The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Argall by William T. Vollmann
Paul Maliszewski

William T. Vollmann. Argall. Viking, 2001. 746 pp. $40.00.

Argall, to grossly simplify matters, is the story of two widely known and wildly embellished historical figures, Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, and the less well known Captain Samuel Argall. This main story is one thick thread among many colorful others, including stories about British land ownership, class structure, tribal politics, and the settling of Virginia, all interwoven with purposeful though sometimes meandering digressions and expressed in a dense archaized grammar. The book arrives studded with footnotes, buttressed by a chronology, orthographic notes, six glossaries, and references to source material, and capped off with a formal letter to the “right honourable reader.” Argall is also the fourth addition to Vollmann’s projected Seven Dreams series of ambitious, encyclopedic novels focusing on North America at different historical periods and paying particular attention to the interactions and conflicts between Europeans and native populations. The Ice-Shirt imagined tenth-century Nordic invaders. Fathers and Crows concerned the Iroquois and French Jesuits of the seventeenth century. The Rifles described John Franklin’s failed polar expedition. All of the books also tell the parallel story of the books’ genesis through Vollmann’s personae, who go by various names but usually answer to William the Blind. In these parallel stories, dear readers learn of Vollmann’s painstaking but joyful research. In Argall William the Blind catalogs the contents of the Complete Works of John Smith, a mere six volumes and Argall’s primary source. William is a true bibliophile and, for all of the adventure and the placing of himself in harm’s way, so is Vollmann. A vast historical imagination is at work here, an imagination that remembers twentieth-century Ithaca, New York, in order to dream convincingly of the seventeenth-century Canadian wilderness. Vollmann’s imagination is voracious, intelligent, and by turns critical, scholarly, and playful. It’s hard to dream of another to which to compare it. [Paul Maliszewski]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Argall by William T. Vollmann Paul Maliszewski William T. Vollmann. Argall. Viking, 2001. 746 pp. $40.00. Argall, to grossly simplify matters, is the story of two widely known and wildly embellished historical figures, Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, and the less well known Captain Samuel Argall. This main story is one thick thread among many colorful others, including stories about British land ownership, class structure, tribal politics, and the settling of Virginia, all interwoven with purposeful though sometimes meandering digressions and expressed in a dense archaized grammar. The book arrives studded with footnotes, buttressed by a chronology, orthographic notes, six glossaries, and references to source material, and capped off with a formal letter to the “right honourable reader.” Argall is also the fourth addition to Vollmann’s projected Seven Dreams series of ambitious, encyclopedic novels focusing on North America at different historical periods and paying particular attention to the interactions and conflicts between Europeans and native populations. The Ice-Shirt imagined tenth-century Nordic invaders. Fathers and Crows concerned the Iroquois and French Jesuits of the seventeenth century. The Rifles described John Franklin’s failed polar expedition. All of the books also tell the parallel story of the books’ genesis through Vollmann’s personae, who go by various names but usually answer to William the Blind. In these parallel stories, dear readers learn of Vollmann’s painstaking but joyful research. In Argall William the Blind catalogs the contents of the Complete Works of John Smith, a mere six volumes and Argall’s primary source. William is a true bibliophile and, for all of the adventure and the placing of himself in harm’s way, so is Vollmann. A vast historical imagination is at work here, an imagination that remembers twentieth-century Ithaca, New York, in order to dream convincingly of the seventeenth-century Canadian wilderness. Vollmann’s imagination is voracious, intelligent, and by turns critical, scholarly, and playful. It’s hard to dream of another to which to compare it. [Paul Maliszewski]

Search the full text of our books: