A review by karp76
Europe Central by William T. Vollmann

4.0

There is a distinct feeling reading these pages. I can see Vollmann. He is offstage in the dark. His writing room is empty and dark, save for a card table. A light shines down over it, illuminating it. There is a typewriter. A stack of pages waiting to be created upon. Some notes, a few books on history. An ashtray. A pack of cigarettes. A bottle of something, half gone. And a dirty juice glass, smudged with fingerprints. Vollmann enters into the light and sits at the table. Adds a sheet to the typewriter. And writes. Just writes. No pauses or breaks. Writes for the allotted time, stops and then leaves, the smokes gone, the booze gone. This is how this book reads. Different parts, different voices framed within one story. There are hints even of Pynchon, the Russian heroes, the strange Germans, half evil, half guilty. With any work this long, it becomes long in the tooth, not ever, really, ready to leave. Yet it must. And yet, we must as well. We look back and remember: there is fact here. Places and people, long and dark years of war, lost loves and stories still not told. "Parables," Vollmann chimes out of the darkness, "embellished here and there with supernatural cobwebs." This is a work of a fiction. And, a good one.