Vollmann, William T. 1959–

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Vollmann, William T. 1959–

PERSONAL:

Born July 28, 1959, in Santa Monica, CA; son of Thomas E. (a professor) and Tanis (a homemaker) Vollmann. Education: Attended Deep Springs College, 1977-79; Cornell University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1981; graduate study at University of California, Berkeley, 1982-83. Politics: "Environmentalist egalitarian." Religion: "Agnostic Plus." Hobbies and other interests: Bookmaking, sketching, wilderness travel, ladies, exotic weapons.

ADDRESSES:

Home—San Francisco, CA. Agent—The Lyceum Agency, LLC, 433 N.W. 4th Ave., Portland, OR 97209.

CAREER:

Writer. CoTangent Press, founder.

MEMBER:

Center for Book Arts.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Ella Lyman Cabot Trust fellowship grant, 1982; regent's fellow, University of California, Berkeley, 1982-83; Aid for Afghan Refugees grant-in-aid, 1983; Ludwig Vogelstein Award, 1987; corecipient of Maine Photographic Workshops grant, 1987; Whiting Writers' Award, 1988, for You Bright and Risen Angels: A Cartoon; Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize, 1989, for an excerpt from Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes; nominated for National Book Critics Circle award for general nonfiction, 2003, for Rising Up and Rising Down; National Book Award for fiction, National Book Foundation, 2005, for Europe Central.

WRITINGS:

You Bright and Risen Angels: A Cartoon (novel), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1987.

The Rainbow Stories, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1989.

Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes (novels), Viking (New York, NY), Volume 1: The Ice Shirt, 1990, Volume 2: Fathers and Crows, 1992, Volume 6: The Rifles, 1994, Volume 3: Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, 2001.

Whores for Gloria; or, Everything Was Beautiful until the Girls Got Anxious (documentary novel), Pantheon (New York, NY), 1991.

Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1991.

An Afghanistan Picture Show; or, How I Saved the World (memoir), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1992.

Butterfly Stories (novel), Grove/Atlantic (New York, NY), 1993.

Open All Night, photographs by Ken Miller, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 1995.

The Atlas: People, Places, and Visions (stories), Viking (New York, NY), 1996.

The Royal Family (novel), Viking (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with Michael Hemmingson and Larry McCaffery) Expelled from Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Rising Up and Rising Down (criticism), McSweeney's (San Francisco, CA), 2003.

Europe Central (short stories), Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (nonfiction), Norton (New York, NY), 2006.

Poor People, Ecco (New York, NY), 2007.

Riding toward Everywhere, Ecco (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor of text to Ariel Ruiz i Altaba: Embryonic Landscapes, Actar Editorial (Barcelona, Spain), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

William T. Vollmann's body of work derives both from his experiences—such as participating in the Afghan-Soviet war and associating with prostitutes and drug abusers in San Francisco's Tenderloin district—and a literary imagination that has prompted some critics to compare him to the innovative American novelist Thomas Pynchon. His novels and short stories often have complicated plots and a variety of character types, and he frequently critiques past and present human behavior, offering his unusual interpretations of U.S. history in the series Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes and denouncing modern materialism and hypocrisy in works such as The Royal Family. "The oeuvre of Vollmann may be divided into two categories: his historical works and what might be best described as his ‘extreme fiction,’" commented a contributor to Contemporary Novelists, who described the latter as "portraits of the marginalized" and "excursions into the sexual fringes of society." Indeed, Vollmann once told CA that he aims to produce "works that promote love and understanding for people whom others with my background may despise or fail to know."

Vollmann's first published novel, You Bright and Risen Angels: A Cartoon, examines the nature of political power struggles through the depiction of an inane war between insects and the inventors of electricity. At the beginning of the story the godlike narrator, referred to as "the author," creates each of the characters by means of a computer. The individuals are divided into ideological sects such as reactionaries and revolutionaries that, along with the insects, wage constant battles against one another in order to obtain dominion over all.

