William T. Vollmann – författare

Vollmann is a relentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivocally adventurous examiner of human existence. He has investigated the causes and symptoms of humanity''s obsession with violence (Rising Up and Rising Down), taken a personal look into the hearts and minds of the world''s poorest inhabitants (Poor People), and now turns his attentions to America itself, to our romanticizing of "freedom" and the ways in which we restrict the very freedoms we profess to admire.

For Riding Toward Everywhere, Vollmann himself takes to the rails. His main accomplice is Steve, a captivating fellow trainhopper who expertly accompanies him through the secretive waters of this particular way of life. Vollmann describes the thrill and terror of lying in a trainyard in the dark, avoiding the flickering flashlights of the railroad bulls; the shockingly, gorgeously wild scenery of the American West as seen from a grainer platform; the complicated considerations involved in trying to hop on and off a moving train. It''s a dangerous, thrilling, evocative examination of this underground lifestyle, and it is, without a doubt, one of Vollmann''s most hauntingly beautiful narratives.

Questioning anything and everything, subjecting both our national romance and our skepticism about hobo life to his finely tuned, analytical eye and the reality of what he actually sees, Vollmann carries on in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn, providing a moving portrait of this strikingly modern vision of the American dream.

“Intrepid journalist and novelist William T. Vollman’s colossal body of work stands unsurpassed for its range, moral imperative, and artistry.”—Booklist

William T. Vollmann, the National Book Award–winning author of Europe Central, offers a charming, evocative, and piercing examination of the ancient Japanese tradition of Noh theatre and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty.  Kissing the Mask is the first major book on Nohby an American writer since the 1916 publication the classic study Pisan Cantos and the Noh by Ezra Pound. But Kissing the Mask is pure Vollman—illustrated with photos by the author with provocative related side-discussions on femininity, transgender, kabuki, pornography, geishas, and more.

“Vollman explores, sometimes sensitively, often provocatively, the emotional, psychological, and physical dimensions of poverty” (Chicago Tribune).

“Few writing today can handle writing about the underclasses of the world like Vollman . . .a writer who writes not only beautifully but also responsibly and morally.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Why are you poor?” That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asked in cities and villages around the globe. The result of Vollmann''s fearless inquiry is a view of poverty unlike any previously offered.

Poor People struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery and quiet resignation, allowing the poor to explain the causes and consequences of their impoverishment in their own cultural, social, and religious terms. With intense compassion and a scrupulously unpatronizing eye, Vollmann invites his readers to recognize in our fellow human beings their full dignity, fallibility, pride, and pain, and the power of their hard-fought resilience.

“Vollman has written a book of enormous power—one that honors the magnitude of each story it records and allows them to say in their own words why life has laid them so low.” —Seattle Times

“He tells stories that need to be told, in ways that compel readers to listen.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Set in locales from Phnom Penh to Sarajevo, Mogadishu to New York, and provocatively combining autobiography with invention, fantasy with reportage, these stories examine poverty, violence, and loss even as they celebrate the beauty of landscape, the thrill of the alien, the infinitely precious pain of love. The Atlas brings to life a fascinating array of human beings: an old Inuit walrus-hunter, urban aborigines in Sydney, a crack-addicted prostitute, and even Vollmann himself.