Writers On Writers

...he felt...as if he were supposed to be doing something else, something grander, higher, more difficult, more dangerous, more daring.  –Steven Millhauser, Martin Dressler

I.

It’s a warm winter day in Ocean Beach and I’m rushing from my apartment, on Muir, toward Newport Avenue, for a meeting with William T. Vollmann and Larry McCaffery. I find them in the back of The Black–past the bongs, lava lamps and guitars; they’re looking at books. I’m late, running on two hours of sleep because I’ve been up all night working on a novel that’s behind schedule for a new imprint at Penguin Putnam–it’s erotica and I need the money; it’s certainly not the sort of literature Mr. Vollmann writes or Dr. McCaffery teaches at SDSU and while I feel like a whore, I know I’m a well-paid one.

If anyone would understand this, it’d be William T. Vollmann, a man who has written much about prostitutes–so much that he’s attracted legions of degenerate fans and has been blasted by stuffy critics for being "too obsessed" with the oldest profession on earth.

The writer and the professor have returned from two days in Mexicali, where Vollmann has been doing research on a book-in-progress about the Imperial Valley.

Larry McCaffery is wearing his usual attire of an old Hawaiian shirt, faded jeans and tennis shoes; Vollmann wears a flannel shirt, baggy jeans, hiking shoes and a baseball hat.

William Vollman with sketch pad...

Vollmann spots me before I recognize him. "Mike," he says, "good to see you."

Larry glances around The Black and says, "I’ve always loved this place."

"They don’t carry your books," I tell Vollmann, like this is a small crime. "They should. And they don’t have mine," I say. "But the used bookstore on Bacon Street has our stuff..."

The main reason for this meet is to iron out a misunderstanding–a miscommunication–between Vollmann and myself. It has to do with a book Larry and I are working on called Expelled From Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader. It’s really a casebook, but the publisher, Thunder’s Mouth Press, felt "casebook" was too academic and "reader" was more general, in commercial terms.

The problem? One, there are some song lyrics, poems, and letters that I want to use which Vollmann isn’t comfortable with, and because I tend not to be able to curb my enthusiasm, I failed to take Vollmann’s wishes and feelings into account–treating him more like a subject than a human being. Two, the publisher wants to rush this book for a Spring 2003 publication but Vollmann prefers that we take our time, two or three years, and get the thing right.

I feel bad about this, so I’m a little nervous as I stand there with him inside The Black, the smell of incense all around like the stench of dead fish at the edge of the Salton Sea.

II.

A William T. Vollmann primer in 500 words: Novelist, essayist, photo journalist, war correspondent, poet and painter–he’s been praised in every major newspaper and magazine for his vast artistic output. His first published novel, You Bright and Risen Angels, dubbed "a cartoon" that’s really an alternate universe science-fiction yarn, was written during late hours at his computer programming job in San Francisco. He lived off candy bars and slept under his desk. The novel was eventually published in England in 1987. No U.S. publisher would look at his work because he didn’t have an agent and didn’t prepare his manuscripts "right"–so several of his subsequent books were first issued in the U.K. and later in the States: The Rainbow Stories, The Ice-Shirt, Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs. American editors started to notice him, and he began to acquire assignments from Esquire, Spin, Gear, The New Yorker; Viking, Pantheon, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux picked up his books. His early memoir of going to Afghanistan was published to much critical but scant commercial success, but remains a dear favorite with fans. He journeyed to the magnetic North Pole and almost froze to death, which he wrote about in The Rifles. He traveled extensively throughout Cambodia and Burma, exploring the underworld of prostitution and drugs, which he wrote about in The Butterfly Stories...and he also interviewed Pol Pot’s brother. Much controversy surrounded his Esquire piece about purchasing a pre-teen prostitute from a brothel in Thailand and enrolling the girl in a school and helping her to set up a small business. He was a foreign correspondent in Somalia, Kosovo, and Belgrade. He attended Sadam Hussein’s national birthday bash in Iraq, searched for terrorists in Yemen, and turned down an assignment from the Los Angeles Times to return to Afghanistan during the 2002 air strikes because the newspaper wouldn’t put up the cash for a body guard. In the summer of 1994, while in Bosnia, the jeep he was in ran over a landmine; he was the sole survivor–a long time friend, a photographer, as well as his translator died instantly; he was shot at, and then later rescued by Spanish soldiers from the U.N. He took pictures of his dead friends and shows these images during slide shows while on the lecture and book signing circuit. People ask him how he can morally do this and his reply: "It is my job." He has documented his travels around the world in the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning collection, The Atlas and, more extensively, in Rising Up and Rising Down (which he dedicates to his two friends who died in Bosnia). He has published a 300,000 word opus on San Francisco’s Tenderloin, The Royal Family, which he took an advance cut in order to have the book published in its voluminous state–speaking of which, this "essay on violence" that he has worked on for seventeen years, Rising Up and Rising Down, is a 3, 400 page, seven volume work that few publishers braved to even look at in theory; it was published in a pricey box-set from Dave Egger’s McSweeney’s Books in late 2003 (an 800-page abridged paperback edition will be released by Ecco Press in late 2004).

One of Vollmann’s current (major) projects is Imperial, a book-length essay about the Imperial Valley, the Salton Sea, and the U.S.-Mexican border in Calexico. For this, Vollmann, a resident of Sacramento, has been coming down to San Diego almost every other month since 1999.

III.

We go to a bar and grill across the street from the O.B. Motel (where both Vollmann and McCaffery stayed the night before).

"Bill was looking through the Yellow Pages for escort services last night," Larry says.

"Did you call any?" I ask.

"I decided to read a book of collected Raymond Chandler stories," Vollmann says.

Larry gets a drink, I get a beer, and Vollmann has a soda water with a lime twist. It’s noon. "I shouldn’t be drinking this early," I say, but I do.

We discuss writing, women and war–three of Vollmann’s favorite topics, which also happen to be section headings in Expelled from Eden.

"Let’s talk about this book," Vollmann says. "I think we started off on the wrong foot, Mike. I would like if we could get that behind us, no hard feelings."

"I’d like that as well," I say.

"I want you two to know that whatever you include in the casebook are your choices, I won’t interfere."

"But you’ll have complete veto power of what finally goes in or doesn’t," Larry says.

"And you’ll see the manuscript and galleys," I say, "I’ll make sure of that."

"However you two want to present me, I’ll live with it," he says. "If you choose to make me out as a monster, so be it..."

I’m a little surprised by this remark, and so is Larry.

Larry says, "Not at all..."

"Well, the title," Vollmann says.

"I lifted it from The Rifles," I say.

"Do you see me as expelled from the Garden of Eden?" he says rather softly. "Because I don’t."

"The sales and marketing team think it’s a great title," I say, feeling foolish–surly I can come up with a better response than that, goddammit, but I can’t. C’mon–I do feel he’s been expelled because I have, we all have, in that old Judeo-Christian sense...

But I’m glad we’ve put our differences aside and can continue on with the project.

"We need to get to the airport," Vollmann tells Larry, and they hurry into the prof’s white SUV, drive off, leaving me by the O.B. Pier.

IV.

William T. Vollmann does not drive. Because of his eyesight (he refers to himself as "William the Blind" in his Seven Dreams series) he has never been able to obtain a driver’s license. Abolish the automobile, he once wrote, because it has no reverence for space. Incidentally, he has often relied on hired hands, friends, fans and escorts to help him move about on his travels.

In his latest excursions to southern California, his guide, ride and platonic assistant has been San Diego State University student, poet, ghostwriter and devout Mormon, Terrie Petree.

I ask Terrie how she wound up becoming Vollmann’s chauffeur throughout San Diego, Imperial, the Salton Sea and beyond.

