William T. Vollmann Critical Essay | Critical Review by Richard Eder

SOURCE: "The Yawp of Reason," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 16, 1989, pp. 3, 10.

In the following review, Eder praises the wide range of themes and styles in The Rainbow Stories.

The rainbow in the title of this collection of pieces by William T. Vollmann refers to the author's use of different colors as codes for different chunks of human life and human spirit.

It is a private and hermetic conceit, one of a good many in Vollmann's writing. More immediately, though, the "Rainbow" suggests the extraordinary range and fire of the author's style.

The pieces in Rainbow extend from fiction to spooked poetic narratives to intoxicated reportage to reportage so meticulously uninflected as to suggest Dada. Vollmann manages a whole wardrobe of voices: ornate, inconsolably bare, romantic, and something resembling messages on computers. A single author's voice would imply synthesis and connection; Vollmann's pieces are rafts...
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