Customer Reviews

Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith

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4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With "Argall," Vollmann makes a triumphant return to his ambitious "Seven Dreams" series of novels, detailing the invasion of North America by Europeans and the legacy of violence and oppression they left behind. "Argall" deals with the British annexation of what they later called Virginia, and focuses on three colorful characters: Pocahontas, Capt. John Smith, and the sinister Sir Samuel Argall, who eventually kidnaps Pocahontas and introduces slavery into the New World.

As the voluminous notes attest, Vollmann has done his homework and gives us what is probably the most historically accurate version of the Pocahontas story. And he does so in an astonishing re-creation of Elizabethan prose. This isn't the elegant Augustan prose adapted by Barth in "The Sot-Weed Factor" and Pynchon in "Mason & Dixon"; this is the earlier, racier prose of the young turks of Shakespeare's day like Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker, and especially Thomas Nashe. As one of Vollmann's sources says of that era, "the whole style of the day was inflated--in writing and in living" (p. 707); hence Vollmann uses a suitably inflated style that captures the age in all its vitality and vulgarity. As both a historical novel and a linguistic tour de force, "Argall" is a magnificent achievement.

Vollman's not for everyone, and that's especially true of the Seven Dreams. His partially-completed, seven volume imagination of the collision between European and Native American cultures is brilliant, ambitious, and at times dizzying. Reading Vollman can be like reading Pynchon or Gaddis; the unconventional dialogue and punctuation can seem difficult, especially if one focuses too much on a line-by-line reading. If you're willing to let yourself go and immerse yourself in the narrative, however, it is spellbinding. Moreover, once you allow yourself to get into the text, you become acclimated and find that reading becomes easier.
Anyone who enjoyed the earlier volumes of Seven Dreams certainly will enjoy this one. I would rate it slightly below Fathers & Crows or The Ice-Shirt, however, as there's a repetitiveness to some of the descriptions that detracts from the overall energy. Nonetheless, a brilliant and highly enjoyable achievement.

It helps if you're a little bit compulsive about reading Vollmann. Oh, he doesn't need the help, but as a reader, you do.

It's easy to compare him with Pynchon, since they both attempt a similar feat of matching subject with style in an expansive format that contains much humor peppered within the story. But Vollmann isn't a humorist at heart, he's part historian and part seer. He brings you the characters that you'd love to believe really are; he worms his insistent way into their hopes and imaginings so that he can present you with their characters.

You learn a lot of history reading the Seven Dreams series, of which "Argall" is a part. You learn more about how Vollmann regards history. But what makes the author so necessary and integral to my reading is that way of making me see how his characters regard themselves.

So throw your reading schedule out the window. Pick up "The Ice Shirt" and start in on this yet-to-be completed chronicle of how the Europeans came to the Americas and what that meant for both the Europeans and the people who were already here. Catch up soon, because you'll want to starting wishing for the next book in the series to appear... compulsively so.

We Stole Puccoons; and whose Snake-Erring'd Nation the ***POWHATANS*** Lost, By the Scheming of our Counsell-Men, Princesse Poka-huntas (a country lass) to TOBACCO (but gained Discount cigarettes); Lost Kingdoms to *ARGALL* . . ."

