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.