Vollmann's second book, a collection of short narratives titled The Rainbow Stories, is a "domineering display of a rare talent," in the opinion of Tribune Books critic John Calvin Batchelor. Set mainly in the slums of San Francisco, the tales offer a candid and often disturbing insight into the lives of prostitutes, derelicts, and criminals. Each story's tone is to some extent determined by the color of the spectrum included in its title; the theme of death, for example, pervades "The Blue Yonder," an unsettling account of the death and autopsy of a bag lady. The stories abound with detailed description, and the narration is often in a journalistic style; Vollmann acknowledges in footnotes and in a section at the end of the book the information he obtained from people he met in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. New York Times Book Review contributor Caryn James called the book's authentic accounts "amazing in their power to attract and repel at once," but also thought Vollmann "merely hides behind the reporter's adherence to facts" and neglects to adequately develop his characters. James saw "touches of hard brilliance" in the work, however, and "huge ambition and talent" in its author. And Batchelor, in his review, praised The Rainbow Stories as "playful, wildly energetic low-life visions."

With The Ice Shirt, the first volume of "Seven Dreams," Vollmann begins what he terms a "symbolic history" of North America, as quoted by James Wood in the Times. Drawing on a significant number of historical and mythological sources, listed at the end of the novel, Vollmann recounts the brief colonization of a portion of North America by Vikings, an event that is believed to have occurred long before Christopher Columbus's voyage to the West. The author's symbolic interpretation of the event asserts, in part, that winter was brought to the previously temperate environment of North America by the power-hungry Norse people who waged destructive wars against the natives before leaving a few years later. Wood called The Ice Shirt a "seriously adventurous modernist book" but complained, "it is impossible to recount the plot … because it is impossible to follow it."

Fathers and Crows, the second volume in Vollmann's metahistorical "Seven Dreams" series, is an epic hybrid of history and fiction that recounts the missionary endeavors of French Jesuit priests in seventeenth-century Canada. Set some 500 years after the conclusion of The Ice Shirt, the story finds Vollmann assuming the fictional identity of William the Blind to recreate the complex and brutal conflict between the French and native peoples, supported by numerous historical sources, maps, chronologies, and glossaries. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Vollmann commented on Fathers and Crows: "In many ways I think this book is comparable to War and Peace. I'd like to see these books taught in history classes." In the Los Angeles Times Book Review, David Ulin wrote that "Fathers and Crows is a difficult book, minutely detailed and densely written, flowing lush and heavy…. But it is a … work of such elegant structure and uncompromising intelligence that it will change the way you think about the opening of the New World—indeed, the way you think about all of history, and what it means." Citing Vollmann's obvious sympathy with the Native Americans, Steven Moore observed in a Washington Post Book World review that "Fathers and Crows is neither a romantic evocation of the Noble Savage nor a politically correct idealization. The Native Americans could be as racist, sexist, and brutal as any European imperialist." Madison Smartt Bell, critiquing for the Chicago Tribune, commended Vollmann's effective juxtaposition of time in the novel and balanced treatment of the vastly complicated series of relationships. Related Bell: "Dozens of individual stories unfold in this book, and Vollmann has blended them so skillfully into his Stream of Time that the great flood of history itself is imbued with a human poignancy."

The Rifles, another installment in the "Seven Dreams" series (although the third to be published, it is numbered volume six, to reflect its place in the chronological order of the stories), centers on the tragic adventures of the British explorer Sir John Franklin, who perished on a naval expedition to discover a Northwest passage in the Canadian Arctic. Franklin's mid-nineteenth-century exploits are mirrored in a parallel plot involving a modern-day affair between a Native American woman and an American novelist who bears a resemblance to Vollmann, though he claims to be the reincarnation of John Franklin. As in previous volumes of the series, Vollmann draws heavily on historical sources to reinterpret the European domination of North America. In a Time review of The Rifles, John Skow summarized the recurring preoccupation of the "Seven Dreams" series: "Corruption of native inhabitants by Europeans is the broad theme of this enormously ambitious project." He added that Vollmann conjures "a vision of absolute evil: civilization, native cultures not excepted, is a pestilence, and mankind is a monstrous curse laid upon nature." Vollmann's proclivity for elaborate historical commentary and narrative digression received some criticism.

