Thirteen stories and thirteen epitaphs Book

4.5 stars.

This book is a mixed fare, both in terms of form and content.
Short story is a challenging format-for the writer - to achieve perfection within a limited space, & for the reader (if they be reviewing it)- in that how to convey a coherent sense of a diverse & loosely-connected potpourri.

Thankfully, the number 13 provides a clue- tales of longing, nostalgia, loss, despair- ominous in the sense that existence itself can be, sometimes in a major key as in the S & M tale, The Handcuff Manual, sometimes in a minor key, as in the tales of quiet desperation, Flowers in Your Hair , & My Portraits, My Love, My Wife.
Each story is followed by an Epitaph- as Vollmann writes in the Author's Note:" A good story is only a hearse to carry you to the ending where the epitaph waits."

This collection is bookended by two masterfully done stories- The Ghost of Magnetism, & The Grave of Lost Stories. In the former, the narrator (Vollmann), in the midst of his farewell party in San Francisco, tries imagining a life away from his friends & the "state of grace" i.e. SF- he conjures up all kinds of future scenarios for himself- East/West/North/South- but there's no relief anywhere. The story climaxes in Las Vegas, where the author figure vomits out memories of his friends in a pool full of the "beautiful people". Nostalgia drives this story & a desire to know & be part of the inner lives of people, which is also true of the rest of this collection as most stories here are portraits of people & of moments in their lives.
One can not help but compare & contrast the sharp differences in attitude displayed towards San Francisco by two genius writers- Vollmann & A. Theroux! ( As in Laura Warholic or,The Sexual Intellectual) It's worth pondering.

The Poe story,The Grave of Lost Stories, astonishingly recaptures the cadence & baroque horror of Poe's own prose- a wonderful homage!

It's hard to separate personal from the fictional here as the *Bill* character appears in so many stories & so do his many friends, especially Ken Miller* & Greenglass** -in fact, the book is dedicated to these two. This book features many Vollmann staples- whores, pimps, druggies, hobos, diverse geographical locales, white man chasing Asian woman/Third World prostitute etc.

The story, The Bad Girl, featuring Ken Miller & his Thai prostitute 'wife' Yummy, presents an integral aspect of Vollmann's whore fixation- a white man trying to 'save' a third world prostitute, to give her a better life- ends up slumming it in Bangkok & then you realize what's the big deal here? This guy was earlier slummimg it in the Tenderloin area of SF with his Japanese lover Satoko- he has always been a marginal character- it's the whore who saves him!

You can find out a lot about Vollmann's personal views on friends & life in general as the authorial voice is present through out- it might annoy some readers but I enjoyed it, it's the way DFW reveals himself in his essays. I also got a taste of Vollmann's humour- it's playful, very tongue-in-cheek!

I had an issue though,when he tarrs all the "beautiful people" with the same brush in the Las Vegas projected scenario- not all rich folks are bad, not all poor folks are good. For all he knows, some of those holidayers might've scraped together money for years for that Vegas holiday. What gives him the right to puke in their pool & thus symbolically puke on their very existence?

Still, I enjoyed reading this book. There are prose passages of amazing grace & beauty esp. the pastoral scene in the story called In Omaha & so many lines here & there that make you go wow! I also loved the epigraphs chosen by WTV for each story- such wide learning!

My personal favs- Flowers in Your Hair ( Maybe cause I like wearing flowers in my hair!), In Omaha ( A very personal story), The Ghost of Magnetism, & The Grave of Lost Stories. My fav Epitaphs- Jaguar, a Rajasthani Palace, a Coward's Heart, Kennedy, & a Loved Book.
The only story I didn't like was Tropicana- I couldn't make any sense of it!

How I wish both Bill & Ken had visited Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia & also the red- light areas of Mumbai & Kolkata- who knows what stories & pics those people & places might have inspired!

But now-a-days,Ken Miller makes his living via wedding photography!!!Open All Night

And Billy boy's whoring days safely behind him,he's happy dressing up as a woman!!!The Book of Dolores

As Hemingway famously wrote: "The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

(*)Ken Miller is Bill's photographer buddy from his Tenderloin days.

(**) Greenglass is the controversial guy who was ( wrongly) accused of child pornography by the F.B.I.

* * *
...even the most shining of all peacocks must eventually fold his fantail, exhausted, and let it drag on the wet and dry grass.

So you blew the dust off the sighting mirror of your compass, whose precision lines framed your face as if you were looking at yourself through the reticule of a sniping rifle.

Satoko was a beautiful vampire who said nothing, did nothing, absorbed him like a lake into which he, a stone, fell with scarcely a ripple. There was nothing about her to understand: she was the infinity of emptiness.

In the suburbs of Gun City, "lovely loveless housewives took phenobarbital and lay curled in bed all day like frozen shrimp."

Inside Elaine there were brick walls with arches as in Poe's wine cellar; there the telltale hearts had once beat like trembling liver-coloured water balloons, bulging through the opening like Mishima's intestines when he committed sepukku ; but everything was dry now; Elaine had let the blood out.