William T. Vollmann is the author of ten novels, including Europe Central, which won the National Book Award. He has also written four collections of stories, including The Atlas, which won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a memoir, and six works of nonfiction, including Rising Up and Rising Down and Imperial, both of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His journalism and fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Harpers, Esquire, Granta, and many other publications.
"A bold and strenuous collection . . . Vollmann's gifts include
passion, amplitude, a deep love and knowledge of the underside of
urban life in San Francisco, and a dark and gruesome humor." --The
Washington Post
"Rainbow suggests the extraordinary range and fire of Vollmann's
style. . . . He writes with a fierce and bright-hued sensibility."
--Los Angeles Times
"A domineering display of a rare talent . . . Vollmann is staking
out an intelligent universe worth exploring for thirty more years."
--Chicago Tribune
This stunning collection consists of 13 knockout stories, ranging in length from a few pages to a short novel, corresponding idiosyncratically to the colors of the spectrum. With an intensity and dexterity previously evinced in You Bright and Risen Angels , Vollman shifts mood from the leisurely, almost-detached account of the brutal contemporary San Francisco streetlife of skinheads (``White Knights'') and prostitutes (``Ladies and Red Lights'') to the surreal ``Scintillant Orange,'' in which we meet three biblical martyrs to Babylonian Nabuchadnezzar's fiery furnace. ``Indigo Engineers'' juxtaposes mechanized objects of destruction, built for a sort of performance-art piece, with the just-following-orders mentality of Nazis. A serial killer with a dual personality murders winos with Drano in ``The Blue Yonder,'' which documents the lives of alcoholics living in shelters or parks. Whether recounting a tale of a band of Indian thugs a la Munchausen, laconically noting episodes in personal relationships or dealing with the relentless realism of skinheads and hookers, Vollman writes with deadpan humor, self-assurance and incredible ability. (July)
"A bold and strenuous collection . . . Vollmann's gifts include
passion, amplitude, a deep love and knowledge of the underside of
urban life in San Francisco, and a dark and gruesome humor." --The
Washington Post
"Rainbow suggests the extraordinary range and fire of Vollmann's
style. . . . He writes with a fierce and bright-hued sensibility."
--Los Angeles Times
"A domineering display of a rare talent . . . Vollmann is staking
out an intelligent universe worth exploring for thirty more years."
--Chicago Tribune
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