In Whores for Gloria; or, Everything Was Beautiful until the Girls Got Anxious, Vollmann returns to the locale of The Rainbow Stories to recount the hardships of Jimmy, an alcoholic Vietnam veteran who wanders among the derelicts of San Francisco's Tenderloin district in search of a beloved prostitute named Gloria. Unable to locate the elusive or illusory Gloria, Jimmy reconstructs her through conversation with other prostitutes. In the Voice Literary Supplement, Eli Gottlieb observed that "Vollmann deftly strews the path of his narrative with vignettes, offering us sharp vérité glances into the lives of the half-dozen hookers, bums, and pimps who cross Jimmy's path." Gottlieb added: "The time [Vollmann] doubtless spent among his subjects, and the intricate sympathy he established with them as a result, are an essential part of his achievement." According to a Kirkus Reviews commentator, "Vollmann's fierce writing seems often more designed to shock than to elucidate, but poor Jimmy does have some credibility, even if at times strained." The novel includes a glossary of slang.

Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs chronicles a series of fictitious travels in the United States and abroad. Jumping from San Francisco to Afghanistan, Thailand, Guatemala, the American Southwest, and an allegorical New York called Gun City, Vollmann portrays idiosyncratic extremity and depravity through the experiences of prostitutes, junkies, hobos, skinheads, and other marginalized people. In the Times Literary Supplement, Mary Hawthorne commented that "the fragmentary, sometimes chaotic nature of most of these stories, however—their illogic, their clutter of styles and digressions—renders them, like life, like dreams, elusive in the end." New Republic reviewer Sven Birkerts offered the opinion that "reading Vollmann's stories, we feel that the lower depths may be stranger and more disturbingly various than we had allowed."

Real-life travels form the basis of An Afghanistan Picture Show; or, How I Saved the World, which recounts Vollmann's post-college excursion to aid the Afghan guerrillas against Soviet invaders in the early 1980s. At age twenty-two, driven by a youthful and naive humanitarian desire to support the cause of freedom against oppression, Vollmann spent several months in Afghanistan, interviewing refugees and recording their experiences. However, Vollmann's weakened physical health and inexperience with weapons rendered him ineffective when finally summoned to accompany the guerrillas on a raid. In the Washington Post Book World, Steven Moore commented that "the book succeeds not only in achieving its original goal—to bring attention to the plight of Afghan refugees … but also in dramatizing the limitations of altruism and activism, the difficulty of understanding the context of any culture other than your own." Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor William McGowan remarked that "despite its unevenness and unexplained assumptions, however, An Afghanistan Picture Show is a bold and original accomplishment, hardly the ‘Failed Pilgrim's Progress’ that Vollmann dejectedly calls it…. [In] his honest accounts of [the Afghanis'] plight, and his morally and emotionally complicated reactions to it, Vollmann … has written a powerful, searching addition to the literature of personal witness."

In the novel Butterfly Stories, Vollmann chronicles the peregrinations of an unnamed narrator, variously referred to as "the butterfly boy," "the journalist," and "the husband," who survives schoolyard bullying to travel about North America, Europe, and Asia in search of love. Vollmann describes extensive indulgence in Far Eastern brothels; the protagonist eventually contracts AIDS, then falls in love with a Cambodian prostitute. A critic for the Review of Contemporary Fiction described the protagonist's journey thus: "The narrator flits like a butterfly: not a symbol of lighthearted caprice but of ceaseless wandering and searching…. The narrator's lack of shame and pride is almost ascetic in its self-abnegation, giving him a pure quality despite his incessant whoring." In a New York Times magazine review, Madison Smartt Bell termed the work a "parable of suicide through sexual intercourse; the purpose of the act is to unite the journalist with his dead prostitute lover, but the story is still terrifying to read." Hudson Review commentator Gary Krist disliked what he saw as Vollmann's sensationalism and "artificial compassion." "In Vollmann's eyes," Krist wrote, "the world is teeming with prostitutes and consumers of prostitution, buying and selling, degrading and being degraded … as they look for a satisfaction they'll never find."

The Atlas: People, Places, and Visions, more overtly autobiographical than Vollmann's other volumes of short stories, relates his far-flung travels in the United States, Canada, India, and Europe, including experiences in war-ravaged Bosnia. A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that "although Vollmann's style is to play it coy with respect to what is fact and what is fiction, there is no mystery as to who is doing the talking here." As in many of his other writings, the central characters are prostitutes and various social misfits connected by their existential loneliness. Vollmann's assemblage of sketches and vignettes takes the form of a palindrome, with twenty-six numbered pieces followed by another twenty-six reverse numbered pieces, complemented by a prologue, title piece, and epilogue. Describing the book as somewhat fragmented and redundant, a Library Journal reviewer noted that Vollmann's essays vacillate between "stark reportage" and surreal depiction of "violence, lust, greed, and alienation."

Vollmann deals again with prostitutes, drug addicts, and others on society's fringes in The Royal Family. The primary characters are the Tyler brothers, both San Francisco residents but otherwise deeply different: John is a prosperous lawyer with a lavish lifestyle, while Henry is a private detective intimately familiar with the marginal world of the Tenderloin. While John carries on an affair with a yuppie-type woman named Celia, Henry falls in love with John's wife, Irene. After Irene commits suicide, Henry buries himself in his latest case, tracking down the so-called queen of the prostitutes for an outwardly respectable but genuinely shady client named Brady. Henry begins to suspect Brady's motives, and Brady then dismisses him, but Henry still pursues the Queen, finds her, and enters into a sexual relationship with her. Vollmann portrays most of the prostitutes and other Tenderloin denizens as being more honest and ethical than the people of the mainstream, bourgeois world, such as John, Celia, and Brady, the last of whom turns out to have plans for an ostensibly "virtual" sex club that actually will exploit, abuse, and even kill real women.

"Vollmann avoids simply glamorizing the outcasts but remains, deep down, a Blakean romantic; prostitution is for him not only the universal indictment of the human race but also, paradoxically, the only paradise we can actually visit," remarked a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Lee Siegel, writing in the New Republic, commented that Vollmann "wishes to show … that candor about the basest aspects of life removes the slur of baseness from them, and that the lack of candor about basic human desires lies at the core of the commercialism that is killing us." Siegel also noted that "in The Royal Family, a forbidden experience is always made to resemble a respectable experience, so that the former might teach the latter a lesson; the ‘deviant’ is always superior to the ‘normal.’" Siegel found the novel's themes less than compelling, saying Vollmann "seems to assert the authenticity of debasement, yet the woman who administers degradation to [Henry] Tyler—the Queen—is a fine and generous person who possesses the middle-class qualities of decency and familial instinct that Vollmann seems to detest." Review of Contemporary Fiction critic Trey Strecker, however, deemed the novel "ambitious and powerful," although "slightly uneven," and praised its "brilliant set pieces" and "angry depiction of the wasted, commercialized American landscape." And while Library Journal contributor Edward B. St. John thought The Royal Family would be "highly offensive" to some readers, he granted that "others will be won over by the author's passion."

Vollmann returned to his "Seven Dreams" series with Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, numbered volume three for its place in the chronology, although published fourth. In his version of this story of the Jamestown colony in Virginia, a story that has often been sentimentalized and distorted, Vollmann devotes one portion of the book largely to the ambitious yet naive Smith, who becomes colonial governor, and the other to Pocahontas, the Indian princess who thwarts a plan to execute him. Pocahontas, though, goes on to lose her culture, as she is forced to adopt English ways after being abducted by Captain Argall, who succeeds Smith as governor and also introduces slavery to the colonies. The novel is "a heady, complex, linguistically dense and savagely cyni- cal version of a story familiar in outline if not in detail," related William Tipper in the Washington Post Book World. As in Fathers and Crows, the narrator is William the Blind, who uses a highly idiosyncratic form of Elizabethan English, which "frequently teeters on the brink of absurdity," in the opinion of Chicago Tribune Books reviewer Adam Kirsch. But Donna Seaman commented in Booklist that Vollmann nevertheless manages to produce "playful but lancing prose." She added that his depictions of Smith, Pocahontas, and her father, Powhatan, are "fresh, ribald, and sympathetic," while Captain Argall is "pure evil." A Publishers Weekly critic found the portrayal of Pocahontas particularly "respectful and moving, much different from the author's usual mannered sexual outrageousness," although Seaman noted that "compelling women characters" have been a hallmark of the "Seven Dreams" series. Kirsch deemed the characters lacking, saying, "none of them … has a genuine interior life," but allowed that the book has virtues, in that Vollmann "strikes a good balance between history and symbol, fact and interpretation." Edward B. St. John, again reviewing for Library Journal, pronounced the novel "arguably the best installment in this magnificent series," while Seaman called it "the work of genius."

