You Bright and Risen Angles: A Cartoon [Hardcover]

William T. Vollmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 1987

A vast, freewheeling, comic/surreal novel, in which the world is a battleground of hostile forces, a cosmic struggle rendered through the stories of assorted young American misfits.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's no easy taskby the author's clear intentionto say exactly what's going on and why in this ferociously talented first novel, a comic-surrealistic assault upon reason that should appeal to those who enjoy Thomas Pynchon. The story is an epic brew of technology, magic, politics, history and entomology, by turns fiercely satiric and good-naturedly humorous. The narrative flits from the jungles of South America to the dusty plains of Afghanistan, the ice fields of Alaska, the streets of San Francisco and many other places, featuring as its principal theme a pitiless war between insects and the inventors of electricity (the distinction between man and insect being somewhat blurred). This battle takes place amid the semi-rational doings of revolutionaries, reactionaries, electrical engineers, prostitutes and social misfits. Some judgments may be ventured: that Vollmann's imagination is astounding; that his dark vision of a perpetually feuding world gives his novel artistic integrity; and that whatever his story may add up to, every page arrests and entertains. Drawings by the author.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this surrealistic allegory, America is populated exclusively by revolutionaries and reactionaries. The reactionaries are led by the mysterious Society of Daniel, a group of electrical engineers who worship the sacred Book of Generators. The revolutionaries, humanoid insects who pledge allegiance to the Great Beetle, are united by a common experience of torture at the hands of crewcut bullies. Vollmann calls the book a cartoon, and although he clearly sympathizes with the radicals, they are, after all, only bugs. In addition to an undigested mass of information about power plants, entomology, and hand guns, there is a lot of good writing herebut not nearly enough to fill 600 pages. With better editing this might have been outstanding. As it stands, it is a fascinating flop, but one that readers interested in experimental fiction will want to take a look at. Edward B. St. John, Loyola Marymount Univ. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 635 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (June 27, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068911852X
• ISBN-13: 978-0689118524
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,437,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Come into the cartoon, September 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: You Bright and Risen Angels (Contemporary American fiction) (Paperback)

In the way the best caricatures can tell you the truth in corrective-lens fashion--to distort the view against your own distortion so you see it plain--Vollmann's first book--which he calls not a Novel but a Cartoon--caricatures the outlandish oppression & cruelty of the human being: especially the human male, especially the American. Seeing where Vollmann's career has taken him--on a nightmarish reporter's journey through the 3rd World, into the ragged world of the San Francisco Tenderloin, deep into an ambitious 7-novel project recounting the history of the New World--it's no surprise to see his concerns with power & preterition set up here in his first work. A tale of America's dream of the bullying, Protean, endlessly inventive, heartless power of money, this Cartoon pits the authoritarian powers against the scrappy underdogs: Electricity(Power) vs. Bugs(the little guys). If this reminds you of Thomas Pynchon's fabulist (& fabulous) Gravity's Rainbow, there's good reason. Vollmann's the next ecstatic drop running up that literary vein. Along with all this, there's the metafictional struggle to tell the story throughout, as 2 narrators (at least 2) wrestle over the helm: 1) a lowly employee with subversive tendencies & sentimentalities whose affection for the characters & obsessions about his ex-girlfriend sneak into the telling, and 2) the being who gives him dictation, the shapeshifting, immortal, amoral Big George, whose exaggerated accounts of his own adventures are a pastiche of every Big Fish tale ever spun in America's history, but who nevertheless is in the service of the kind of truth that only comes with the heartlessness of the fact that everybody (else) dies. Lodged, of course, in the best sort of eyebrow-raising fiction. I, the reviewer, am trying to tell you that I liked this book, and that I am a picky reader. But I, the writer, keep getting mixed up as to how to get you to buy it. For the sake of postpostmodern literature--for the sake of the longevity of the love of literature--read this insane, awkward, gorgeous thing.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's worth the effort, July 17, 2004

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: You Bright and Risen Angels (Contemporary American fiction) (Paperback)

The first 50 pages took me almost three hours to read. I was worried I made a big mistake in reading this book. And then Vollmann's world captures you. By the end my opinion had changed: this is the best book I've read.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite novel, April 9, 2002

By 

Laura Mabee (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Bright and Risen Angels (Contemporary American fiction) (Paperback)

I wish more people knew W. Vollmann. I have read this book 4 times and it is better with each read. The first time through you may not know what is going on for the first hundred pages or so, but keep reading; it is worth it.