A Disorienting, Extremely Cynical, Surprisingly Moving Book

This book is truly a remarkable piece of literature. It takes the reader on a journey that is both disorienting and engaging. The story is filled with extremely cynical characters and situations that make you question the nature of humanity. However, despite its cynicism, the book has a surprisingly moving core that will tug at your heartstrings.

Parker and Frank are two of the greatest characters in the book. They are complex, flawed, and yet somehow endearing. Their relationship is one of the highlights of the story, as they navigate the ups and downs of life together. Parker is a tough and street-smart individual, while Frank is more sensitive and idealistic. Their differences make for some interesting dynamics and add depth to the story.

Overall, this book is a must-read for anyone who enjoys thought-provoking and emotionally engaging literature. It will leave you with a lot to think about and a newfound appreciation for the power of storytelling.

Fabulous uber weirdo fiction!

It's about the revolutionaries, and some of them are ants, there's a mysterious electricity god or creature, and also mysterious humans.

This is truly one of the most bizarre things I've ever read.

It's very fun, but you kind of have to approach it in a different way than reading a "normal" book.

You have to really engage your brain.

I don't know, maybe my perception of "normal" has changed now.

I should definitely re-read this.

Interestingly, this book is the main reason I ended up in San Francisco.

It's a long story, but it's all connected to this strange and wonderful piece of fiction.

I can't wait to explore it further and see what new surprises it holds.

It is not certain whether this book is still in print. In most bookstores, you will not be able to find it. I discovered it when I was searching for rare Kazantzakis books during my visit to San Francisco. The characters in this book are either bugs or humans with bug-like characteristics. It is truly strange and interesting. However, it is one of Vollman's works that is less accessible to the general public. The unique concept and the way the characters are depicted make it a fascinating read for those who are interested in something out of the ordinary. Despite its relative obscurity, it holds a certain charm that吸引 readers who are willing to explore the less-traveled paths of literature.

The world we live in is truly a crazy place. If it were a utopia, a work like "You Bright and Risen Angels" would have been impossible to create, let alone conceive. Thank goodness, there are at least ten different wars happening at present.

Vollmann commences his debut novel with a quote from one of the most despised world leaders in history. "If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the shedding of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin." This, of course, is Adolf Hitler.

Like most Post-Modern works, it's almost redundant to say that what follows cannot be explained in 140 characters or less. But it's the truth. And "You Bright and Risen Angels" is even more so than any other book in history (perhaps only "Gravity's Rainbow" or the works of William S. Burroughs can rival it in terms of sheer lunacy). The simplest synopsis would be: Bugs vs. electricity, revolutionaries vs. reactionaries, and Vollmann is free to do whatever he wants at any given moment.

This is a passionate and fevered piece, composed of dreams and nightmares, assembled in increments and sudden explosions by a writer who is as awed by the universe as a child. It's "Don Quixote"-esque in its delusions, and we, the readers, are the dumbfounded Sancho. Essentially, one idiom holds true for Vollmann and his complete mastery of the run-on sentence (and this is a good thing): if the writing is good, the readers will come. This is creative genius unbridled, put to pen without any restraint. Normally, in such circumstances, the creator might be considered completely insane, but here, Vollmann allows his imagination to run wild. It's not to say that Vollmann's prose is as unreadable as many Post-Modern works; rather, it's the ideas and structure that can be challenging. The run-on sentences are fluid and completely legible, with each one being absolutely necessary.

