Scott Beauchamp
  • Home
  • Writing
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Home
  • Writing
  • Contact
  • Blog
An Aggregate of Last Moments

my review of vollmann's 'carbon ideologies'

11/15/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
"Carbon Ideologies is a triumph, but it might not be the sort of triumph that Vollmann intended. He might have been aiming for a moral coup, but what he arrived at instead was a conquest of literary form. He has created an artifact, imperfect and incomplete, but formed in and mirroring the strange circumstances of its time and place. Two giant books about the material consequences of our wasteful lives, both hulking as if having metastasised. Each full of sympathetic figures, familiar in their easy rapport, overpopulating the pages. Daunting in its scope, there’s a living mystery which occupies the centre of the project: what was the purpose of all our reckless consumption? It’s a question which Vollmann, his subjects, and presumably his readers, are ultimately unable to answer. In not providing an easy resolution, Vollmann has opted for the genius of negative capability over a false or allegorical sense of completion, however seductive that might be."

Here. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Scott Beauchamp

    Writer - Critic - Poet - Editor

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly