Larry
McCaffery
(San Diego State University)
We now live in the Digitalized Era of the
Soundbite, and Simultation, where carefully scripted images have
replaced substance, data replaced knowledge, and Americanユs craving
for "the real" is satisfied less by first-hand experience than by
the "voyeurism-lite" fare of TV shows like "Survivor." One can hardly
imagine a writer more out of step with this current Zeitgeist than
Sacramento-based novelist William T. Vollmann, whose latest novel,
The Royal Family ミan unruly, unforgettable 800 page epic
journey into the lurid, luminous heart of San Franciscoユs Mission
Districtム has just been published. Vollmann is a throwback to an
earlier era, when authors like Hemmingway and Steinbeck would pack
up their typewriters, set off for the Spanish-Civil War battlefront
or Californiaユs migrant worker camps, and then begin the process
of synthesizing what they encountered into novels that offered readers
insights into the lives and issues they witnessed which journalistic
accounts simply werenユt able to provide.
Readers interested in the current state
of serious American fiction but who are as yet unfamiliar with the
work of Vollmann would do well to remedy this deficiency. Since
1987, when his first novel You Bright and Risen Angels arrived
trailing ecstatic reviews (and the inevitable "New-Pynchon" tags)
like lettering behind a skywriting plane, Vollmann has released
a staggering array of recklessly extravagant works. Among his ten
earlier books are The Atlas (winner of the LA Times Book
Award), and the first three volumes of an audaciously conceived
septet of "Dream Novels" that will eventually comprise a symbolic
history of the United States. Taken collectively or individually,
this body of work is unrivaled among Vollmannユs contemporaries in
terms of their thematic ambition, range of erudition and literary
allusion, varieties of stylistic innovation, and sheer story-telling
skills.
But as with his best earlier books, perhaps
the most impressive aspect of The Royal Family is Vollmannユs
remarkable, highly individualized prose, with its odd blend of hyper-specificity
and lyricism, its unexpected leaps from the literal to the surreal,
and its ability to somehow suggest a sense of profound empathy and
compassion without resorting to sentimentalism or irony. Here, too,
his presention draws upon an eclectic, improbable array of influences
(Ovid, Melville, the Bible, the Teachings of Buddha, Dostoeyevski,
and Dante, to cite only the most obvious examples), and unfolds
as a deliberately unsettling mixture of genres and narrative forms,
including satire, heroic quest, allegory, first person reportage,
metafiction, cyberpunk, and family drama. But at least in its early
stages, The Royal Family presents itself as a sort of skewed postmodern
crime novelムDanteユs "Inferno" by way of Elmore Leonard and Melville.
The novel opens in a squalid hotel room
in San Franciscoユs Mission District, where the novelユs 40ish protagonist,
private detective Henry Tyler, is attempting to enlist the aid of
a prostitute to help locate The Queen of Whores, a mysterious, perhaps
imaginary figure who is reputed to use her magical powers to provide
nurturing and safety for her "extended family" of prostitutes and
pimps. Tyler has been hired by a man named Brady, who hopes to enlist
the Queenユs services in developing a new establishment in Las Vegas
called Feminine Circus allegedly catering to "virtual sex" enthusiasts.
Unmarried and friendless, estranged from
his family and trapped in a meaningless job, Henry has fallen hopelessly
and passionately in love with a lovely Korean-American woman named
Irene who is, unfortunately, already married; even more unfortunately,
Irene is married to Tylerユs brother, John, a upwardly mobile contracts
lawyer whom we later discover is helping Bradyユs efforts to open
Feminine Circus.
Henryユs personal and profession life soon
begins to unravel when he is fired by Brady and Irene, discovering
she is pregnant, commits suicide. Wracked by grief over her death
and haunted by her ghost, Henry now is said to be "like a wolf licking
razor blades--drinking his own blood to death." Desperate for anything
that can provide some sense of meaning in his meaningless life,
he decides to continue his search for the Royal Queen through the
Mission Districtユs maze of seedy bars, porn shops, and flop houses
in the hopes that she may be able to offer him the same sort of
protection and love she is supposedly able to provide for her own
Royal Family. After many dead-ends, Henry finally is led down a
dark tunnel to the center of the Queenユs hive, where he surrenders
himself to her offerings and temporarily finds a safe haven there
as her lover.
