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The writer William T. Vollmann is many things: a 2005 National Book winner, fiction writer, a journalist, a prolific producer of over 20 books; a war zone observer (he once almost died from a land mine). His books tend to be city-block size with hundreds and thousands of pages. “Maximalist” is often used to describe his hefty books and in-depth prose. Junot Diaz calls him an “American Titan.” He is also works in a rare and some would say dead industry — at least, in the less generous sense, irrelevant industry: literary writer. But literary writing — however you may define that — has a way of containing power like an element: seems pointless until you unlock its power. Or it, the writing, can transform your own world. Help support it, at least.
In 2025, he is wrestling with cancer and according to the WSJ, has little time left — at most three “healthy years left.” That’s what he told the writer Alexander Nazaryan before taking a shot of scotch.
His longtime publisher Viking dropped him after disagreements. As a result, he’s gone with a publisher known for publishing RFK Jr’s. work: Skyhorse Publishing. This was the route Vollmann needed to take to get his latest (and likely last) book published: A TABLE OF FORTUNE. TBF is a four-part novel that captures the last half-century of American war and politics with a focus on the history of the CIA. For literary fans it shouldn’t be missed.
But for anyone who can handle longform reading, you should consider reading Vollmann. You may come out different after you read a Vollmann work. He brings you into a world, dumps history and context into your brain and opens new neural pathways. He makes big sweeping themes intimate and vital as a quivering organ. The rooms in your mind bloom and your heart fumbles with new hardware.
Many may think his 1000+ page works, his pile of words don’t have an audience in the flick-around video economy — and in the hyper-online death of attention screen life many of live (me included), but WSJ points out that there are those who believe an appetite for such anti-trend literary masterworks. As WSJ reports:
His struggles to see “A Table for Fortune” into print were the subject of an 11,000-word article by Alexander Sorondo published in March by the Metropolitan Review, a new literary journal. Despite its length, executive editor Lou Bahet said, it is the second-most-read article the site has published. In her view, that is evidence of Vollmann’s relevance, and of a hunger among many readers for serious writing.
“A lot of publishers and outlets don’t know how to meet the real demand for literary culture that clearly exists,” Bahet told me. “If someone who is regarded as a genius has to wage an epic battle to publish at this stage in his career, then what that spells for the rest of us is really concerning.”
Despite Vollmann’s commercial struggles, Robert L. Caserio, a former English professor at Penn State, sees him as a “possible Nobel Prize winner.” Caserio remembers teaching “The Rifles,” Vollmann’s 400-page novel about the search for the Northwest Passage, part of the “Seven Dreams” series. To research the novel, Vollmann spent two weeks at the North Pole, nearly freezing to death. The result, like all his works, combines immense erudition with old-fashioned storytelling. “The students were enthralled,” Caserio said.
One lesson I pull from Vollmann is that he does the work: he goes places, he reads deeply, and stays curious. He gets the details he needs. He tries to find stories many miss: unhoused on streets, war zones, the poor, the killed in colonial take over in the 1800s.
In other words, he finds the lumber to build the house. He can be viewed as rough: sleeping with prostitutes and doing drugs for research; “I’m pro-gun ownership,” he says. “Pro-suicide. Pro-euthanasia. Pro-abortion. Pro-capital punishment. Pro-death all the way. Yep,” he told one magazine. But I’d rather a writer be in the buzz of living life — gone into the rocky adventure of answering questions with real non-spec answers — than living always behind the desk.
Other works to check out:
Vollmann visiting Ukraine — 15,000 words
THE RIFLES — 400-page fiction about looking for the Northwest passage in 1845. (Accessible)
POOR PEOPLE — Vollmann travels the globe talking to the the poorest communities.
Vollmann serving as editor for 2012 American Best Travel Writing.
A 2018 Sactown profile of Vollmann that offers further insight into his life and work.
Vollmann tackling the death of his daughter and homelessness.
Vollmann is known for not using the internet, but he has in more recent years, at least, hired a research assistant to “Google for him.”
A Reddit thread on where to start in reading Vollmann.
Vollmann’s National Book Winner in EUROPE CENTRAL. From publisher:
A daring literary masterpiece of historical fiction that weaves together the gripping stories of those caught in the web of authoritarian rule.
Through interwoven narratives that paint a portrait of 20th century Germany and the USSR and the monstrous age they defined, Europe Central captures a chorus of voices both real and fictional—a young German who joins the SS to fight its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, and the tumultuous life of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich amidst Stalinist oppression.
In this magnificent work of fiction, acclaimed author William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye on these two authoritarian cultures to render a mesmerizing perspective on human experience during wartime.
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