"As with all good things, I ended up tooling around with Bill by chance," she says. "I owed Larry [McCaffery] some indentured servitude as part of an independent study class. He asked if I was willing to spend a couple of days helping William T. Vollmann. I gave Bill a call, he found out I spoke Spanish fluently, and the next thing you know we were planning week long blocks of travel time."

"He is known for a man who likes to put himself in danger," I say. "Has he gotten you into some dangerous situations? I’m curious about this since he wouldn't let my girlfriend, Tara, accompany him a few years ago to an outing on the border to interview illegal aliens because he said it might be too perilous for her."

"Bill has never gotten me into a dangerous situation. He has led me to the edge of several and then let me decide if I wanted to take the leap, but he’s not the type of man who would willingly endanger anyone. Except himself."

"Care to elaborate?"

She says, "Well, an aborted carjacking, being abandoned in a dark alley by a bilingual pimp, betting on cockfights, having the passenger’s side handle of my car door ripped off by a crowbar, tunneling underground, and driving around the Salton Sea on a 115 degree afternoon with no air conditioning... how could I choose the most salient one?"

V.

"My first involvement with Bill Vollmann was in early 1990 while I was completing work on a collection of literary interviews with ‘radically innovative American fiction writers,’" says Larry McCaffery as we wade in the Jacuzzi at the Roadrunner Club in Borrego Springs. "Sensing I needed a final interview that could sum up the features I was ascribing to, I wrote my colleague Tom LeClair for suggestions. Tom responded with a note suggesting several possibilities that concluded with: ‘But if you really want radical, you should check out a new guy named William T. Vollmann.’ I checked You Bright and Risen Angels and The Rainbow Stories out of the library and was only a few pages into Angels before I sat down and wrote Vollmann a letter asking if he would be willing to be interviewed for my book. He agreed, sent me a package of goodies including the galleys of The Ice Shirt and a description of his Dream Series, and I interviewed him at his apartment in Manhattan in May."

I ask, "What were your initial impressions of Bill?"

"I came away from that first meeting convinced I had seen the future of American fiction. Over the next few years I met with Bill a half dozen or so times–eagerly read all his work, reviewed most of his books, published several interviews with him and critical essays, and guest-edited a ‘Younger Authors’ issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction featuring the first extended discussion of his writing."

"When did your relationship with him change from that of author-critic to personal friends?"

"In the mid-90s, when Bill moved from Manhattan to California," Larry says. "My motives in nurturing this friendship are surely self-evident–who wouldn’t want to be able to hang out with somebody who was not only ‘the most dangerous man in America,’ but also, as I once put it in a review: ‘a rough-edged beast who has been slouching towards some Millennial Bethlehem with a kind of monstrous elegance, utter fearlessness, and voracious appetite that one associates with Melville, Whitman, and Pynchon’?"

Larry submerges his head into the water, comes back up and rubs his eyes. "At any rate, the regular visits I started making to see Bill at his home in Sacramento allowed me peek into his bookshelves, look through his huge archive of photographs, water colors, and ink drawings, watch him constructing his book object assemblages, and gaze in amazement at the large map he has on his studio wall onto which he had carefully pinned innumerable markers indicating places he had visited while conducting research.

"But the real change in our relationship began in July 1997 when Bill accepted my invitation to visit me here in Borrego. On this first visit, we spent several days hiking and touring the area in my SUV, and made several extended side trips to the Salton Sea and the Imperial Mexicali Valleys to the southeast. Given his fascination with travel, danger, and extremity, I had hoped Bill would find this region to be irresistible, and sure enough, he took the bait. Since that first visit he has revisited the Imperial area dozens of times to conduct research that he used in The Royal Family, in various magazine articles, and for a non-fiction book about Imperial Valley that has, in typical Vollmann fashion, expanded and mutated unpredictably in a manner comparable to Moby Dick’s evolution during the latter part of its composition.

