You Bright and Risen Angels

The book I'm reading now You Bright and Risen Angels by William T. Vollmann even seventy pages in seems to be assuredly one of those immense, sprawling, enigmatic masterpieces of literature hitherto unacknowledged. There is on the front cover one of those typically over-generalized newspaper review proclamations, this one from USA Today, obviously pandering to the browsing bookstore types, calling this novel: "A bold and abrasive act of imagination, reminiscent of both Pynchon's V and the futurist fantasies of William Burroughs."

Truly an appropriate, yet unfair comparison. I, personally, would laud Vollmann with even greater praise as being one of those rare writers, like Shakespeare, whose writing and meaning T.S. Eliot described in one of his essays as "expansive," that is, his writing encompasses a greater understanding than his contemporaries. The sheer originality in his novel, ironically, I can only describe in terms of comparisons: the absurd war-mongering plot of Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 or Heller's Catch-22, the political fairy-tale fable of Orwell's Animal Farm, and the strange, lolling, rhythmic writing style of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

On the back of the book: In the jungles of South America, on the ice fields of Alaska, the plains of the Midwest, and the streets of San Francisco, a fearsome battle wages. The insects are vying for world domination; the inventors of electricity stand in evil opposition. Bug, a young man, rebels against his own kind and joins forces with the insects. Wayne, a thug, allies himself with the malevolent forces of electricity and vows to assassinate the praying mantis who tends bar in Oregon. A brusque La Pasionaria with the sprightly name of Millie Jeads leads an intrepid band of revolutionaries.