I read the final 200 pages of this book on the morning of January 1st, 2019. I was on a terrace in Lisbon, overlooking the beautiful Tejo river. The sun was shining brightly, as if etching the sentences into my brain. I remember the glare of the sun, the gentle movement of the river, and the soft music playing in the background. It was a moment of sheer force, of impossible choice. Vividly, I remember the anguish and the need that filled my heart. I will keep with me this outrage, this sense of injustice that still lingers. It was a powerful reading experience that will stay with me for a long time.

Wow...just wow.

The centerpiece of this work, or at least the numerical center and the point that truly hooked me in, is the dual novella-length pieces presented back-to-back (or perhaps in a pincer movement from right to left, or however you might envision it). These are about two of the (initially) opposing generals, Vlasov and Paulus. It's important to note that I don't mean to suggest that their forces engage in battle with each other, as they don't really meet on the warpath. Instead, they serve as two fascinating case studies of the absurdity of power and war at the highest levels of military culture and structure, with one being from Russia and the other from Germany. These pieces are entitled 'Breakout' and 'The Last Field-Marshal'.

Prior to this masterful duet, "Europe Central" is already brilliant, yet it feels somewhat disjointed (partly due to its inherent structure) until you reach the center. After this, the novel seems more of a unified whole to me. And with a brief interlude for 'Zoya', Vollmann quickly follows up with 'Clean Hands', which is both devastating and completely unexpected (also unexpected in its intensity of devastation after the short breather between 'The Last Field-Officer' and Gerstein's tale).

In some ways, this work feels like a postmodern "War and Peace", but without much of the Peace aspect, which is also the key point: we can no longer clearly distinguish the two separately. There is a significant focus on a few cultural figures, namely an artist, a documentarian, and a composer, as well as the social figure that the latter two are in love with (the artist being a woman and the other two being men). This book has led me to eye-opening and ear-opening explorations of pre-, during-, and post-WWII poetry, documentary/film/propaganda, musical composition, and painting/etching and the like. These are areas where I had only superficial experience before, but now I have come to appreciate them in much greater depth and dimension.

During my recent obsessive exploration of the epic tomes of world literature, I am realizing more and more that the greatest novels are all historical to some extent. This may not be a groundbreaking epiphany in itself, but in our often overwhelming modern digital age, I am still grateful to be able to learn from past and present masters who took the time and dedicated their lives to expressing their perspectives of the world around them.

Librazo is an outstanding book.

Despite the fact that in some phases it may perhaps overdo it in dealing with certain themes, it remains a significant work.

It presents a comprehensive exploration of various ideas and concepts, leaving a lasting impression on the reader.

The author's ability to handle complex topics with depth and clarity is truly remarkable.

Even though there may be moments when the treatment of certain themes feels a bit excessive, it does not overshadow the overall value and importance of the book.

Librazo stands as a testament to the power of literature to engage, challenge, and inspire.

It is a book that demands to be read and re-read, as each reading reveals new layers of meaning and understanding.

Overall, Librazo is a must-read for anyone interested in thought-provoking and engaging literature.

Here's the review I published early on in the San Francisco Chronicle, well before this won the National Book Award:

Slipping downhill with Joseph and Adolf

A novel with a moral core explores their legacy of evil

Reviewed by Steve Kettmann

Sunday, May 1, 2005

Europe Central

By William T. Vollmann

VIKING; 811 PAGES; $39.95

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It's neither an exaggeration nor an insult to say that William T. Vollmann's "Europe Central" is a remarkable and challenging work. This novel, with its throbbing, twitching, and at times exasperating prose, has the power to push readers to the brink of madness. It is angry and vivid, claustrophobic and consuming, mesmerizing and meandering, all at the same time.

Vollmann's aims are bold. He takes on the task of humanizing two of the most evil figures of the 20th century, Hitler and Stalin. By crashing through the walls of our collective memory, he seeks to reanimate their legacies in a painful and visceral way.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Vollmann's exploration of slippery characters. He shows how and when they slipped from one moral position to another. For example, the character of Kurt Gerstein, an S.S. Obersturmführer who hated the Nazi regime but was still complicit in its crimes, is a complex and fascinating study.

Near the center of the book, Vollmann devotes two sections to a pair of lieutenant-generals, Andrei Vlasov and Friedrich Paulus, who switched sides during World War II. Both men are portrayed as sad, doomed, and sympathetic figures, which is a testament to Vollmann's ability to see the humanity in even the most unlikely of places.

However, the book is not without its flaws. A few of the sections seem to float free, like balloons that have escaped their moorings. But overall, "Europe Central" is a remarkable achievement. It is a symphony of a book, a jarring, haunting, and absurdly ambitious work that returns moral seriousness to American fiction. Here's hoping that it will inspire other writers to follow in Vollmann's footsteps and batter down the mental barriers that prevent us from truly understanding the horrors of the past.

Steve Kettmann lived in Berlin from 1999 to 2003, contributing to The Chronicle and other publications.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...

This article appeared on page B - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle

My initial encounter with Vollmann was through his recent short story collection, Last Stories and Other Stories (2014), which I firmly believe is nothing less than brilliant.

Eagerly, I sought out a copy of Europe Central and delved right in. It is structured in a similar vein to the previous work, being a loosely intertwined fabric of vignettes that connect Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR from the early 1930s until the end of World War II.

For me, Vollmann is a writer whose works I must consume in small portions. His writing is a potent concoction. I find that after reading a vignette, I need to ponder over it for a day or two before gradually progressing.

As a student of World War II history, especially that of the Eastern Front, this novel accurately captures what it meant to be Russian and German during that terrifying era.

I think one needs to have a good knowledge of World War II to fully appreciate this vast and sprawling canvas of horror that Vollmann has painted. An understanding of modern Russian composers and even the poetry of Anna Akhmatova would surely be beneficial as well.

I can clearly see why this novel was a National Book Award winner, as Vollmann makes us grapple with all the reasons why the legacies of both the Second World War and the Cold War continue to shape Europe and the United States and will likely do so for generations to come. Although it is grim and gritty, it is well worth the read.

Impressively ambitious and far-reaching,

this is Vollmann's post-modern summation of a 20th century caught between warring ideologies. Europe Central is the hub that relays and intermingles the messages of fascism and communism into a chattering portrait of the immediate past.

It's filled with characters trapped between unappealing, dangerous moral options. Dimitri Shostakovich and Kurt Gerstein burn especially bright, and the book is gleaming with clever allegory and bits of hyper-vivid dashes of prose.

However, it's also an unwieldy behemoth of a book that wanders and repeats, much like history itself perhaps. And it becomes perhaps slightly less than the collection of all of these little parts.

I can't say I care for pure military history, though Vollmann certainly takes voices and approaches to the material all his own. But some of his mythizations, like Operation Citadel as a Wagnerian epic, are fantastic.

I find myself really loving Shostakovich and his music now. And, as Jesse notes, the obsessive attention to detail is incredible, as seen in the lengthy notes section.

On the other hand, Vollmann's fixations are difficult to fully grasp. I recognize Elena K as the center of goodness here, but it's never clear why. Vollmann and all his characters seem to adore her, but we never see her clearly, only the warping effects of their adoration.

Another cryptic case of a writer who becomes obsessed with a figure at least partly of his own creation perhaps. But anyway, this book is amazing and tiresome. I'm glad to have read it and glad to be done.

Elena Kontantínovskaya es Europa.

Violent storms light up the night in Central Europe. Barbarroja, Leningrad, Stalingrado, Kursk, Cologne or Berlin. The symphonies and quartets of Shostakovich explain Europe. There is fear, which allows one to survive, and there is courage, which is madness and death.

Elena, who is Europe, is bisexual, brunette, the most beautiful. She loves Shostakovich, but also Carmen Roman Lazarevich, or also Vera Ivanova. She is inside (the Komsomol) (the gulag, for 1 year) (the Spanish Civil War), and dies in 1975, the same year as Shostakovich.

There goes Anna Akhmatova. Her husband was assassinated in her place, because it is easier to make someone suffer if they remain alive. Her lovers are her weakness. Only popular admiration and having taken the Seventh Symphony of Shostakovich under her arm from a Leningrad on the verge of being defeated saves her.