"During this period, I’ve become Bill’s part-time chauffeur, father confessor, tour-guide, hiking buddy, literary confidant, and partner in crime."

"Any weird stories from these trips? Dangerous adventures and anecdotes?"

"It’s not so much that Bill necessarily wants to place himself and his friends in strange and dangerous situations, but somehow that’s usually what happens. In my own case, what’s happened has been that I’ve done a lot of things, met a lot of people, and wound up in a lot of places and situations that I wouldn’t normally have encountered. I’ve gone to strip joints and whore houses, for example, slept in flop houses, donned a flak jacket, fired off rounds of the world’s largest handgun, been to cock fights, and descended into dark, watery Chinese tunnels beneath Mexicali. I’ve lugged a view-camera and tripod into the Anza Borrego badlands, glided along the most polluted river in North America in a rickety boat. I’ve met homeless people, drug dealers, migrant workers, pimps, prostitutes, coyotes, sipped sake across the table from a Yakuza member, and followed the trail of illegal aliens’ empty water bottles and discarded clothing to the top of Mt. Signal in Mexico."

VI.

Of course, I too am eager to join Vollmann on his adventures, experience a bit of danger, hang out with questionable women and foray into the unknown–all the things in his books that have made him a literary cult hero. I’m sure there are many who’d like to be in his company, who pester him about it like groupies to a rock star or a moth to a flame, so I’m hesitant to bother him in this regard. I know that writers, above all else, need to be alone for their research and work. Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and Henry Miller (to name just three) were constantly hounded by fans who camped outside their homes thinking they could party with, and become a part of the lives of, their idols. I also know the pitfalls of great expectations; there have been a few incidents where I discovered that the authors I admired on the page were not what I envisioned in real life.

Nevertheless, over the next year various plans were made for me to join Bill and Larry on these excursions into Imperial and beyond, all of which fell through for one reason or another–conflicting schedules, illnesses, mix-ups on dates, inopportune delays, and looming book deadlines.

For this article, I had hoped to hook up with him during his February 2004 trip to Indio, during the Festival of Dates.

"I’m not sure where we’ll be, I have a lot of things to do and people to see," Vollmann says on the phone, "but let’s try to meet up somewhere. Have dinner. Why don’t you give Terrie your information, and I have your number."

The day he’s due to come in, Friday, I call Terrie and ask what the plans are. "This is what I know," she says as she packs her suitcase, "Bill called and said: ‘Pick me up at the airport at 10 a.m.’ From there, I have no idea."

She doesn’t know what hotel they’ll be at, where and when they’ll be out and about in Indio.

Tara and I make plans to go to Borrego on Saturday and Indio on Sunday, but some unforeseen events stop that.

On the phone, Bill says, "Monday and Tuesday won’t work, we have to go down to Calexico. Terrie’s bringing me into San Diego on Friday. Why don’t you, Larry and me head down to Tijuana and check out some strip clubs?"

"Larry’s never been down to Tijuana," I say.

"It’s about time he goes," Vollmann says.

Alas, that doesn’t work out either. Bill has to meet someone in Mexicali he can only see Friday afternoon; he checks in late into the O.B. Motel. Larry and his wife, Sinda, also have a room there.

I have to settle for a get-together in the morning.

VII.

"When’s the first time you visited San Diego?" I ask during breakfast at Shade’s, an eatery along the beach. Tara, Larry, Sinda, Terrie and her boyfriend are with us, several small tables pushed together.

"I was three," Vollmann says. "My mother took me to the zoo. We came down from L.A., where we were living on Wilshire. My father was getting his graduate degree at UCLA."

"Now, you’ve been down to Tijuana before?"

He nods.

"He’s seen the donkey show," Larry says. "So have you, Mike, right?"

"I’ve seen the dog show," I say. I always figured the donkey show was an urban myth, but know very well that if you ask around enough, and have money, you can find whatever kink your heart desires in TJ.

"So what was the donkey show like?" Larry asks Vollmann. "Was the woman into it?"