"You Bright and Risen Angels" treats the world like a playground, much like almost every good Post-Modern work does. And it's filled with hilarity. The highs are incredible and occur so frequently that one might need to take a break before continuing. For example, there's the city of lost children between the subway tracks that one of our heroes recalls (the kind of absurd fear that only a child can imagine). Or there's K.U.N.T. (Kuzbu Union for a National Turnaround), which is used as the title for an organization when one of our characters goes door-to-door soliciting donations. It's humorous for obvious reasons, but also because of the situational comedy that unfolds when the character spreading this propaganda isn't well-liked and is constantly a nervous wreck, and the people behind the doors he knocks on just want to have their dinner in peace and quiet. In fact, he is often scared or chased back into the street, especially when the name of the organization is, after all, KUNT. One chapter is simply called "THE SPREAD OF KUZBUISM," followed by four lines that form a quote, and then this: "Meanwhile, Kuzbuism spread." End of chapter. After the revolutionaries (those on the side of the bugs, the closest to this book's protagonists, with their faces blackened into swollen masks of desiccated purpose) engage in a one-sided highway battle with a car full of children and a husband and wife (whom they kill mercilessly because they're rich), they gather the money they can find from their corpses. "Two hundred forty-two dollars Canadian," said Milly, going through the wallet. "Sixty-three dollars," said Susan, counting the haul from the purse. "Excellent," said Bug. He then drove smoothly to the nearest rest area, and they had a picnic lunch. After several pages of horror, there is no brief intermission, but suddenly there is comedic relief. Another favorite moment, although more subtle, is when we follow Newt's apprenticeship under the malevolent Mr. White. In the chapter's doom-laden climax, Vollmann includes a sketch of the students, including Newt, in Mr. White's class. This is a "still" before an exam; the kids look mischievous and excited, with the intention of cheating as soon as Mr. White leaves the room. All is fun and games until Mr. White returns unexpectedly and catches the children running amok and cheating. In the ensuing skirmish, Newt kills (as ordered by the blue globes) the girl he has a crush on, incinerating her to ashes. Then we think back to the picture only a few pages prior, which seemed completely unnecessary at the time, and what does Mr. White say, the father of the girl Newt just killed in cold blood? "Newt, you've got quite a whipping coming to you." This is a clever and absurd way of saying that Mr. White's profits and attempts at world domination come first. Vollmann's world is as absurd as Burgess's in "A Clockwork Orange," but this time around, we feel that just about anything can happen. And soon, we begin to realize that it will.

One might assume from reading the above that Vollmann doesn't know how to craft a page-turning story with actual plot and character development. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The reason why this book succeeds on such an incomprehensible level is because he's able to seamlessly weave the absurd and the heart-touching. There's the vignette of Parker as a child coming home from school and finding a caterpillar on his driveway. He rescues it, takes it inside, feeds it, and happily awaits its transformation into a butterfly. And then: "A week later as he came home the snow was melting. It was getting warm. He saw the hornets stirring out of their nest under the eaves. He went into his room. Inside the jar were brown bits of something and an open cocoon. A butterfly or moth had beaten itself to pieces trying to get out of the jar." What is more vulnerable to the triumphant roar of civilization? A child or a bug? Vollmann wants to convey that both are, for many different reasons. There are echoes of Vollmann's real-life insecurities, the watery depth his characters literally and figuratively plunge into, and his sister who drowned in a swimming pool when he was a child and her sole protector. Then the world opened up, bright with a new kind of pain and absurdity. We are insects too, against progress, because not all progress helps the betterment of humanity. Progress, by definition, means that something of nature must be overcome, and what more than the nation of bugs? Until we're left to feed on each other, that is. "And from then on, if all he had for a weapon was goodness and rightness, he felt a strong sense of fear and powerlessness. Everything he learned was making him more like an insect." Halfway through the book, we learn of the horrors inflicted on the bugs by the humans. One particular chapter graphically details the execution of several beetles, a nightmarish prison holocaust where limbs are ripped from their meaty chitin hides, which sparks the revolt against the oppressors. "While we have life, we have hope. While we have hope, we have courage. While we have courage, we have ingenuity. While we have ingenuity, we have flame-throwers. A state of war now exists between us and the bugs."

This is a novel so full of purpose that every paragraph bubbles and every sentence resonates on some level, if not the intended one. There are allusions to this work in David Foster Wallace's first novel, "The Broom of the System" (not to mention his short stories and "Infinite Jest," which, at times, doesn't seem to have the reader's best interests at heart), but nowhere does it bridge the gap between maniacal obsessive Post-Modernism and humanity itself (it appears that "The Pale King" was going to be his first novel-length attempt at it, but that's another story). But this euphoric first novel does all of that and more. "You Bright and Risen Angels" is not only severely underrated, but it's also a marvel in prose, a work from a maximalist who's not afraid of actually trying to make you feel something. A true rarity.

The twin warheads of Burroughs and Pynchon MIRVed into a single cost-effective weapons-delivery system.

This system was built in the mid-80s, and despite the passage of time, it still holds significance on a 21st century battlefield.

The concept of combining these two warheads into one system was a strategic move to enhance efficiency and reduce costs.

Even though the technology has aged, its capabilities and functionality remain relevant in the modern era.

Bill likely wants us to view this weapons-delivery system as a testament to the enduring nature of certain military technologies.

It shows that even older systems can still have a role to play in contemporary warfare, provided they are properly maintained and adapted to new circumstances.