In the Seven Dreams series one may begin with any volume, but of the four currently published volumes, Argall would be the most "American". Here we have a post-modern retelling of English colonization. As with volumes one and two, Vollmann adapts his writing style and language to the flavor and times in which he dwells. His research is deep and impeccable, and one of the most interesting things to me in reading the Seven Dreams is his unique style and method of mixing ". . . colors not only from the palate of times, but also from the palate of places" (The Rifles, 377). Did I really read of a bullet or bullets laying on the frozen ground in one foreshadowed scene from The Ice Shirt (which took place in the 10th Century)? There are a few such strange instances in Fathers & Crows. Less so in Argall, though, which mostly sticks close to the life and times of Captain John Smith (1580-1631). Smith is a similar "yeoman" type character to Poutrincourt & Champlain in Fathers & Crows, and perhaps Eirik the Red in The Ice Shirt. Vollmann utilizes these men as launching points into their time-periods, reassessing their trials and tribulations, conquests and failures. Likewise, in each of the first three volumes we find historically forgotten, but important women. They include Freydis Eiriksdottir & Gudrid Thorbjornsdottir in The Ice Shirt, Born Swimming & Tekakwitha in Fathers & Crows, and in Argall, Pocahontas. As of yet, I have not read Vollmann's so-called prostitute novels/trilogy, but am familiar enough with his research into and use of prostitutes in his various stories. Having now read the first three volumes of the Seven Dreams in order (and looking forward to #6, The Rifles), it's not surprising to find this recurrent theme of a male "glory seeking adventurer doomed to failure meets and interacts with his depraved and deprived female counterpart" (note also, interactions between Pere Brebeuf & Born Underwater in Fathers & Crows). What's fascinating about all this is that through Vollmann's modern day lenses (and those are some thick lenses!), "historie" and "histoickall facts" come across as more than the "Symbolic History" he is creating. What happens is exactly what he wants to happen, and that is to ". . . further a deeper sense of truth". The phantom-like, piratical title-character Argall, as is the town of Gravesend which John Smith hales to & from (in "several compass circles") are good examples of the blending of truths and untruths in order to create "an account of origins and metamorphoses". In reading Argall you are not reading history, exactly. It is based on history, but is closer to poetry than a novel, because poetry transcends the strictures of a traditional novel. Its genius lays not only in its concept as part of a larger North American landscape puzzle, but in its execution. While The Ice Shirt contains a captivating dis-harmony of time & place, myth, legend, history, and modern travelogue; Fathers & Crows a more refined and fine-tuned sense of direction & story-telling; Argall is a magnificent culmination of language & character. It felt very enlightening, especially to one who grew up with very idealistic and naïve notions of adventurous Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower, trading and sharing Thanksgiving feasts with blissful, welcoming Indians. And Pocahontas seemed some romantic "Indian princess" who delighted those bold and faithful colonists. Of course, most of us become less naïve and more enlightened as we grow older and expand our horizons. As with any deep poetry or "meditation", Argall (and The Ice Shirt, & Fathers & Crows) is an enlightening experience for those able and willing to venture forth. Admittedly, as less enthusiastic reviewers have pointed out here and elsewhere, Vollmann can seem long-winded, wanting of an editor, and somewhat superficial in terms of character morality, etc. Personally, I take my time with books, and enjoy the lengthy narratives, twists and turns, use of chronologies, maps, lengthy source notes, whimsical drawings, so on and so forth. I feel like I've got my money's worth. (As one should for a $40 coverprice!). In terms of morality, I think Vollmann (as a post-modern writer) comes across as dry and lacking "wisdom" in any deep moral sense, as compared to say the Victorian-era writers such as Tolstoy and Dickens not because he can't feel or provide insight into his characters, but because: 1. it would be disingenuous given the subject & overall plan of the Seven Dreams, and 2. it frees up YOU, the reader to interact with the text using your own values and judgments without the author getting in the way. It's up to you to find your way (but there are plenty of notes to guide you in whichever direction you so choose).

That said, I hope you take some time to read Argall, and the Seven Dreams, as I think you'll learn more about our (the North American) continent than you thought you knew, including the exploits of various peripheral characters you may never have heard of, but who certainly existed - especially one Captaine Samuel Argall.

it would be a mistake to expect a casual read. Argall is part of the Seven Dreams series.

it's a dream world. sometimes vivid, vague, hallucinatory and incoherent. a dream is contemplative and sometimes even ponderous. to appreciate Vollmann (even his expository work), try to dream the dream. license rules here. traditional form and structure have no place.

if you can allow yourself to dream, then i recommend Argall, The Ice-Shirt (Seven Dreams), and his National Book Award winning Europe Central.

Argall, "the true story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith," is grand adventure, careful history, personal testimony, compassionate cry. The tale is told, mostly, in a rogue Elizabethan/Jacobean idiom of Vollmann's own devising. Those who have read Melville's Moby Dick and, especially, Pierre, know how this conceit works. At first it's a hurdle. But after a dozen or so uncertain pages this reader found Vollmann's use of the device satisfying. The author writes entertainingly in his tongue, the prose evincing a relationship between character and language that is quite possibly not expressible in one of today's argots. The old locutions capture associations and reasoning that "make sense" of his characters' actions. For readers willing to ride the style, this book is probably as close as we can get to glimpsing the historical Pocahontas, to adventuring with the real John Smith.

And theirs is quite a story. Pocahontas is vividly drawn. Vollmann's John Smith, though no average Joe, looks for the meaning of life in the pitiless hierarchies of social class, and in this he is Everyman writ large. A third major character, Argall, also historical, intersects Smith's story with a power and mystery reminiscent of what Ahab brings to Moby Dick.

But story is only the colorful warp of Argall. The woof weaving it together is Vollmann's wish to write with an active conscience. Through ambitious John Smith, Vollmann shows how aspirations can turn tragic when fame and success are held too dear. If this makes Argall a cautionary tale, it is one remarkably free of judgment. What distinguishes Vollmann from many excellent writers is the passion with which he attempts to harness fabrication -- so often considered an intrinsically amoral activity -- to produce artifacts of conscience. It is as though fiction rings true in direct proportion to the breadth and depth of behavior that its author willingly witnesses, without saying yes or no. To me Vollmann's strength lies not only in his wit and talent but in his peripheral vision, his ability to convey a universe of caring beyond the immediate focus of his text. There is food here of a sort not found in many fictions, new or old. Argall may not please the incurious reader, the faint of heart, the professional reader, or the cold of heart. Others may find it, as I do, a heroic book, both epic, intimate story and intelligent, caring act of bravado.