There are many more. Fania Kaplan tried to kill Lenin and, after being executed, had to deal with Krupskaya, Lenin's wife. Meanwhile, Käthe Kollwitz saw her art grow thanks to the death of her son in World War I. Since then, her sculptures of a mother with a dead son are the passion of the proletarians of the world. Andrei Vlasov was a hero and a traitor, perhaps because one cannot be one thing without becoming the other. He died when captured by the Germans and then the Soviets executed him at the end of the war. Friedrich Paulus, on the other hand, survived his induced suicide. He was named field marshal to make him commit suicide, and he decided not to die. The Soviets also let him live. What better example of the German defeat? The head of the 6th Army alive in Cologne, after the war, when he should have killed himself after the defeat of Stalingrad.

All the Jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals, the dissidents knew it. All of them were massacred, largely thanks to the diligent work of Kurt Gerstein, who while helping in the extermination of human beings collected information to denounce the facts. The Gerstein Report is as useful as its creator was for his superiors.

What is the music that accompanies all this? Shostakovich has a symphony prepared, which will tell all that must be told. It will tell of the Stalinist repression, the suffering of the Soviet people from the invasion, the hunger, the rockets, the tanks, the flight. He must be careful. Not everything can be told. Sometimes he will tell the truth and just as often, but with a different conviction. The Seventh Symphony is not the same as the Eighth Quartet op 110. It is not the same to be defeated by the Germans as to be subjugated by one's own. If he is forced to join the party it is to ensure that he will never again put his foot out of line, but he does it involuntarily. He hates what allows him to survive. He is deceived in love. Nina, Margarita and Irina. Others like Ustvolskaya or Tatiana Glivenko. All are a tiny part of his love for Elena. Elena is Europe. Elena is loved in her youth, but also when she is married in different marriages. Elena ages at the same time as Shostakovich, and finally both disappear in the year 1975. There you have the music of the 20th century in Central Europe.

This was the moment when he understood that the representation of reality can be more real than reality itself.

This was the moment when he understood that the representation of reality can be more real than reality itself.


There seem to be an astonishing number of books in our world. I must admit that I sometimes suspect that many of them need not have been written. But this one is different. It is an imperfect, weighty, almost brutalist volume. It is a fully realized intention presented to the reader without hesitation or concession. The hauntingly depicted characters are engaged in a struggle with (and attempting to rationalize) the ethical consequences of their actions as their blood-soaked land is swept up by elemental forces far beyond their control – spreading like a cancer, a runaway train unleashed upon history. No amount of pained moralizing, technological expertise, or human magnificence can prevent them all from being overwhelmed. The narrative detaches completely from reality, just as the world – once again defeated by this megalomaniacal death drive – does. Spells of magical realism, impressionistic portraits torn from the past, mingle with fictions, symbols, and private laments to reanimate some half-decayed horror before our very eyes and make it dance. Make it meaningful. The narrators of these tales, the little cybernetic composites who observe, shape, and distort our relationship with the raw essence of the thing, have meta-biographies hidden within the circuitry of each chapter, sometimes emerging from the walls long enough to expose their own vulnerabilities. We bounce from east to west and back again. From wakefulness to the land of dreams. But which is which? It seems to be a protean matter, a question of perspective. I read this over three years ago. The passage of time is terrifying. If you wanted to, you could say that I have no longer read it at all; it is now an entirely separate entity. Much has been lost, much has been distorted, and much has been woven so deeply into the other strands of my being that any attempt to untangle it would become an act of creation in itself. With this in mind, I would like to claim that this book brought autumn to a man imprisoned in purgatorial summer. It brought melancholy – my lifeblood – to a place where it never seems to flow through the system quite right. It drained the world of color. It made me believe again in the raw power of the novel as an artistic medium.

THC #10

I have no choice but to award this incredibly prolix and ambitious novel five stars. It is a remarkable achievement, both a triumph of the will and a people's novel.

However, despite its many virtues - the drama, the beauty, and the erudition - I believe it falls short of being a truly holistic or organic work of art. In other words, this is Vollmann's Inland Empire rather than his Blue Velvet. The novel shines with brilliance and force, inventiveness and raw power, but it is like a scattered shower of shrapnel, the tattered rags of the last century hung out to dry once again. After all, it is history, and history is a mess.

Stephen Moore perhaps sums it up best in his blurb on the back of the book: Europe Central is a historical novel that pits human beings against the forces of history. The novel consists of juxtaposing chapters in groups of two, one usually dealing with Nazi Germany and the other with the Soviet Union. Several chapters focus on the Soviet composer I. Shostakovitch, while most of the others deal with other major players in the conflict between the two nations known as the Eastern front of WWII.

Even within these juxtapositions, there are other juxtapositions, such as the German general who switches sides after being captured at Stalingrad, balanced against a chapter about a Soviet general who also switches sides after being captured. The novel opens with a chapter that places the Communist German artist Kathe Kolwitz in/against her Weimar period in Germany and recounts her trip to the Soviet Union. This serves as a foil for the development of Shostakovitch, the Formalist composer, as a character in Soviet Russia who will, many years later, tour communist East Germany.

This is all thoughtful and thought-provoking material. The writing is forceful yet lyrical, and it flows beautifully throughout. Although the novel is very long, I never found it difficult to read. However, it did lag a bit here and there, allowing me to put it aside more than I would have liked. (The Royal Family, on the other hand, was impossible to put down for more than a few hours at a time.) There is a lot of dramatic and powerful stuff in Europe Central, but it is also, I'm sorry to say, uneven. The great moments come in fits and starts.

The chapters vary in length from 5 to 150 pages, completely destroying any sense of temporal symmetry between them. Part of me wants to suggest limiting the novel to the Shostakovitch character alone, but I think that would have made it more flat and uneventful. Sadly, it was the long chapters about the composer that dragged the most. Since he wasn't a soldier and only endured the prolonged siege of Leningrad (and not even all of it), his sections, while an interesting study of the artist's relationship to both politics and the state, or perhaps I should say the horrific disaster of that relationship, were ultimately less captivating than some of the other characters. So some chapters are better than others, some longer, some shorter. It's an uneasy patchwork if you're expecting a typical symmetrical Renaissance cathedral. What you have here is a postmodern conglomeration of pieces in conflict, exactly like the conflict between individuals and states, individuals and history, fascism and communism, or the C.C.C.P. and the Nazi party. It fits the novel's theme of opposition and conflict without resolution well to be as uneven as it is, but it might not fit so well into our age-old post-Renaissance ideals of symmetry and/or artistic greatness in holistic integrity. (I wouldn't use that criterion myself, as all artistic production is equal parts self-serving and the greatest gift an artist can give the world, but I bet there's more than one review on this page that calls Vollmann self-indulgent here - am I right?)

Two final last-minute observations for further study: the voice of the narrative is also uneven in a few spots. The omniscient voice disappears at times, replaced by an "I" who might be a Russian KGB observer or even the voice of the people or their German counterparts. Just one more example, but it gave me pause. To find a personal reflection suddenly interjected into an otherwise descriptive narration was jarring. But, you know, life is full of being jarred, particularly around the time of WWII.

Ever notice how many of our postmodern epics are about juxtapositions and set in WWII or the Cold War? Gravity's Rainbow, Underworld, this one... And all of them have something of the narrative and formal unevenness I'm highlighting here, without being able to judge it. More like Underworld than Gravity's Rainbow, I guess, so perhaps Pynchon is still infected with modernism, or is a better writer. I don't know, it depends whose side you're on. And the point of Europe Central is that both sides are sheer horror and only a fool would join either one.

This massive tome nearly knocked me out, but I managed to survive, and I'm much better off for it.

My knowledge of the eastern front of World War II has been greatly expanded. It's told from the perspectives of a wide range of people, including musicians, lovers, generals, artists, and government functionaries.

The cast of characters and the constantly shifting narration can be dizzying, but ultimately it's deeply satisfying. Vollman's use of real people (whom I could study independently) and the detailed list of sources helped me wade through these often excessive and complex vignettes.

Not only are the narrators unreliable, but they're often unrecognizable and shape-shift between and sometimes even within sentences. However, the poetry and elliptical repetitions have a strangely sensual effect on the reader.

This was a difficult read late at night as it's taxing on the brain and one must stay alert to appreciate it. But I love learning, and this most unusual "historical" novel, my first by this author, was incredibly rewarding.

I learned a great deal about Soviet leaders, and of course, many artists, notably the composer Shostakovich. The overwhelming and insidious power of the Soviet state over the composer's state of mind was highly effective.

The author doesn't judge; he gets into the various minds of his protagonists and narrators, no matter how petty, profound, or disgusting their ethics may be. Vollman's technical mastery of his subjects is remarkable. He's the kind of guy I'd love to hang around with at parties.

