Vollmann describes this novel as a cartoon allegory, and this description indeed seems accurate based on my personal reading experience.

The characters in the novel are vivid, humorous, exaggerated, and strange. They always seem to be resurrected, ready to live another day and reappear in the next episode.

It is also appropriate to describe the novel as an allegory because it seamlessly rhymes with the antagonisms that are so prominent in our history and contemporary world, such as hate and love, electricity and nature, reaction and revolution.

"You Bright and Risen Angels" is a highly imaginative and inventive piece of maximalist American fiction. It has two (or really three) narrators who are constantly at odds with each other and present very different worlds, plot-lines, and ideas.

The layout of the text is clumsy, technical, and deliberately jumbled, making reading the novel feel like navigating an internet blog of interconnected hyperlinks.

Vollmann is a highly intelligent writer, as demonstrated in this debut novel. However, there is no writing genius here. The writing is sharp, funny, and striking, but not breathtaking. Here, I am only referring to sentences, words, and passages.

Vollmann does not seem to have created the necessary tapestry to amaze his readers with beautiful formulations, in the same way that Pynchon and DeLillo of Vollmann's generation have.

In addition, Vollmann's interspersed incel-diaries are somewhat off-putting. I have no idea what he was thinking when he wrote those parts about Clara, but they are rather strange and creepy. I'm not sure if it was Vollmann himself venting his love-life frustrations in the novel or if it was purely a fictional construction.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this novel. It was highly entertaining and challenging, and I think it is a great teaser for what Vollmann might be capable of in the future. I have "Fathers and Crows" and "The Rifles" on my shelf and am planning to read both during the summer.

One of my favorite writers is William T. Vollmann. Despite suffering from carpal tunnel, he manages to publish massive books every other year. He started publishing at a young age, with his first novel, "You Bright and Risen Angels," coming out when he was 28, I believe. I decided to give this one a try.

The book was dense. It took me about three years to finish it, probably more time than it took him to write it. Some young and ambitious writers are more creative, sometimes to a fault, with their neurons firing too hard and a complete lack or disregard for restraint. This book is a supernova of creativity, which the author now seems to denounce a little bit in hindsight ("... it was too easy to go on and on..."). When everything is extrapolated to the extreme (the book is subtitled "A Cartoon"), what's on the page can shrink down to ants (or "angels") that the author, admittedly, just enjoys toying around with. Salmon Rushdie probably feels the same way about his first novel, "Grimus."

Still, the book is interesting as an artifact. At the time of its writing, Vollmann was working as a programmer, young and dissatisfied. After work, he would stay at the office writing this book, famously subsisting on candy bars and hiding from the janitors. He would wander around the parking lot at night, staring at Californian highways. Then he would work on the book some more, sleep at the office, freshen up in the bathroom, and continue with the day job the next morning. This routine repeated for the entire workweek. I don't think he owned a car.

Many of us live in the world of ALT+TAB, lonely, trapped, and forced to hide in our imaginations. This is the food on which the book gorges itself. More interestingly, the seeds of all his future tropes are already rooted there: oppression, violence, insurgencies, history, prostitutes, handguns. Given the flavor of the texts from which the many scattered epigraphs are sourced, one assumes he had also started taking notes and writing "Rising Up and Rising Down" during this period.

One assumes... That doesn't feel quite right. It seems wrong to read fiction as biography, despite what we know now about this author from interviews, puff pieces, "Exit From Eden," and oops, other works of fiction. (Let me make the distinction that this would be different from reading the work as autobiography, or autobiographical, different in the way a psychoanalyst might study a person's speech mannerisms vs. the contents of speech for insight.) "You Bright and Risen Angels" is systemically autobiographical. Beneath the smothering metaphorical layers and locales, the factions, the flips, and the flipness, we feel his general struggle and compassion for the underdog. We feel what he must have gone through in his own life, the sad relationships, the alienation, and the will to some form of power. I could only really read the book as a result of what Vollmann himself must have endured.