Ok, Vollmann is brilliant, a genius. One has to give it to him with this and his other huge tomes in which he goes full-tilt in an attempt at literary greatness, and his passages are often riveting.

The book tries to out-do ULYSSES. It does. But finally, around the 400th page, who cares?

That's the truth, I haven't even read this book. So I'm not going to tell you it's good. I'm giving Vollmann 5 stars, rather than this particular book.
His Seven Dreams series has been somewhat of an insane odyssey, as a reader. The Ice-Shirt is mesmerising and terrible. I read it and felt like I'd just tried digest a pick-axe. Sharp and painful, but definitely an original thing to do with my time.
Vollmann might be one of the few American authors who deserves (and is) on the Nobel longlist. His books, in this series, and outside it, explore the trenches of civilization with a passion and courage that is unequalled. The places he visits for research (the Arctic circle, Cambodia's Pol Pot regime, Bosnia, San Francisco's Tenderloin) develop into fiction and non-fiction that is both transcendental and wildly crude.
He is a writer in a funny place. Somewhere between Steinbeck, Melville, Conrad, and Pynchon. His complex patterns of guilt and his sad heroics are all explored on the page, and are crushingly real and plangent.
I don't know if Argall is the place to start reading Vollmann (since I haven't read it myself) but it might as well be. His books are magnificent. The first one I read was Butterfly Stories, and it broke my heart. The Atlas is amazing, and so are both his collections of stories.

William Vollmann is like the nerdiest person you knew in college or high school. He grew up to become a novelist who gained notoriety by writing in great detail about his experiences with prostitutes and having the audacity to claim that it took some sort of moral heroism for him to smoke crack with them in roach-infested transient hotels. Of course, it wouldn't do to be slumming all the time -- otherwise he'd just be another John Rechy or Bruce Benderson. So he adds Ivy League intellectual patina to these books by positioning them as meditations on the history of North America, or as reflections on how "all loving relationships are really forms of prostitution." He writes long, long books hoping that you'll be very, very impressed with him.

Folks, read this book or any other book by William Vollmann and keep in mind that this is an author with a profoundly stunted emotional growth. There's nothing cute about celebrating prostitution as the "most honest form of love" -- it's sickening writing, the babbling of a man still stuck in the fantasies of adolescence who will never understand that real love transcends economic exchange into a pure giving of oneself to another. He pats himself on the back for his "ferocity," when in fact he's never really outgrown being a journal-scribbling teenager who thinks every word he scribbles needs to be published and admired. His writing amounts to one big infantile gesture of lashing out at his Mommy and Daddy -- he admits as much in his interviews -- but at the same time hoping all these books he writes will make his parents love him. It's sad.

The fact that Vollmann has a big crowd of admirers says a lot about the sheep-like mentality and the moral vacancy of too many people who like cutting-edge literature. Read the bombastic praise Vollmann receives that is printed on the dustjackets of his books, and reviewers envious of his lifestyle just look like fools with the pumped-up praise that lavish on Vollmann. Go to a Vollmann reading and look around -- the people there are the sort who are hip, cynical, wear funky glasses and hate their parents, and whose main worry is keeping up with the latest slick novels and edgy CD's to hit the shelves. They have no ability to think for themselves and they are bored with life -- so they are profoundly impressed by this guy who writes about his experience with prostitutes. If you recognize yourself in this description, you need to get a life.

There's a certain sort of bourgeois person who believes their life can be redeemed by writing a novel in which they'll "show 'em all" -- the 'em being Mommy and Daddy, the cool kids who rejected them in high school, the jocks who called them nerds, etc. Vollmann is the "patron saint" of this sort of misfit. I read an interview in which Vollmann stated confidently that he is as important as Shakespeare or Faulkner. He doesn't seem to understand that the self-absorbed navel-gazing of a well-read prostitute's john doesn't quite cut it as great literature, no matter how many big words and descriptive phrases he tries to pack into his sentences. Vollmann's delusions are as bloated as his books, and his vision lacks even a hint of the universality or breadth or understanding that literary importance requires. Nobody but a few misfit loners and antiquarians will be reading Vollmann fifty years from now. Vollmann is a Montherlant in the making -- that is, an irrelevant curiosity that even most highly educated people will not have heard of.

Please think for yourself and don't buy this book just because you think it's kind of neat and edgy that this guy writes about his experiences with prostitutes. Don't engage in the sad spectacle of living vicariously through William Vollmann's sad, warped world. You'll just put yourself one step closer to moral oblivion.