But Vollman might need an editor as some sections were far too long and wore out the reader. However, he's a virtuoso, and maybe his wings can't be clipped. Perhaps I just need to get used to his strange emanations, like finding the thread in the jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman's strange creations.

Likely Vollman is over my head, and it's I who am limited in understanding. So I hope he will forgive me for docking a star in this pathetic review.

I decided to read Europe Central with the intention of discovering what is happening in the realm of experimental fiction nowadays. At first, I chose the Audible edition, which was convenient as I was using points. However, after just one hour, I realized that I needed to see the text. The Russian names, fragments of overheard speech, and impossible events made it necessary. Next, I opted for the iTunes edition, which was even easier to access. But this wasn't quite right either. I wanted to be able to underline, draw arrows, and write exclamation points in the margins - to leave my mark. So, I ordered a used print copy on Amazon. When it arrived, I discovered something about the hardcover edition that wasn't true of the other two. It was not easy to pick up, literally. With eight hundred pages, including fifty pages of footnotes, it was quite daunting. Still, as they say, in for a penny, in for a pound. Or more like five pounds.

William T. Vollmann is an ambitious writer. In Europe Central, he aims to make the defining event of the 20th century, World War II, more accessible. Not easily digestible, as there is no clarity here. Instead, ingestible, meaning the reader takes in the text and responds on a gut level. He focuses on key moments in the lives of a few individuals living in Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany during the war. We get extremely close (inside-the-head close) to artists, generals, spies, scientists, and, of course, the dictators themselves.

There is no traditional plot in this book. When people discuss a story being "plot-driven" or "character-driven," they are referring to the story arc. Here, there is story, but no clear arc. I would argue that the story in each "chapter" is driven by language. The author, not the facts (although there are many historical names, dates, places, etc.), is in control. For example, Elena Konstantinovskaya was actually blond, but the character Elena has long dark hair, which better fits the overall imagery.

There is also no sequential order. The "chapters" are paired, with each pair approaching a topic or theme from opposite perspectives. Zoya speaks out before she is hung, while Gerstein records atrocities before he is shot.

Moreover, there are numerous narrators. The first person appears in the text, and the reader has to figure out who is speaking. The narrator can even change in the middle of a chapter, without so much as a new paragraph. We have a Russian omniscient voice, a German omniscient voice, a communications specialist, a rocket science bureaucrat, a secret policeman, a cultural minister, and even Shostakovich (who has multiple chapters) shows up in the first person a few times. And since there are many pairs in this book, I would say that one of the first person narrative voices I hear is the author's double.

In one instance, the narrator is a dutiful communications specialist in a windowless office in Romania. Presumably, he has followed the war since 1938 ("Away flees Chamberlain...") up to a pivotal moment in 1945, through his access to the vibrating wires. Now he enthuses about Germany, now Russia, whoever is in power ("One has to be on the watch..."). But then the voice of the author creeps in. ("The receiver clamps to a mouth and an ear.") The specialist comments in parentheses: "I thought they were mine." The text then moves away from the specialist's purview. I hear the author predicting the future. ("In spite of mass commitment, there were not enough components.") I hear the author asking questions about WWII. ("What set steel in motion?") It is the author, not the Romanian specialist, who is "...preparing to invade the meaning of Europe."

I loved some of the "chapters" (Vollmann refers to them as parables) and disliked a couple. I used the Internet to look up information and learned a great deal. I will definitely read Vollmann again, and this time in hardcover.

A monumental collection of long stories that read like a novel and feature as protagonists the artistic, political, and military figures who, for better or worse, characterized the tragic years from Hitler's rise to power (here called the sleepwalker) until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The language is precise and hallucinated, dreamlike and unrelenting, and greatly resembles the lucid deliriums of Giuseppe Genna.

It is truly worth following Vollmann in his lucid madness. This collection offers a unique perspective on a tumultuous period in history. The stories are not only engaging but also thought-provoking, making the reader reflect on the actions and decisions of the characters. The vivid language used by Vollmann brings the events and the people to life, allowing the reader to experience the emotions and the atmosphere of those times. Whether you are a history buff or simply someone who enjoys a good story, this collection is definitely worth checking out.