Partly an all-powerful, all-loving goddess,
partly an aging whore whoユs managed to use her street smarts to
survive, the Royal Queen is, like Melvilleユs White Whale, at once
a highly particularized individual and an all-encompassing symbol.
Physically repulsive and irresistibly seductive, dispenser of life
and death, protection and abuse, hope and despair, the Queen ultimately
becomes an expression of basic dualities and fundamental mystery
of existence itself.
Vollmann has written about San Francisco
in many of his earlier books, but never so memorably or in such
rich, excessive detail as here. In the long middle section of the
novel describing Henryユs new life as a member of the Queenユs band
of misfits, Vollmann exhaustively catalogues the Mission Districtユs
sights and smells, its street sounds and idioms, with a loverユs
delight. Thus, like Joyceユs Dublin or William Kennedyユs Albany,
Vollmannユs Mission District is at once a literal place meticulously
grounded in actuality and a mythic setting in which the characters
and actions represent timeless, universal patterns of human life.
Vollmann is equally successful in bringing
the Queenユs extended family members to life as vividly-drawn, fully
realized characters. With their mixture of rage and grief, their
syringes and crack habits, their scars and missing teeth, their
sordid pasts and unfulfilled dreams, these pimps and prostitutes
will initially almost certainly strike readers as being repellent,
even monstrous. But as Henry witnesses the brutality, monotony,
and fear that characterized their daily lives, and as he hears their
sordid, often poignant life stories and fantasies, we begin to share
his recognition that while these people are indeed "monsters," they
are also human beings possessing the same frailties and longings
that everyone has.
Henryユs involvement with the Queen has
not merely been a search for personal connection but a quest for
understanding the reason for human misery and degradation. In one
of the most excruciating scenes in the novel, the Queen introduces
Henry to Sunflower, a prostitute who has willingly allowed herself
to become a receptacle for her clientsユ agony pain; recognizing
that Sunflower can bear no more, the Queen gives her an overdose
of crack to end her suffering. Sunflowerユs agony and "crucifixion"
here illustrates of one of the central themes of the book:. the
Dostoyevskian notion that suffering and degradation is paradoxically
ennobling, perhaps even sacred. The reminder of the book is about
how he learns to follow Sunflowerユs path.
Eventually Henry is expelled from his temporary
safe-haven when the Queen is overthrown, victimized by the same
forces of greed, envy, and betrayal that afflict all systems of
authority. Now jobless, homeless, and carless, Henry hops a freightcar
and thus embarks on the final stage of his journey to dissolution
and revelation. Iユll allow readers to discover for themselves the
specifics of this latter portion of the novel, I will note that
it involves Henry visiting various hobo jungles--in Sacramento,
Miami, Seattle, and even an extended stay in Southern Californiaユs
own most notable squattersユ community: Slab City, located just east
of Niland, on the eastern side of the Salton Sea. Suffice it for
now to say that itユs during this last phase of his quest that Henry
is finally able to apply the lesson heユs gained from the Queen--a
variation on the Buddhaユs ancient admonition that since the very
essence of human existence is suffering, anger, greed, and ignorance,
the path to true wisdom can only lie in a renunciation of this world
os sensual bodily existence entirely.
At one point in the novel, a fascinatingly
ambiguous character named Dan Smoothムa pedophile partially responsible
for the Feminine Circus and also the wisest person in the novelムtells
Henry that the only way to know if someone is telling the truth
is "Because itユs ugly, man!" Perhaps soムbut only partially so, because
like Melville, Vollmann knows that truth is never this simple. And
in opening wide a window that allows us to see the dark truth of
the ugliness and brutality of the Mission District, Vollmannユs The
Royal Family also reveals its lurid beauty, mystery, and above all,
its humanity as well. In doing so, heユs created a haunting, disturbing
and magnificent novel that forces us to acknowledge that blackness,
depravity, and ugliness are all part of the heart of darkness we
all share.