Europe Central by William T. Vollmann
By William T. Vollmann
During this tremendous paintings of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR within the 20th century. Assembling a composite portrait of those warring leviathans and the bad age they outlined, the narrative intertwines stories either genuine and fictional—a younger German who joins the SS to show its crimes, generals who collaborate with the enemy for various purposes, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich laboring below Stalinist oppression. via those and different lives, Vollmann bargains a bold and enchanting viewpoint on human activities in the course of wartime.
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Extra resources for Europe Central
Example text
But I guess that’s not the point now, is it? ” The Slip Once she was gone, I downed another cola, then took a hot shower and shaved. I was down to the bottom on just about everything—soap, shampoo, shaving cream. I stepped out of the shower and dried my hair, rubbed on body lotion, cleaned my ears. Then to the kitchen to heat up the last of the coffee. Only to discover: no one sitting at the opposite side of the table. Staring at that chair where no one sat, I felt like a tiny child in a De Chirico painting, left behind all alone in a foreign country.
Such things happened often enough, so how could I think her leaving me was anything out of the ordinary? The long and the short of it was, it was up to her. “The long and short of it is, it’s up to you,” I said. It was a Sunday afternoon, as I dawdled with a pull-ring from a beer can, that she came out with it. Said she wanted a divorce. ” she asked, releasing her words slowly. “No, either way is not fine with me,” I said. ” “If you want to know the truth, I don’t want to leave you,” she said after a moment.
Sex with her with her ears exposed was an experience I’d never known. When it was raining, the smell of the rain came through crystal clear. When birds were singing, their song was a thing of sheer clarity. I’m at a loss for words, but that’s what it was like. ” I once asked her. “Of course not,” she said. ” “A duty. Dry and tasteless, like chewing newsprint. But that’s okay. ” “Then you ought to show them,” I said. ” For sure, there were a lot of things I didn’t understand at all. For instance, the reason why she treated me special.