"Not at all. It didn’t look like she was having a good time."

I ask, "Was she on a stage? Were people standing around her and watching?"

"She was on a stage. She got under the donkey and..."

"How did you find out about it?" Larry says.

"Oh, this was back in the 80s," Vollmann says. "A guy came up to me on the street and said: ‘Hey, do you want to see a donkey show?’"

"Bill has a story set in San Diego that I published in Fiction for a Daydream Nation," Larry says. "It’s also in The Atlas, right?"

"It is," I say. It’s a surreal section (the narrator talks with a lizard) of a longer piece called "Houses" that starts off: Down in the golden grass near San Diego where houses and new houses terrified me, families lived the California life, saying to one another: if you can’t feel it, never mind it.

"It almost got cut, but I fought to keep it in," Vollmann says.

"Do you have any San Diego sections in Imperial?" Larry says.

"There are a couple parts."

"Hmm. Don’t think I read them."

"When did you start Imperial?" I ask.

"Oh, around 1997."

"I thought you began it in 1999," but I know that his 780-page (1400+ pages in manuscript) novel, The Royal Family, has parts set in Imperial and a place outside the Salton Sea called Slab City, inspired by his trips down here in 1996-7, so this makes sense. "When do you think it’ll be finished?"

"Another two or three years," Vollmann says. He smiles. "Have to make sure the book is really big."

"Another seven volume set," Larry laughs. "Or maybe just three."

"I could write a chapter about every grain of sand in Imperial. Wouldn’t that be something, Larry? Write 100 pages for every grain of sand, that grain’s history and everything it has seen."

Bill stops a Shade’s employee who is refilling water glasses and asks the young man where he’s from. He’s Hispanic, dark brown skin, smiles with confusion like: why does this man with thick glasses and a crew cut want to know? "Yucatán," he says.

"I’ve been there," Vollmann says, and talks a while with the employee about the region.

Breakfast arrives and we eat.

"I’ve been praising you to Bill how great you are at karaoke, Mike," Larry says, "how your ‘Copacabana’ is legendary in Borrego."

"I haven’t done that one in a while," I say. "Lately it’s been ‘Ring of Fire.’ Larry does a good Elvis."

"I bet he does," says Vollmann.

Larry sings a verse from "Ring of Fire." "We need to get you out there for karaoke," Larry tells Vollmann. "How does that sound? Do-able?"

"Sounds good, Larry."

"You know, Mike has just published his twenty-seventh book."

"It’s in the stores," I say, "but I don’t have copies yet. There was a mix-up at the publisher’s warehouse."

"Which one of your books is your favorite?" Vollmann asks.

"That’s hard to answer," I say. "The one I’m currently working on."

"Expelled from Eden, of course," Larry says.

"How long have you and Tara been together?" Vollmann says.

"Two and a half years."

"Oh. For some reason I thought you two had been together longer."

"Well, I knew her a year or two before–"

"Before you knew her Biblically," he says.

"It’s apocryphal," Larry says. "Bill, Tara does book art objects, too."

"She does? I’d like to see them."

"Maybe you can go to their place after breakfast," Larry says.

"I’d like that."

"Are you going to the National Critics Book Circle ceremony in two weeks?" I ask Vollmann.*

"No, I don’t care about those things," he says. "I’ll be in Japan then, anyway."

I don’t believe him. Many writers can feign indifference about a nomination and not winning, but all are secretly pleased if they win–a nod to the talent, the effort, and the work.

VIII.

Vollmann suggests that Tara bring some of her book objects by his room, we can kick back until checkout time. Friends of his from Encinitas are coming by to pick him up. Tara’s reluctant to get her book objects, but we go back to the apartment and she gathers three.

I pick up my samurai sword. "You think Bill would like to see this?"

Tara shrugs. "Do you really want to bring it?"

"He likes weapons, I think he’ll appreciate it."

Walking down Newport with the sword, people step out of my way and give me strange looks.