Since the publication of Argall, Vollmann has edited, with Michael Hemmingson and Larry McCaffery, a collection of his own work titled Expelled from Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader. In addition to this volume, he has authored Rising Up and Rising Down, a social critique on human violence; Europe Central, a collection of short stories that won the National Book Award; and Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. The latter volume is an examination of sixteenth-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and his groundbreaking book The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. It was one of the first publications to state that the sun, not the earth (as was commonly believed at the time), is located at the center of our solar system. Vollmann's Uncentering the Earth analyzes Copernicus's calculations and concludes that although they were faulty, the theories they posited were correct. Booklist critic Seaman noted that "Vollmann writes with vigor and poetic insight," and while a Kirkus Reviews contributor stated that the book "is not for the scientifically fainthearted," they also observed that it is "peppered with intrigue and conflict and even a little human interest."

Vollmann's Poor People offers an overview of his study of poverty. Vollmann attempts to approach poverty from a different angle from previous writers, making no effort to experience the state himself nor to hold the poor up to be in some way saintly or martyrs. Rather, he approaches the poor from as uneducated a position as he can manage, in an effort to provide an unbiased view, despite the unlikelihood of achieving that state. He travels around the world and interviews individuals regarding their lack of finances and normal creature comforts—or even human rights—and then seeks to explain their situations to his readers. Library Journal contributor Ellen D. Gilbert remarked: "Vollmann brings to bear his keen powers of observation on the world around him and, not incidentally, on himself."

In his next work, Riding toward Everywhere, Vollmann takes an in-depth look at the life of the typical American nomad known more commonly through history as the hobo. Vollmann has written frequently about various disenfranchised portions of the population, from the lower classes to prostitutes, and so it is not surprising that he should show an interest in these itinerant individuals who were best known for their tendency to ride the rails by hopping on and off of railroad freight cars and making their way from town to town for free. The book is a compilation of various essays and other writings on the subject, and focus in large part on Vollmann's own fascination with jumping onto freight trains and his partner in crime, Steve, who accompanies him. He acknowledges that their circumstances are different from the hobo known through history, as unlike that particular character of Americana, they choose to jump the trains rather than feeling that they need to do so. Vollmann looks upon the act of jumping trains as one of rebellion, both against the swift modernization of the nation that is making trains themselves obsolete, and against certain restrictive facets of life in general. He looks at train hopping as an act of freedom, a belief he illustrates clearly by heading for the train yard when his wife asks him for a divorce. The message is that this particularly unique means of escape is one that sooths the soul regardless of one's burdens. Steve Almond, in a review for the Boston Globe Online Web site, remarked that "Vollmann's lyric prose manages to convey both the velocity of train travel and the intensity of the sensual experience, a jolting achievement in an era of ‘comfort travel’ that has sought mostly to annihilate our relationship with the landscape." Despite his own personal feelings regarding the hobo life, Vollmann does not glorify the individuals who spend their time on the rails. He shows an understanding of the draw of that life, yet is honest in his depiction of the sadness and despair that often enfolds the people living it. He includes numerous interviews in his work, discussions with people who live day in and day out hopping onto freight trains. Some of the interviews were given voluntarily while others Vollmann paid for, but all reflect a sense of the damage that has been inflicted on these people. Vollmann's attitude might be somewhat romantic, but he reveals a great deal through these portrayals. As a counterpoint, he also discusses many of the great works of literature that include portrayals of hobos or depict the life of a freight hopper, or that he simply chooses to read while he is on his adventures. Not all critics found his effort up to par, however. J.R. Moehringer, in a review for the New York Times Book Review, remarked that "clearly Vollmann is writing from his heart. He longs in earnest to get away from, or back to, America, and such longing lies at the core of our national literature. But unlike the literary road warriors he reveres, Vollmann never manages to make his getaway sound urgent or fun."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 89, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Vollmann, William T., An Afghanistan Picture Show; or, How I Saved the World, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1992.

PERIODICALS

Book, July-August, 2000, Tom LeClair, review of The Royal Family, pp. 69-70.

Booklist, January 1, 1994, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of The Rifles, p. 808; February 1, 1996, Brad Hooper, review of The Atlas, p. 899; August, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, p. 2053; October 15, 2004, Donna Seaman, review of Rising Up and Rising Down, p. 369; February 1, 2005, Donna Seaman, review of Expelled from Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader, p. 931; January 1, 2006, Donna Seaman, review of Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, p. 40; January 1, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of Poor People, p. 32.

Chicago Tribune, July 26, 1992, review of Fathers and Crows, p. 3; September 30, 2001, Adam Kirsch, review of Argall, p. 2.

Entertainment Weekly, March 29, 1996, Megan Harlan, The Atlas, p. 59; March 2, 2007, Gilbert Cruz, review of Poor People, p. 71.

Hudson Review, summer, 1994, Gary Kist, review of Butterfly Stories, pp. 299-305.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1991, review of Whores for Gloria; March 1, 1993, review of Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs; September 1, 1993, review of Butterfly; December 15, 2005, review of Uncentering the Earth, p. 1315.

Library Journal, March 1, 1996, p. 95; July, 2000, Edward B. St. John, review of The Royal Family, p. 144; September 1, 2001, St. John, review of Argall, p. 236; January 1, 2006, Sarah Rutter, review of Uncentering the Earth, p. 150; March 1, 2007, Ellen D. Gilbert, review of Poor People, p. 98.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 19, 1992, review of An Afghanistan Picture Show, p. 3; August 23, 1992, An Afghanistan Picture Show, p. 2.

Mother Jones, March 1, 2007, Michael Agger, review of Poor People, p. 81.

New Republic, April 11, 1994, Sven Birkerts, review of Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs, p. 40; January 22, 2001, Lee Siegel, "Rock Bottom," p. 38.

New Yorker, April 30, 2007, review of Poor People, p. 83.

New York Review of Books, December 15, 2005, Michael Wood, review of Expelled from Eden, p. 64.

New York Times Book Review, August 13, 1989, Caryn James, review of review of The Rainbow Stories, p. 6; July 26, 1992, review of Fathers and Crows, p. 10; September 6, 1992, Lawrence Thornton, review of Fathers and Crows, p. 14; September 30, 2001, Jay Parini, review of Argall, p. 18; March 18, 2007, Walter Kirn, "Show Me the Moneyless," p. L11; January 27, 2008, J.R. Moehringer, review of Riding toward Everywhere, p. 9.

New York Times, February 6, 1994, review of Butterfly Stories, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, May 18, 1992, review of An Afghanistan Picture Show, pp. 51-52; July 13, 1992, review of Fathers and Crows, pp. 36-37; December, 1993, review of The Rifles, p. 57; January 15, 1996, review of The Atlas, p. 441; June 5, 2000, review of The Royal Family, p. 69; September 3, 2001, review of Argall; September 22, 2003, Review of Rising Up and Rising Down, p. 98; February 7, 2005, review of Europe Central, p. 38; January 22, 2007, review of Poor People, p. 172.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, spring, 1994, review of Butterfly Stories, pp. 212-213; fall, 2000, Trey Strecker, review of The Royal Family, p. 139.

Time, March 28, 1994, John Skow, review of The Rifles, p. 68.

Times (London, England), May 31, 1990, review of The Ice Shirt.

Times Literary Supplement, November 29, 1991, Mary Hawthorne, review of Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), June 25, 1989, John Calvin Batchelor, review of The Rainbow Stories; November 4, 1990, Madison Smartt Bell, review of Fathers and Crows, p. 5; September 30, 2001, Adam Kirsch, "American Promise Fulfilled and Betrayed: Historical Novel a Revisionist Look at the Legend of Pocahontas," p. 2.

Voice Literary Supplement, February, 1992, Eli Gottlieb, review of Whores for Gloria; or, Everything Was Beautiful until the Girls Got Anxious, p. 6.

Washington Post Book World, August 2, 1992, Steven Moore, review of Fathers and Crows, p. 1; October 14, 2001, William Tipper, "On Native Ground," p. 7.