As we look towards the future of the battlefield, it will be interesting to see how this and other legacy systems continue to evolve and contribute to military operations.

When I was around twelve years old, I constructed "The Conglomeraship" using LEGO blocks. The intention was for it to appear as if it had been assembled from the salvaged and derelict scraps of other ships. It was deliberately made to look ugly, bulky, and crude.

Ever since then, I've had a passion for things that are not so much flawed but rather constructed out of flaws. Flaws are only considered bad in something that aspires to perfection. Take the "Millennium Falcon" for example, it's a "hunk of junk", but that's precisely the charm!

William T. Vollmann's first novel, "You Bright and Risen Angels", has its share of characteristics. It can be described as immature, pretentious, gratuitous, self-indulgent, ridiculous, poorly paced, and out of control. However, it also happens to be wildly entertaining, heart-breaking, hilarious, and genius.

Simply put, the novel is about growing up in small town America. It's a coming of age story, and perhaps the only one to feature an insect war. Vollmann's genius lies in anchoring the battle between insects and electricity in events such as summer camps, schools, colleges, first jobs, breakups and makeups, bullying, hitchhiking, and all the other common experiences of growing up in the suburbs of America. He manages to explore the lives of high school kids through the lens of spies, troop movements, and battles, creating a hilarious take on the heroic task of becoming an adult in the strange world of America.

But that's just one layer of the twisted puzzle that is "You Bright and Risen Angels". The book has two narrators: the author and Big George, both vying for the fate of the characters. This warring narrators concept was reprised by Vollmann in his later masterpiece, "Europe Central". Compared to the artful maturity of "Europe Central", this book seems even more raw and abrasive, constantly going over the top, with an explosion of prose and possibility as more layers pile up.

There are many questions that the book poses. Are the bugs and electricity just metaphorical representations of a computer game? Is the narrator imagining the whole story to deal with the loss of his girlfriend? Is Big George his boss? Is Bug an actual Bug, or just slowly turning into one? What exactly do the Blue Globes want? And so the book roars and rages like a wild guitar solo, being ridiculous, dissonant, absurd, and sometimes going so far over the top that it doubles back on itself.

The book is filled with ideas and conflicting philosophies. The villains, Dr. Dodger and Mr. White, are cartoonish stereotypes of ruthless industrialists, horrific, bumbling, and irredeemably bad. The revolutionaries who oppose them initially seem like clear cut good guys, but when Bug and his gang start murdering kids for fun, we can't be sure that they are entirely admirable either. The confrontation between leftist extremists and right-wing extremists has no winner, and the moral equivalence between Nazism and Stalinism was again revisited by Vollmann in "Europe Central". It adds a dimension of subtlety to what might otherwise seem like a violent video game of a book.

Vollmann throws in plenty of references to Hitler, quotations by Marx and Hegel and Rand, and there are allusions to economics and politics. However, this is in no way a "philosophical" book or a serious work of political ideas. The intellectual layer exists to be parodied and mocked, not explored through subtle nuances. This is a book about doing drugs, getting into gunfights, fighting insects, and scheming against your tyrannical boss. The pure wish-fulfillment fantasy clashes with the philosophical references, and it's this tension that Vollmann exploits for so much energy. You can never predict what the next chapter might bring: a weird descent into hallucinatory political philosophy, or a prison break out. Both are presented with the same verve.

I read "You Bright and Risen Angels" in a little over two weeks. It's a long book, and if read slowly, I think the sarcastic tone, unrelenting violence, and general abrasiveness would become dull. However, when consumed in a quick burst, this explosion of ten-page paragraphs and ridiculous movements is a whole lot of fun. It certainly was for me.

"You Bright and Risen Angels" is a flawed book, but that's part of its charm. It's a personal fantasy, a daydream, and as such, none of the flaws really detracted from my enjoyment. It's like a salvaged wreck of a vehicle, patched and mended and covered in dirt, but it sure made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs!

I read this a few years ago.

It was gloriously unnecessary and just so much fun, fun, fun. Out of all the books that I've read from WTV, this one might have given me the "least" in terms of traditional learning or knowledge acquisition. But isn't that really the most one can hope to get out of such obvious joy and play in the act of creation?

The real magic is in the cloak of invisibility that you wear while reading, not in the residue that might or might not follow you later.

Hey man, we were there! We experienced that moment of pure happiness together. There were the turtles and the beach boys, adding to the overall charm and lightheartedness of the experience.