Must have... still doesn't feel right. But the book, story-wise, is a mess. The insects vs. electricity metaphor/conceit serves as the template for basically all other minor struggles (someone oppresses, someone gets oppressed). I felt no connection to half the characters (guess which ones). There is a thumbing-the-nose-at-authority that all young people go through after college and which could have invoked non-stop yawning here if not for the author's full-bore creative exuberance and pyrotechnicality. It's kind of unmatched in a first novel, more so than in "V." Still, how many of us want to listen to the volume at 11 for 700 plus pages? Jeez, I sound like an old geezer. What the fuck.

OK, so, knowing what Vollmann was able to accomplish in subsequent novels, especially the honing of his ambition and technique in the "Seven Dreams" volumes so far, "You Bright and Risen Angels" might have more "hands to show." As masterworks themselves are inscrutable, sometimes it is the failures that are more elucidating. Past all of the cartoonish razzle-dazzle, the book at its core is heart-crushingly lonely, repackaged in anger and writerly genius as a sustained screed. We get that. The most interesting parts for me, though, are when he gets off the insects vs. electricity superhighway and drives for a while on the access road. These are the scenes that are more personal, with his surrogate character bemoaning a lost love, another surrogate character canvassing neighborhoods with propaganda, another/many surrogate character(s) suffering in the prisons of capitalism, and another character suffering in actual prison. This last thread, the adventures of Stephen Mole in prison and his subsequent escape, opened my eyes to what Vollmann is capable of. The prison scenes are focused and sustained, and the escape itself, written like the novelization of a Michael Bay action thriller, except even better, paradoxically, blew my mind. Some artists you wonder if they can do "the basics." We know that Picasso the cartoonist could draw incredibly accurate life studies if he wanted to; Pollock, we know, couldn't. By flipping styles and aping genres, something I'd never seen him do before, Vollmann convinces me that he is more Picasso than Pollock.

As if that performance doesn't already make the book worth it, the last sustained scene, with the surrogate character Frank and his dalliance with a street girl, is arguably the bridge into the next plateau of Vollmann's oeuvre. Here the superhighway is abandoned, pretty much for the rest of the novel, and the style morphs into his more now-familiar journalistic natural realism. As Frank wrestles stories out of his new street friend, tries to earn her trust, tries crack for the first time (Vollmann, we know, also... alright dood, STFU), realizes that love can be unrequited, is full of the stuff anyway, and can find redemption among the underbelly, etc. Thus, from here, a major artery opens in the Vollmann corpus - "The Rainbow Stories," "Whores for Gloria," "The Butterfly Stories," "The Royal Family."

"You Bright and Risen Angels" is an amazing documentary of a young artist's raw, protean self/id searching for meaning, not quietly, casting out clouds of sad javelins and finally hooking into important flesh.

You Bright and Risen Angels (1987) is, in many respects, a science fiction novel. It's not the postmodern sci-fi like Vonnegut's or the kind that uses SF imagery as mere material. Instead, it's a cartoonesque, surrealist, and unrestricted science fiction novel in the strictest sense.

I wouldn't have said that before reading Pynchon's Against the Day (2006), a novel that deals with, among many other things, the dreams of the early 20th century about its potential futures, something like the science fiction of the past (Mason & Dixon isn't too far off either).

Obviously, science has always been a concern in American literature, from Poe's ratiocination to Burroughs' mutant bio-technology. But it seems to me now that contemporary fiction that has scientific discourses as its object (such as Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle) tends to revisit the past, reaching back to the primitive and delirious vision that underlies the world as we know it.

This is the case here. From the very beginning, the book opens with an epic "history of electricity," going back to a time when political and electrical power overlapped. It extends to a dystopic world that merges antique atomism with ideological repression and control. The polarity reversals between the revolutionary and reactionary forces are caused by agents provocateurs, unstable electrons, insects (the underdog), and the blue globes, those evil entities of electrical current similar to the interstellar ones generated by electricity according to the ariosophy of Lanz-Leibenfels in Nazi mysticism, and maybe the ancestors of Skip, the anthropomorphized lightning ball in Against the Day.

I've made some general considerations, but a formal analysis of this book can only be exhaustive (metamediatised narration: cartoon, computer games, programming language, war chronicles, charge activation process rather than coming of age stories, etc.). I can understand David Foster Wallace claiming You Bright and Risen Angels to be "too Pynchonian" out of rivalry [T.D. Max, Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story, p. 316], just as you might have found it too Burroughsian when it first came out. But I think that it may be easier to appreciate its own merits now that Vollmann's subsequent efforts have proved to be the result of a singular voice apart from his literary models.

I had a rather mixed experience with this book. On one hand, I did enjoy it to a certain extent, but I also had some significant reservations.

It is an extremely long book, and as the story progresses, it does start to feel a bit disjointed and almost crumble under its own weight. This was a bit of a letdown.

However, the most challenging aspect for me was the highly stylized prose. At times, it was quite hilarious and added a unique charm to the narrative. But after reading the same tone for the same character for the 100th time, it became overly cloying and tiresome.

Another issue that I struggled with was the extreme violence that was present throughout the book. It was not just the violence itself, but also the complete lack of empathy shown by almost every character towards the suffering of others. Some characters were inherently evil or blindly obedient to someone or something else, like Wayne or Mr. White. Others, however, were brought to a point where they chose to abandon what most would consider normal ethical behavior. By the end, they all seemed like emotionless automatons, regardless of their size or significance.

While I was truly impressed by the author's erudition and imagination, I have to admit that this book didn't really have much heart. Nevertheless, I do look forward to reading more of Vollmann's work as I can see a great deal of potential in his writing.

Jesus christ.

I purchased this book on a whim. The reason was that I liked the way the author's name sounded in my head as I attempted to figure out its pronunciation (Vohl-man? Vole-man?). Also, I was drawn to the title and the weight of the book in my hand.

It is subtitled "a cartoon", which is perfect. Not only does it prepare you for the strangeness of the narrative, but it also means you take it at face value and saves you some heartbreak. After all, it may be tragic, but it's only a cartoon. Ignore the blurb; it's useless. The mantis doesn't appear until well over halfway in, and Wayne is a free agent who just kind of hates it. Milly isn't the leader, and the revolutionaries are definitely not intrepid. The plot telescopes back and forth from a history of the US, focusing on the violence of its rich white men, to a childhood in summer camps and swimming pools, to the events the blurb almost manages to describe.

If the most important thing in literature to you is that the writer tells his story clearly, then do not read this book. Vollmann does tell us a story of some kind, about absolute power, futility, and human effort. However, he tells it in a manner filled with digressions, jokes, and sentences that can run on for pages. His language is deceptive. He uses technical, scientific terms with the ease of an expert, but in context, you don't need to know the exact meaning of each word. You just need to know that he's talking about a computer or a caterpillar's organs.

The author (possibly a Vollmann self-insert, possibly a beetle, possibly another character entirely) is in conflict with Big George. Big George talks of himself as if he is the noblest warrior for electric expansion, but in fact, he merely seems to pop up to interfere when the author tries to give his "heroes" a happy ending.

Entirely sympathetic characters are nonexistent in the cartoon, probably because they don't exist in the real world for the most part. The two main villains are unrepentantly gruesome fascist industrialist Randians. But two of their sort of underlings (Wayne and Parker) have so much of their lives and pasts displayed to us that we can't help but feel sorry for them sometimes, even as we see them attempting to control the world. "Our hero" Bug is possibly the least heroic revolutionary leader in fiction. He joins the insect side because he was bullied by Wayne and Parker in his youth and seeks violent revenge, which he gets. But he can be gruesome and petty in his own ways. In one instance, his band of "heroes" shoots out a pair of children's eyes in the course of robbing a car for two wallets.

The cartoon is disgusting, beautiful, and sad because love fails to save anyone who has it and seeks redemption through it. The contents page, listing chapters far in advance of those actually present in the book, provides the only glimmers of hope, but these are as false as the chapters they claim to be inside.

On finishing, the reader can do little but admire Vollmann's balls. This novel was written in a night while he lived in his office and avoided cleaning staff. It presents an awful world where awful things happen and there is no way the good guys can win (one of the first chapters has the author raising his characters from the grave and apologizing for failing them). But god, what prose. It's like having all your nerve endings set off at once. In the space of a few pages, we get the course of an entire relationship, and it's more tragic than most of literature.

Early Vollmann is a sophomore effort that offers rousing good fun.

It is filled with vigorous pretension, remarkable invention, and what seem to be cocktail-napkin doodles by Vollmann himself.

