Europe Central: National Book Award Winner

Vollmann’s language is rich and strawberry cream creamy, language that, without too much ado, could be transcribed into T.S. Elliot-style poetry, since his themes hit on damaged humanity, the power of history and fragmentation, and that’s fragmentation as in Dada, as in Hannah Höch and John Heartfield photomontage, a form of art Adolf Hitler especially despised. And with this quote from Mein Kampf “I go the way that Providence dictates, with the assurance of a sleepwalker." the novel repeatedly refers to Hitler as the sleepwalker.I particularly enjoy the author’s vivid image of those old black rotary telephones having ten eyes, “that octopus whose ten round eyes, each inscribed with a number, glare through you at the world.” and then linking the telephone with sleepwalker Hitler: “The sleepwalker in the Reich Chancellery could tell you (not that he would) they’re his eyes, lidless, oval, which imparts to them a monotonously idiotic or hysterical appearance . . . “. It’s that fluid yet deadly interplay of objects with the human, as if Hitler is so omnipresent he is looking at all Nazis under his command as well as the entire population of Europe through the ten eyes of each and every black telephone, 1930s-1940s ubiquitous device par excellence. “The sleepwalker’s all eyes” And in terms of using his eyes, let's not forget Hitler spent many years dedicated to the visual arts, drawing and painting as a near-starving artist in Vienna.Reading the first section ‘Steel in Motion’ I catch initial glimpses of the novel’s stunning historical references, for example: “Barrage balloons swim in the air, finned and fat like children’s renderings” Bulls-eye, WTV! Perfect simile; that’s exactly what those barrage balloons looked like, balloon used by the British to defend against air attacks – the cables holding up the balloon would damage enemy aircraft.“Steel imbued with the sleepwalker’s magic sight, illuminates itself as it comes murdering." Again, 'Europe Central' shares much with the photomontage of artists like Hannah Höch and John Heartfield, a steely emphasis on the intertwining of humans with technologies, for example, another image of the octopus-telephone: “From the anus-mouth behind the dial.” Vollmann soaks the black gadget for all its worth, telephone as the eyes and anus of Hitler. Yet again, another striking quote: “Don’t trust any technicians who assure you that this brain is “neutral” – soon you’ll hear how angrily the receiver jitters in its cradle.” The author picks up on Marshall McLuhan -- the media is the message. It’s as if in Europe Central the gadgets and all that steel exude a life of their own and are manipulating humans as their flesh-and-blood pawns. “Behind the wall, rubberized black tentacles spread across Europe.” Ominous, ominous – 20th century technology as the strangling octopus, throttling, choking and crushing humans as if they are a school of helpless little fish in an ocean of steely, unforgiving tentacles.Then, in the section entitled “The Saviors: A Kabbalistic Tale” The author uses Aristotelian compare and contrast in presenting Fanya Kaplan with N.K.Krupskaya,, two women who saw themselves as good Marxist comrades marching shoulder to shoulder with other likeminded comrades toward the land of final synthesis as in Hegel-turned-on-his-head thesis-antithesis-synthesis. And age 28 special for both Ks, Kaplan and Krupskaya, since Krupskaya at age 28 married Lenin and Kaplan at age 28 shot him. And each woman, as per vintage photos, were stunning as a 20-year-old, but, oh my goodness, did women age quickly back then, especially when sent to prison or Siberia for years of hard labor.Anyway, Vollmann packs in historical facts and lyrical images as if he were stuffing 25 pounds of potatoes into a 10 pound sack, for example, we read the following of the last 4 days in Fanya Kaplan’s life after she shot Lenin: “a huddle of twenty-four grey subterranean hours like orphaned mice; and in the flesh of every hour a swarm of useless moments like ants whose queen has perished; and within each moment an uncountable multitude of instants resembling starpointed syllables shaken out of words . . . “ If you were counting, that’s three similes tightly packed in. I read a Paris Review interview where Vollmann relates how at one time in his life he was writing 16 hours a day. Now that’s a writer on fire! . . . and perhaps on cocaine, speed, or, at least, caffeine.For the narrator of Europe Central, people stand tall like a certain letter of the alphabet, ideas glow like a letter, words hum like a letter, which reminds me of that Georges Perec quote: “Is the aleph that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?” And these Europe Central times are times for men and women of action, as in the action-packed words of Comrade N. V. Krylenko “We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.” Ironically, Comrade Krylenko would himself be shot – I wonder if the masses were impressed.However, nobody could ever doubt Comrade Krylenko was a revolutionary who took his revolution seriously. And equally ironic, through all the revolutionary slaughter, one of N. K. Krepskaya’s very favorite books was Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women.’ And there’s a scene of N. K. Krepskaya meeting Fanya Kaplan in a prison cell that provides a stroke of Latin American-style magical realism: "Then the letters disappeared into the woman's mouth. Krupskaya was speechless. The woman began to glow more and more, until the light from her was as white and pure as a page of the Torah."One of my favorite parts of the novel was all the references to Dimitri Shostakovich and his music. For example: “Best listened to in a windowless room, better than best an airless room – correctly speaking a bunker sealed forever and enwrapped in tree-roots – the Eighth String Quartet of Shostakovich (Opus 110) is the living corpse of music, perfect in its horror. Call it the simultaneous asphyxiation and bleeding of melody.” To gain a keener insight and feeling for this novel, I listened to this and other Shostakovich string quartets repeatedly during my reading. All in all, I great novel, but I must say not a novel exactly to my taste since I found, for one thing, the shifting first-person narrator at a distance from the other characters. I contrast this with another 800 page novel set in Europe and Russia during WWII: “The Kindly Ones” by Jonathan Littell, a novel where the first-person narrator was a member of the Nazi SS. The evil of Littell's novel was so real, so immediate, so powerful, I had to listen to the audiobook while taking my walks and let the evil run down my legs and out the bottom of my feet. Europe Central is an encyclopedic literary monument to an incredible time in 20th century European history but, for me, Vollmann’s novel lacks the power of Littell’s.

