It makes the environment seem like an enemy and modernity seem like a necessary evil. The destruction of a culture, a process that takes generations and generations, is a project run by many people with many different goals, and at its heart is manipulation and extraction.
Vollmann, though, with his second ‘n’ powering his seriousness, doesn’t always communicate this all that well, and one wonders if he gets caught up in some of his writing techniques a bit more than he gets caught up in how clearly he is communicating these incredibly complex ideas. Of course, I’m not saying that he is a bad writer - quite the opposite. I was struck by how easily so much of this read, how swiftly his often beautiful sentences flowed and caught the imagery of the far north. But for a writer like Vollmann it is clear that technical mastery is just as important as the ideas he is trying to show off. And certainly there is a mastery here of many techniques. Stream of consciousness, multiple consciousness, timeshifts and flows and movements. It is all, appropriately, rather like a dream. It is perhaps the most ambitious novel I’ve read in quite some time.
But there is one element that never quite sat well with me, and that is Reepah. You see, she is a love interest of Subzero - the Inuit woman that she brings down to New York - and she seems like a character rather than a person, just as Subzero at times seems like a character rather than a person. It is interesting. A transition from the idea of the noble savage from the 19th century transferred to the presentation of the addicted First Nations of the 20th. It isn’t flattering to either Vollmann or the Franklins or (for that matter) Reepah, and you never get the sense that you are working with a serious, full body of characters.
Perhaps that is the point, though. Again, this is in a series called Seven Dreams, and maybe the looseness of the characters (the Old Franklin being nothing more than a silly, self-important explore, the New Franklin being nothing more than a silly, self-important bleeding heart) is part of that, filling in with the looseness of the time shifts and the place shifts (the far north all looks the same, no? regardless of when and where and how you are there?) but never giving any more than looseness, vagueness, beautiful haziness in a blizzard of time and ideas and consciousness. And certainly none of these characters are made out to be heroes or villains, just perhaps variations of an innocent. I’ll give Vollmann the benefit of the doubt.
Early into the pages of this book I was thinking that this was the best Canadian novel not written by a Canadian that I’ve read, and ranked up there with many of those which are written by Canadians. I think I still stand with that assessment. It is an ambitious work, and it doesn’t always do what it wants to do, but I think it is worth noting how it does and when it does, and admiring its beauty in between.
And do read the footnotes. There are some alarming revelations in there worth every bit of the effort of pushing forward after the conclusion of the Sixth Dream.
levijs's review
3.0
3.5* but not out of apathy or indecisiveness. Quite the opposite!
I don’t really love historical fiction so it is a bit of a wonder that my caprice lured me towards one of the volumes in Vollmann’s Seven Dreams Series.
But alas. I’d been meaning to read Vollmann for a while, and I’ve been collecting as many of his books as is possible, motivated by their scarcity (“rare” is a wholly accurate term if a person is going to limit their search to local bookshelves).
Perhaps contrary to popular opinion, I found the sections on John Franklin quite boring here (again, historical fiction isn’t really my jam, especially when the history is >150ish years ago). This is an odd opinion to have about a book that is advertised as being about John Franklin’s famous journey Northward, I realize. But, lucky for me, this book is just as much about Franklin as it is Vollmann (or some Ship-of-Theseus-like version of Vollmann). And these sections about Vollmann (“Captain Subzero”) are, I think, fantastic. Captivating is, perhaps, the word. Vollmann is overflowing with empathy, and his skill set is perfectly suited for empathizing with captial-O Others. And this, I think, is was what drew me to Vollmann in the first place: his prostitutes and neonazis and freighthoppers and vagrants and runners and hiders and fighters and seekers and all those who have a story but lack a voice. And when Vollmann finally recounts the time “Subzero” almost froze to his death, the reader can’t help but feel that the best stories are the ones that are lived, not told.
Also, the quality of this physical book is very impressive. Vollmann’s drawings (I’m assuming they’re Vollmann’s drawings), the typographic symbols, the lists and glossaries and all the other printed details create the impression (alongside Vollmann’s writing too, of course) of something very thoughtfully made.
I don’t really love historical fiction so it is a bit of a wonder that my caprice lured me towards one of the volumes in Vollmann’s Seven Dreams Series.
But alas. I’d been meaning to read Vollmann for a while, and I’ve been collecting as many of his books as is possible, motivated by their scarcity (“rare” is a wholly accurate term if a person is going to limit their search to local bookshelves).
Perhaps contrary to popular opinion, I found the sections on John Franklin quite boring here (again, historical fiction isn’t really my jam, especially when the history is >150ish years ago). This is an odd opinion to have about a book that is advertised as being about John Franklin’s famous journey Northward, I realize. But, lucky for me, this book is just as much about Franklin as it is Vollmann (or some Ship-of-Theseus-like version of Vollmann). And these sections about Vollmann (“Captain Subzero”) are, I think, fantastic. Captivating is, perhaps, the word. Vollmann is overflowing with empathy, and his skill set is perfectly suited for empathizing with captial-O Others. And this, I think, is was what drew me to Vollmann in the first place: his prostitutes and neonazis and freighthoppers and vagrants and runners and hiders and fighters and seekers and all those who have a story but lack a voice. And when Vollmann finally recounts the time “Subzero” almost froze to his death, the reader can’t help but feel that the best stories are the ones that are lived, not told.
Also, the quality of this physical book is very impressive. Vollmann’s drawings (I’m assuming they’re Vollmann’s drawings), the typographic symbols, the lists and glossaries and all the other printed details create the impression (alongside Vollmann’s writing too, of course) of something very thoughtfully made.
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