A man pushing a shopping cart is yelling at anyone who crosses his path: "DON’T EAT MEAT! YOUR PARENTS TOLD YOU MEAT WAS GOOD BUT THEY LIED TO YOU! MEAT IS EVIL AND BAD FOR YOUR BODY!"

It starts to sprinkle.

"That storm’s coming in," I say.

IX.

Vollmann is waiting in his room at the O.B. Motel. It’s getting windy and starting to rain harder. He has a view of the pier. There are surfers out in the water and they look like seals.

He’s in Room 206. This is the same room Tara’s parents stayed in when they visited for Christmas. I mention this and Vollmann says, "I hope I slept in the same bed as they did."

The room has two beds. "They slept in the other one," I say.

"I think they overcharged me. Larry and Sinda had a room just like this one and they paid $69. They charged me $110."

His Macintosh Titanium laptop sits on the bed stand, playing Japanese music. Tara says it sounds nice. "Had to get my money’s worth," Vollmann tells her.

He doesn’t have email and never logs on the Internet. Larry has told me he doesn’t trust the Net.

I show him my samurai sword. "Got it at an antique store down the street." He doesn’t seem very interested. I say, "Not sure if it’s a real antique. It’s not even sharpened."

"You can always blunt someone to death," he says.

Tara shows him her book objects and I sit in a chair. They talk about glues and the smell of glue. "Smells like postage stamps," he says. I mumble something about the apartment smelling like glue for days when she works on her art. They talk about binding and paper and printing methods. He seems genuinely interested in the books and Tara is acting timid, losing her voice. She sits on the floor and Vollmann lies back on his bed, holding one of the pillows.

"So, Mike," he says, "what are you working on? Any new books?"

"There are always books and deadlines," I reply. "Some more for Blue Moon, a crime novel set here in San Diego, a western. My agent has my new novel out."

"So why do you need an agent? You do all these books for publishers, seems you do okay for yourself." He closes his eyes. "I didn’t have an agent for years. Then I got one with The Royal Family; she turned it into a two-book deal. Why give 15% of your money to an agent?"

"I sometimes wonder about that. But I need him, he gets me past doors I can’t; my stuff’s read by the top brass rather than going up the ladder–not that it means much, that it gets me a sale. He knows everyone. He used to be an editor at St. Martin’s Press, where he did all the pop culture and music books, discovered Douglas Copeland..."

"Mike has an antagonistic relationship with him," Tara says.

"I do," I say. "He’s a cranky old bastard, at least on the phone. In person, though, he’d give you the shirt off his back."

I almost mention that my agent’s former assistant now works for Vollmann’s agent, how small our literary world is, but think that’s too much insignificant information.

"That’s why you have to meet them, get to know them," Vollmann says. "They have to be aggressive, and I guess you want that."

"I haven’t been to New York since 9/11," I say, remembering how on 9/11, my agent was in L.A., couldn’t get a flight back, so he and two other people rented a car, drove to Chicago; from Chicago he took the train into Manhattan, where he wrote me an email: We think differently of the dead now.

"How about after the casebook?" Vollmann asks, bringing me out of my disaster thoughts. "Anything interesting?"

"I was thinking of doing a casebook on Paul Auster."

"Oh, that’d be good. But is there anything big and important, your own books?"

He’s interviewing me.

"There’s quite a few in my head, many of them aren’t ready yet. Maybe in a few more years I’ll be ready to write them. I’ve tried writing some books I wasn’t ready to and they didn’t come out right."

"Such as? Or is that okay to ask?"

"They’re just grains of ideas," I say. I don’t tell him about the critical history of The Red Cross that I’ve been toying with for the past two years. I want to, because he inspired that project. Instead: "The problem with me is length, unlike your books. All my books are slim. I’ve never written anything over 100,000 words. I will someday. But every time I come up with a novel that I think will be 500 pages, it winds up being 200."

"I’ll be writing a book that’s 50,000 words," he says. "It’s about Copernicus. This is for Norton. They’re doing science books by literary writers. They just did one by David Foster Wallace–"

"On infinity," I say. "Yeah, I’ve heard about that series." (It’s called Great Discoveries, from Norton’s Atlas Books imprint.)

"I signed a contract and got half the advance last December, and it’s due this December. I figure it’ll take me a month to write."

"So what are you going to Japan for?" It’s my turn to ask questions. "For a magazine?"

"I’m writing a book about Noh Theater. I’m going to Kyoto, where I’ve never been before."

We talk about classical Noh–the masks, the movements. "Some critics believe the masks are more important, others believe it’s the music," Vollmann says. He explains how the performances are often different each time, even though the actors may have presented the same piece for years. "They’ll work with musicians they never have before, and there’s no rehearsal." He opens his eyes. "So, do you two have any travel plans soon?"

"Not really," Tara says.

"We go to Borrego Springs a lot," I say. "Hang out with Larry. If he’s not there, we find things to do."

"Do you like Borrego, Tara?"

"Sure," she says.

"She likes the pools," I say.

"Pools are nice," she says. "I like the Salton Sea, too. Smells bad, but it’s great out there."

"Maybe you could swim in it. See what’s on the bottom."

"Oh," she says, her voice cracking, and laughs.

"I’ve taken a boat trip on the Salton Sea, with this guy Ray, the only professional guide left."

(From Imperial, in a chapter called "The Water of Life," this is how the guide is described: Ray Garnett, yes, oh, yes, proprietor of Ray’s Salton Sea Guide Service, was a duck hunter, but he preferred to take his birds in Nebraska. He knew quite a few men who hunted the wetlands around the Salton Sea, and he used to do that himself, but about their prizes he remarked: I don’t like ’em, ’cause they taste like the water smells.)

"I sometimes wonder what’s on the bottom," Vollmann says.

"Maybe bodies," I say.

"Ray has found bodies before. Immigrants."

"They just drowned or–?"

"Probably," Vollmann says. "But who knows, maybe some foul play."

"I think there are lots of bodies out in Borrego."

"I wouldn’t doubt it."

I tell him: "Five years ago, this guy I knew tells me that a dude who lived next door to him had murdered his girlfriend. She came over to break up with him and he took a hammer to her head. He put her body in his surfboard bag, drove her out to Borrego, and buried her. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going and he played like he didn’t know so she was listed as missing. A few years down the line, this fellow becomes a born-again Christian; he can’t live with the guilt so he confesses to his pastor. The pastor turns him in. He leads the cops out to where her body is. If he never confessed, if he wasn’t turned in, he would’ve gotten away with it. And I doubt anybody would’ve found her body."

"Did he get life?"

"I’m not sure."

"She must have been mummified," Vollmann says. "Did he bury her in the bag?"

"I believe so. But this makes me think that there are probably many more bodies out there. It’s the perfect place to dump them. There are areas that haven’t been touched by a human foot in a hundred years, if at all."

X.

It’s starting to rain very hard and flash flood warnings appear on the TV. I’m depressed, questioning my work–am I writing the right novels, spending my time behind the computer productively? Why can’t I write really huge books like Bill Vollmann? Then again, he has problems with his publishers about such tomes: they’re just too damn expensive to produce. Larry and I have run into this same obstacle with Expelled from Eden–it has had three announced publication dates; contract problems, life, and a jigsaw puzzle of a manuscript have caused delays. We’re close, though–I can almost see the light at the end of that proverbial tunnel. There have been three rounds of cuts–a once 300,000-word manuscript has now become 165,000. The book will be a 500+ page trade paperback. We have a real cover and should go into production–galleys and blue lines–soon. How will Vollmann feel about the final product, as well his readers, fans, and scholars? My hope is that all the bright and risen angels will shine upon us and the calculus will be: we did the man justice.

Copyright 2004 Michael Hemmingson

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