The title page of my copy is autographed "To Whitworth, Dan from Vollmann, William" and is emblazoned with hand-drawn bugs by the author at a memorable reading at SDSU around 1989 - 90.

Interestingly, this work is a lot shorter than most of his novels. However, it is just as dense with ideas as any of his other works.

Despite its shorter length, it manages to pack a punch and engage the reader with its unique blend of elements.

It shows Vollmann's early talent and creativity, and serves as an important piece in his body of work.

Even though it may not have the same heft as some of his later novels, it still holds its own and is well worth reading for those interested in Vollmann's writing.

This is one of those peculiar evolutionary experiments that take place during the transition between major periods.

Just like the Pleistocene megafauna, this novel exists between postmodernism and its as-yet-unnamed successor.

So, similar to giant beavers and ground sloths, Vollmann's book is strange, ungainly, and fated for extinction, yet it also carries certain traits, such as metametafiction and sincerity, that are recognizably contemporary.

This is a story about a war between insects and modernity, which is conveyed throughout by the invention and use of electricity.

The insect allies, the revolutionary Kuzbuites led by Bug, are pitted against their more powerful antagonists, the reactionaries, led by Mr. White and Dr. Dodger.

In broad terms, Bug, a bullied boy, becomes allied with the insects at a young age and eventually grows up to lead the Kuzbuites in service to the Great Beetle, the leader of bugdom.

Meanwhile, Bug's tormentors, especially Wayne and Parker, grow up to serve the seemingly all-powerful White (an infinitely wealthy administrator) and Dodger (the inventor of electricity and everything else) in this war.

The novel doesn't offer the typical battle scenes one might expect in a book "about a war." Instead, it focuses on the conflicting ideologies and political posturing in service of that war.

This means we get a lot of description about the preparations for battle, the clandestine actions taken to gain an advantage in battle, and how the truly powerful manipulate their pawns to ensure victory.

So, on the surface, this is an intricate and extremely dense sci-fi novel with little more to recommend it than its resemblance to a giant beaver.

However, by focusing on the nature of the conflict between insects and modernity and considering that Vollmann started this after a stint with the mujahedeen during the Afghan-Soviet conflict, the true depth of the novel's comment begins to emerge.

First, this is an allegory for the Afghan-Soviet Conflict, where the bugs are like the mujahedeen, both relatively powerless but also undefeatable in a real sense.

It's also about the digitization of the world, which helps explain the business about electricity and "blue globes" and the threat presented by bugs, as they thwart and undermine all tech/computer systems.

More generally, it's about "bugs in systems," meaning the novel is about the endless, anonymous wars waged against flawed systems like economics, government, and the internet.

As with these real-world conflicts, the victor in the novel isn't clear, as these conflicts don't really have conclusions.

Maybe it all just boils down to violence, the violence of progress, the violence of globalization, the violence of economic oppression.

This is seriously challenging fiction that I'm not entirely convinced gives back what it asks of its reader, but there is something here if you're willing to look.

William T. Vollmann's 1987 debut, "You Bright And Risen Angels," is an extraordinarily sprawling and disorderly book.

It is strained to the very breaking point, contracting and collapsing under the weight of its own raw energy, yet with an exuberant force that cannot be ignored.

It is a beautiful mess, a cacophony of digressions that leads the reader on a picaresque allegorical journey similar to "Heart of Darkness."

I have always had a penchant for peculiar oddities and productions.

Just like the shambolic genius of Syd Barrett's solo debut, "The Madcap Laughs," I am drawn to imperfect artefacts that acquire a rare artistry and originality through their flaws.

These originals have the power to reframe their counterparts, their genres, and their mediums.

"You Bright And Risen Angels" is precisely such a thing.

It is a dense, compulsively elaborate work that is simultaneously silly, obscene, funny, tragic, philosophical, poetic, inspired, horrific, and comedic.

It is a cartoon blast of post-modern tale-telling that leaves the reader wondering if it was programmed this way.

There are bugs in the system, indeed.

The book is narrated by "the author," a programmer who creates a system and writes the story into being.

The electrical current surges into the characters, bringing them vividly to life in our imaginations.

We have our hero, Bug, the omnipotent Mr. White and his dubious assistant Dr. Dodger, the narcissistic Wayne, the plant-like Parker, double agent Frank, and scary Big George, among many others.