It's those kinds of memories and feelings that make reading such a wonderful and enriching activity, even when the book itself might not seem to have a profound or life-changing message. Sometimes, just having fun and getting lost in a world of imagination is enough.

Vollmann is, without a doubt, an extremely odd individual. His personality is odd; he has created enough myths around his extreme novels to become something of a meme in the literary world. But more importantly, from a stylistic perspective, he is also odd. The plot of this novel, which involves a war between insects and the forces of electricity, with giant beetles, transcontinental railroads, and sexual shenanigans in an observatory, is eccentric. However, as a postmodern novelist, such hijinks are expected.

What is truly odd about Vollmann is how he writes these novels that appear to be meticulously organized on the surface but are actually haphazard when you read them. In terms of his stylistic preferences and themes, he belongs to the Gaddis/Pynchon/McElroy school, but unlike those authors, who seem to organize their chaos carefully, Vollmann just throws a bunch of ideas together. His novels have elaborate chapter and subchapter headings, repeated motifs, and strategically placed illustrations, but much of the book is sloppily constructed.

The general impression I got from reading this is that Vollmann had no idea how to structure a large tome and never got better at organizing his many ideas. Even his shorter works, like "Whores for Gloria," suffer from this lack of structure. The "narrator-Big George" conflict and the pages of post-adolescent poetry about a girlfriend add little to the narrative.

However, despite all the criticism, this book is still goddamn entertaining when it's not indulging in the painful lost-love story. The story of the insects waging war against the forces of electricity is engaging, and Vollmann can write some beautiful sentences. There are also some truly immersive scenes, like the revolutionary attack on a computer-programming center and the protagonist's memories of summer camp. Vollmann, for all his flaws, can really tell a story, and the fact that he can do so despite the dull moments speaks volumes about his talent or my own tastes. Either way, the good passages outweigh the bad, and when Vollmann gets it right, he's unstoppable.

First, this is my favorite title of any book I know. It has a certain charm that immediately grabs my attention. And then, this book is a serious handful. It presents a unique reading experience with its sections that range from really funny weird thickness to indecipherable, dense, weird thickness.

Like Gravity's Rainbow, I often find myself finishing a page and completely forgetting what the hell I just read. The mile-long sentences in this book truly showcase Vollmann's skills. They are far more complex and elaborate compared to the short story books that followed. When I read those short story books again, most of them seem pretty sophomoric in comparison.

It'll definitely take me a long time to get through this one, but I keep pecking away. I'm determined to understand and appreciate the depth and complexity that this book has to offer. Despite the challenges, I'm intrigued by the unique style and the ideas that Vollmann presents. I believe that with each page I turn, I'm getting closer to uncovering the true essence of this remarkable book.

Impressive for a debut. It shows great potential and talent from the author. However, it should have been more carefully edited. The sentences, unfortunately, aren't beautiful or interesting enough to keep my interest for a full 635 pages. There are times when the prose feels a bit flat and lacking in that special charm that would make the reading experience truly engaging. But on the other hand, the ideas and creativity behind the book are truly impressive. The author has come up with some unique concepts and storylines that have the potential to be developed into something truly remarkable. With a bit more polish and refinement, this debut could have been an absolute masterpiece.

Insanely inventive, this work is also extremely uneven.

It is basically impossible to summarize, as it is nominally a cold-war fable, yet also an absurd, anti-humanist bildungsroman about a human named Bug who sides with actual insects in a war against electrical engineers.

There are amazing sections within it. For instance, the first long chapter on the Society of Daniel is captivating, as is the pool fight and the bar in Oregon. However, by halfway through, it starts to feel more iterative than creative.

I constantly see comparisons to Pynchon, but the prose has a pulpy feel that reminds me of 70s sci-fi. It also reminds me a great deal of Ballard, such as in "The Atrocity Exhibition".

Overall, it is an interesting novel that is really fun at points. To be honest, perhaps there is just a bit too much going on. I do love the table of contents that extends beyond the events of the book, adding an extra layer of intrigue.

Almost all of my favorite books of all time. This is a first novel, which was written after hours in an office. Vollmann demonstrates his dedication and his interest in vision rather than popularity. The way he crafts the story and the characters is truly remarkable. It makes me aspire to write better and strive for a higher level of quality in my own work. His use of language, the vivid descriptions, and the engaging plot all contribute to making this novel a masterpiece. It has had a profound impact on me as a writer and has inspired me to push the boundaries of my own creativity. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who has a passion for reading and writing.