A review by nealadolph
The Rifles: Volume Six of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes by William T. Vollmann
3.0
William T. Vollmann’s name sounds serious, laden with that extra weight provided by a great germanic name. It’s that second ‘n’, right at the very end, a bit of a surprise for the reader who thinks that one suffices but discovers that they are wrong and that his name, like his identity, would be incomplete without that dual duals in his family name, the one dual in his given name, and that T, like some cross between two great names, the point where they meet, the hint of some great mystery. What could it be the start of? What middle name could fit between these two heavy titles and seem like it deserved to be there?
There are great many mystery’s in Vollmann’s The Rifles as well, and, like his name, this fascinating novel is serious. Perhaps this was the novel that his family tree meant for him to write, or perhaps this is only one of the many novels, written in this style, this approach, that his special name gives him special powers to write in a special way.
It is a story of two very different but alarmingly similar Franklins. The one is Franklin of the famous ill-fated arctic explorer who attempted to find the Northwest Passage and died on the sheets of wintry ice which covered the Canadian Arctic for much of the year in the middle nineteenth century. It is a story of a brave man, to say the least. The second is a second Franklin - a fictional character who lives in New York but has many of the same features as the first. A wife named Jane, an Inuit woman who he falls in love with and attempts to bring home, much to Jane’s disdain. His name is also Subzero for some playful reason, which speaks, in many ways, to the trivial ways in which many people understand life in the Arctic. And there is a third character, the narrator, William the Blind, who may actually be Subzero and who may actually be a separate character, it isn’t easy to tell, but he certainly is a character, even if he is only a narrator.
Vollmann uses these Franklins and his William to look at how little our understanding of the Arctic has changed over the past 150 years, to explore the continuity despite the life-altering changes that have characterized a region that is increasingly globalized, increasingly dependent, increasingly challenged by climate change, increasingly modern, increasingly addicted to rifles and processed foods. It is a complex project, and Vollmann’s goals are plenty, but it is clear by the end that his efforts focus most clearly on the destruction of a massive, sustainable, sophisticated culture by the silly efforts of white men. But this is a big project - one which historians of colonialism have been undertaking for centuries and, with a great deal more fervour, at least four decades. And it is multifaceted in many remarkable ways.
Vollmann recognizes that the heart of the process is irreversible historical change, like the introduction of a thing like The Rifle, or the arrival of boat and it’s people to the land of the Inuit, or the forced relocation of dozens from their ancestral lands to another, more barren, unfamiliar land. Irreversible historical change, it seems. But it isn’t without agency - it is change for a purpose, largely manipulative in nature. Somebody has something to gain. The white man has something to gain and has made it so that the Inuit has everything to lose which they have no already lost. Vollmann seems to understand essential violence in history and the present.
He also understands that the destruction of a culture is much broader in shape than we give it credit, and is a project that requires a good deal of accidental fortune. It is one which is singularly violent to women. It attacks tradition, seeks to alter it benignly and slowly in micro-transactions of human behaviour. It changes land, changes buildings, changes transportation. It alters food stuffs, collapses entire branches of language trees, challenges traditional hierarchies. It makes the environment seem like an enemy and modernity seem like a necessary evil. The destruction of a culture, a process that takes generations and generations, is a project run by many people with many different goals, and at its heart is manipulation and extraction.
Vollmann, though, with his second ‘n’ powering his seriousness, doesn’t always communicate this all that well, and one wonders if he gets caught up in some of his writing techniques a bit more than he gets caught up in how clearly he is communicating these incredibly complex ideas. Of course, I’m not saying that he is a bad writer - quite the opposite. I was struck by how easily so much of this read, how swiftly his often beautiful sentences flowed and caught the imagery of the far north. But for a writer like Vollmann it is clear that technical mastery is just as important as the ideas he is trying to show off. And certainly there is a mastery here of many techniques. Stream of consciousness, multiple consciousness, timeshifts and flows and movements. It is all, appropriately, rather like a dream. It is perhaps the most ambitious novel I’ve read in quite some time.
But there is one element that never quite sat well with me, and that is Reepah. You see, she is a love interest of Subzero - the Inuit woman that she brings down to New York - and she seems like a character rather than a person, just as Subzero at times seems like a character rather than a person. It is interesting. A transition from the idea of the noble savage from the 19th century transferred to the presentation of the addicted First Nations of the 20th. It isn’t flattering to either Vollmann or the Franklins or (for that matter) Reepah, and you never get the sense that you are working with a serious, full body of characters.
Perhaps that is the point, though. Again, this is in a series called Seven Dreams, and maybe the looseness of the characters (the Old Franklin being nothing more than a silly, self-important explore, the New Franklin being nothing more than a silly, self-important bleeding heart) is part of that, filling in with the looseness of the time shifts and the place shifts (the far north all looks the same, no? regardless of when and where and how you are there?) but never giving any more than looseness, vagueness, beautiful haziness in a blizzard of time and ideas and consciousness. And certainly none of these characters are made out to be heroes or villains, just perhaps variations of an innocent. I’ll give Vollmann the benefit of the doubt.
Early into the pages of this book I was thinking that this was the best Canadian novel not written by a Canadian that I’ve read, and ranked up there with many of those which are written by Canadians. I think I still stand with that assessment. It is an ambitious work, and it doesn’t always do what it wants to do, but I think it is worth noting how it does and when it does, and admiring its beauty in between.
And do read the footnotes. There are some alarming revelations in there worth every bit of the effort of pushing forward after the conclusion of the Sixth Dream.
There are great many mystery’s in Vollmann’s The Rifles as well, and, like his name, this fascinating novel is serious. Perhaps this was the novel that his family tree meant for him to write, or perhaps this is only one of the many novels, written in this style, this approach, that his special name gives him special powers to write in a special way.
It is a story of two very different but alarmingly similar Franklins. The one is Franklin of the famous ill-fated arctic explorer who attempted to find the Northwest Passage and died on the sheets of wintry ice which covered the Canadian Arctic for much of the year in the middle nineteenth century. It is a story of a brave man, to say the least. The second is a second Franklin - a fictional character who lives in New York but has many of the same features as the first. A wife named Jane, an Inuit woman who he falls in love with and attempts to bring home, much to Jane’s disdain. His name is also Subzero for some playful reason, which speaks, in many ways, to the trivial ways in which many people understand life in the Arctic. And there is a third character, the narrator, William the Blind, who may actually be Subzero and who may actually be a separate character, it isn’t easy to tell, but he certainly is a character, even if he is only a narrator.
Vollmann uses these Franklins and his William to look at how little our understanding of the Arctic has changed over the past 150 years, to explore the continuity despite the life-altering changes that have characterized a region that is increasingly globalized, increasingly dependent, increasingly challenged by climate change, increasingly modern, increasingly addicted to rifles and processed foods. It is a complex project, and Vollmann’s goals are plenty, but it is clear by the end that his efforts focus most clearly on the destruction of a massive, sustainable, sophisticated culture by the silly efforts of white men. But this is a big project - one which historians of colonialism have been undertaking for centuries and, with a great deal more fervour, at least four decades. And it is multifaceted in many remarkable ways.
Vollmann recognizes that the heart of the process is irreversible historical change, like the introduction of a thing like The Rifle, or the arrival of boat and it’s people to the land of the Inuit, or the forced relocation of dozens from their ancestral lands to another, more barren, unfamiliar land. Irreversible historical change, it seems. But it isn’t without agency - it is change for a purpose, largely manipulative in nature. Somebody has something to gain. The white man has something to gain and has made it so that the Inuit has everything to lose which they have no already lost. Vollmann seems to understand essential violence in history and the present.
He also understands that the destruction of a culture is much broader in shape than we give it credit, and is a project that requires a good deal of accidental fortune. It is one which is singularly violent to women. It attacks tradition, seeks to alter it benignly and slowly in micro-transactions of human behaviour. It changes land, changes buildings, changes transportation. It alters food stuffs, collapses entire branches of language trees, challenges traditional hierarchies. It makes the environment seem like an enemy and modernity seem like a necessary evil. The destruction of a culture, a process that takes generations and generations, is a project run by many people with many different goals, and at its heart is manipulation and extraction.
Vollmann, though, with his second ‘n’ powering his seriousness, doesn’t always communicate this all that well, and one wonders if he gets caught up in some of his writing techniques a bit more than he gets caught up in how clearly he is communicating these incredibly complex ideas. Of course, I’m not saying that he is a bad writer - quite the opposite. I was struck by how easily so much of this read, how swiftly his often beautiful sentences flowed and caught the imagery of the far north. But for a writer like Vollmann it is clear that technical mastery is just as important as the ideas he is trying to show off. And certainly there is a mastery here of many techniques. Stream of consciousness, multiple consciousness, timeshifts and flows and movements. It is all, appropriately, rather like a dream. It is perhaps the most ambitious novel I’ve read in quite some time.
But there is one element that never quite sat well with me, and that is Reepah. You see, she is a love interest of Subzero - the Inuit woman that she brings down to New York - and she seems like a character rather than a person, just as Subzero at times seems like a character rather than a person. It is interesting. A transition from the idea of the noble savage from the 19th century transferred to the presentation of the addicted First Nations of the 20th. It isn’t flattering to either Vollmann or the Franklins or (for that matter) Reepah, and you never get the sense that you are working with a serious, full body of characters.
Perhaps that is the point, though. Again, this is in a series called Seven Dreams, and maybe the looseness of the characters (the Old Franklin being nothing more than a silly, self-important explore, the New Franklin being nothing more than a silly, self-important bleeding heart) is part of that, filling in with the looseness of the time shifts and the place shifts (the far north all looks the same, no? regardless of when and where and how you are there?) but never giving any more than looseness, vagueness, beautiful haziness in a blizzard of time and ideas and consciousness. And certainly none of these characters are made out to be heroes or villains, just perhaps variations of an innocent. I’ll give Vollmann the benefit of the doubt.
Early into the pages of this book I was thinking that this was the best Canadian novel not written by a Canadian that I’ve read, and ranked up there with many of those which are written by Canadians. I think I still stand with that assessment. It is an ambitious work, and it doesn’t always do what it wants to do, but I think it is worth noting how it does and when it does, and admiring its beauty in between.
And do read the footnotes. There are some alarming revelations in there worth every bit of the effort of pushing forward after the conclusion of the Sixth Dream.