There is also the Caterpillar Heart, the Electric Gang, and the Blue Globes of Electricity, which are spectral-electrical sphere manifestations that will give you the heebie-jeebies.

Despite its chaotic appearance, there is a plot in this magnificent electrified-insectifide necropolis.

The energy and gusto of Vollmann's writing propel the reader through the story, which is filled with plots, counterplots, and symbols that twist and convulse with electricity.

It is a teetering structure of Post Modern stylings that is more confusing than my review can possibly convey.

Yet, it is gloriously comic and absurdly moving.

The Insect genocide, in particular, broke my heart.

I was surprised to discover that Vollmann had not read "Gravity's Rainbow" prior to writing this book.

"You Bright And Risen Angels" is less esthetic and narcissistic than Pynchon's masterpiece, but as a black comedy rife with digressions and a sprawling cast of madcap laughing oddities, it is extremely similar.

I held off writing a review until I had experienced the first of Vollmann's Seven Dream Series, "The Ice Shirt," so that I could gain a sense of how his writing has evolved.

For this debut work is exciting in its potential, pointing to something truly great.

I believe it is a must-read for Vollmann completists, an early demo, bootlegs, raw data, and program prototypes of a bigger, more sophisticated, and elegant system.

The story goes that Mr Vollman (nn?) wrote this after hours whilst working in an office.

This truly shows the power and potential that can come from work.

If ever there was a case in favor of work, then this is it.

Unlike others I've heard of, who work at their own risk, Mr Vollman seems to have found a way to make the most of his office job.

Perhaps it was the quiet of the after-hours that inspired him, or maybe it was the sense of routine and structure that work provides.

Whatever the reason, his story serves as a reminder that work can be more than just a means to an end.

It can be a source of creativity, inspiration, and even personal growth.

So the next time you find yourself at work, remember Mr Vollman and his story.

Maybe there's a hidden gem of an idea or a project waiting for you to discover, just like there was for him.

I initially wanted to award this a full 5 stars. However, there were an excessive number of parts that were overly absurd for an extended period of time.

To be honest, an overabundance of insanity has a tendency to desensitize the senses. As a result, my attention became far too lackadaisical to fully engage with such a narrative.

This was my very first encounter with Vollmann's work. Nevertheless, it most certainly will not be my last. I am extremely eager and looking forward to exploring his non-cartoon related works.

I believe that there is likely to be a wealth of depth and substance in those other pieces that will capture my interest and attention in a more profound way.

Despite the drawbacks I experienced with this particular work, I remain hopeful and excited about what else Vollmann has to offer in his non-cartoon literary repertoire.

Europe Central was truly astonishing, and as a result, I purchased a whole collection of Vollmann's other books, firmly believing that they would all possess the same level of mastery. However, this particular book, being his first, left me completely disillusioned after only around 70 pages.

There is no doubt that it is an erudite work, and Vollmann clearly has an in-depth knowledge of both science and history. But unfortunately, it is also mean-spirited, misogynistic, and comes across as the self-conscious writing of an aging yet clever teenager.

If I were in the mood for teenage fantasies, I would much rather turn to Cory Doctorow. Thankfully, Europe Central was published 18 years later, redeeming Vollmann in some ways and offering a more engaging and thought-provoking read.

Overall, while this initial work was a disappointment, it does not overshadow the potential and talent that Vollmann has shown in his later works.

I have a great fondness for Vollmann. However, until now, I have deliberately avoided his first novel. It is often characterized as a 600-page tome that delves into the war between insects and electricity. And that description is, to a certain extent, accurate!

Nevertheless, it is actually a highly enjoyable and humorous book to read. At the beginning, it captivates the reader with its unique and imaginative premise. But as one progresses through the pages, it starts to feel a bit tiresome.

Clearly, it is the work of a young, intelligent male author who is eager to showcase all his knowledge and ideas in this first novel. He seems almost desperate to cram in everything he knows, perhaps out of a fear that he might never get published again.

Throughout the book, there are indications that this could potentially be the first volume of a series. Fortunately, Vollmann had the good sense to realize that there were better creative avenues for him to explore, and he moved on to produce other remarkable works.