something new

I just ordered my first William T. Vollmann book. It's a reader with excerpts from his novels, journalism, essays, correspondence, and poetry, so I'm looking forward to reading it. 

I hadn't even heard of him until recently, when I watched a video on youtube on one of my favourite booktube channels - leaf by leaf, which is surprising because literature is one of my main interests and apparently this guy is really, really good, he's been publishing books since the 80's, and he's extremely prolific.  Here's the leaf by leaf video where he gives an overview of Vollmann's work:
WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN. He has many videos about Vollman's individual works as well. 

....and I kind of cheated. Instead of waiting to receive the book in the mail, I bought one of his books as an e-book. I really like e-books. I've been exploring project gutenberg and finding free books in lots of other places...so I've compiled quite a collection of e-books...some I just keep the links in a document, some I have the pdf, some I get on my kindle (and at the moment I usually read on my computer using the kindle app). The great thing about e-books is that you can get a lot of them for free....not just from project gutenberg and archive.org, but you can often get pdfs or other formats of e-books of even quite recently published or renowned books from different websites. But even when you pay for kindle books through amazon, they're cheaper than the hardcopy and you don't have to wait for them. The other major advantage of e-books is they are searchable, so they're great for research and writing. You can find a quote and then you can copy and paste. 

Anyway, I got the e-book of Vollmann's, The Atlas, which, as the title suggests, is a compilation of his writings about places he's been and experiences he had in those places. One of the places he writes about is Redfern. So I'm reading that one first. He writes beautifully. I'm drawn in. 

I think the best writers have a kind of dialectical mix of transparency and materiality going on. They allow the story to flow through them. They don't try to own it or spin it or impose on it. But, at the same time, it's their story - their expression.