William T Vollmann follows in a long and almost uniquely American tradition - including dos Passos, Pynchon, Barth, de Lillo, Gass and Gaddis - of writers of big, slightly impersonal, self-consciously literary novels attempting to document a significant slab of history, usually involving some element of the formal innovations of modernism. Like many of its predecessors, this is not a true novel, but a fantasia on historical themes, veering in and out of biography, history, fiction and musicology.As a work of history and biography, Vollmann's erudition is impressive. This is evident not merely from the text of the book but from the extensive bibliography, which while interesting is unnecessary for a novel unless, as I suspect is the case, Vollmann puts this forward to demonstrate the moral and historiographic case for his book.The novel consists of the dramatisation of the roles of many of the key players in the great ideological struggles of the 1940s, both between Russia and Germany, but also within those countries. In portraying these historical figures as fictional characters - Shostakovich, General Vlasov, Field Marshall Paulus, Kurt Gerstein, Anna Akhmatova and others - Vollmann privileges us with an insight into the dilemmas and ambiguities that characterised their existence under totalitarian regimes in which personal resistance - however seemingly passive - could be fatal.Despite some of the comments from other reviewers, I found the novel a relatively "easy" read - that is, it was engrossing and fascinating. But at the same time it took a long time - several weeks - to read it, not merely because of its size, but because it so often required me to put the book down to reflect on what I had been reading. Many of the scenes are harrowing and disturbing. Many others throw a new light on historical events I had thought I was familiar with, and in that sense the novel is a great success.However, to appreciate this book it is necessary to be familiar with and interested in this period of history, and a working knowledge of the Stalingrad campaign, the music of Shostakovich and the Stalinist period are useful or, as others have noted, the novel may not mean very much to you.Some sections of the novel are more convincing than others. Vollmann's fictional analysis of military detail is more convincing than his musicological knowledge - the discussion of Shostakovich's work, such as the "Leningrad" symphony or the 8th string quartet strike me as the comments of an enthusiastic amateur; someone with technical musical training would describe these works and their gestation in quite different terms. (Compare the way Thomas Mann described Beethoven's last piano sonata in "Doktor Faustus", for example.)As other reviewers have pointed out, the identity of the various perspectives from which the novel is written are not always clear. We do not often know who is speaking - sometimes the character, sometimes an unnamed KGB(?) officer or German equivalent, sometimes an impersonal narrator. Perhaps this is intentional. There is also very little variation in tone between the voices of the different characters.A serious reservation is whether the histories of many of these figures and events are appropriate subject matter for fiction at all. There is an argument along the lines that any fictionalisation of these events and characters somehow diminishes their sense of "reality", especially if the purpose of fiction is, amongst other things, entertainment. I do not think there is (or can ever be) a clear resolution of this issue, and while I believe that nothing is outside the scope of art, I think artists who deal in issues such as this have a much greater responsibility in the way they treat these events. (As examples, the film "Schindler's List" raises difficult questions, while novels such as DM Thomas' "The White Hotel" and Martin Amis' "Time's Arrow" in my opinion clearly cross the line and represent the grossly irresponsible treatment of their subject matter, which ultimately has the effect of trivialising these events.)While I think that Vollmann has treated these subjects responsibly, I am still occasionally troubled by the fictionalisation of some of these events.Overall, I found "Europe Central" to be a compelling book and, genuinely, a great one. Vollmann has tackled an extremely difficult subject, and reproduced the interior lives of these characters effectively, with intelligence and a sense (if not the actuality) of authenticity. The scope of the novel is incredibly ambitious, and the fact that there are some reservations about its complete success does not in any way diminish the undoubted greatness of the novel. Like most masterpieces, it is flawed, but I nevertheless believe that "Europe Central" is a genuine masterpiece. Highly recommended.

I paid a penny for this pretentious rubbish and that was a penny too much. I find it impossible to fathom what people claim to enjoy about this book because hardly any of it makes sense. It’s so bad l started looking around to see what people think of him in the States as he is a big cheese there. There is a terrific amount of fawning by those who think he is some sort of intellectual giant but if this is great literature so is Mickey Spillane and Mickey Mouse too. This is bad, bad, bad. Do not waste your penny.

I'm sadly starting to believe that Vollmann is massively overrated. I thought You Bright and Risen Angels was incredible, but everything I've read since (Europe Central, The Royal Family, and The Atlas) has felt, though occasionally brilliant, overwritten, self-indulgent, pointlessly obscene, and in dire need of a good editor.

This book is superb. I've read countless WW2 fiction and this one easly comes in my top 5. Similar to Life and Fate (in my opinion this book is just a far better read)as it goes between characters in Russia and Germany.I can't praise it enough. If you have any interest in WW2 then I promise this will take pride of place on your bookshelf.

The other reviewers were pretty spot on but this only deserves four stars, for me, as it is too long. The editor should have sorted that out but as it stands it goes on forever.The first half though is stunningly good. The chapters about hitler and paulus especially, the 'sleepwalker' and his downfall are portrayed exellently, entirely convincing and even scary.Read this. Then go and read life and fate by Vassily Grossmann.O.

An engrossing novel. The biography of Shostakovich was interesting but perhaps too strongly fictionalized. Sometimes confusing as to just who is narrating.