An aborted novel transformed into nonfiction that is simultaneously tedious, exhilarating, dry and heartbreaking, Imperial thrives on its smart design (historical documents and Vollmann's own striking photographs break up the immense narrative) and its author's awareness that he can't quite understand his chosen subject…"Imperial does not need me to be itself," Vollmann insists, but no one who reads this singular, significant book—half Michael Harrington's The Other America, half James Joyce's Finnegans Wake—will contemplate NAFTA, illegal immigration or a trip to a "Southside" brothel without thinking of him.
—The Washington Post
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Reviewed byMichael Coffey
This is an exasperating, maddening, exhausting and inchorent book by the stunningly prolific Vollmann, who has really outdone himself. Eleven hundred pages plus endless endnotes about a single county in California is as perverse as Vollmann has dared be-which is saying a lot for a guy who has written a massive collection of tales about skinheads (Rainbow Stories), a sevenvolume history of the settling of a measly continent (Seven Dreams) and another seven volumes on the history of violence (Rising Up and Rising Down). But a big book about one county? Well, it's not just any county. Imperial is the southeasternmost county in California, bordering with Mexico to the south and Arizona to the east, across the Colorado River. Is it a place deserving of this seemingly disproportionate chronicle? Today, it is a hot spot for illegal immigration, law enforcement action, drug trafficking, prostitution and sweatshop labor in maquilladoras, fetid border factories. It is a place, sure enough, where imperialism has made its mark. Over the past centuries, a lot of bad things have happened in El Centro, as the region is also called, and very little good, as Vollmann's excessive datadump demonstrates ad nauseam. The Spanish came, murdered, plundered, left; America annexed; land grabs ensued and Colorado River water was illegally diverted westward to render a temporary agricultural paradise and make a few fortunes. As with most of his books, Vollmann has performed mindboggling feats of research, gobbling up obscure and arcane texts about the Spanish conquests, hydrography, citrus cultivation,immigration, poverty rates, desalinization, drug use, human smuggling and exploitation of the weak by the wealthy in all its guises as it applies to this benighted, once beautiful desert region. If Vollmann has a point of view here, an axe to grind, it is that he is appalled by the power inequities and the subsequent suffering of the Mexicans, and he is moved by the latter's simple desire to have a better life. But gouts of a bleeding heart make for some viscous prose, and, as seldom happens with Vollmann, his emotions overcome his cool and his positions fray into incoherence. Vollmann's normally reliable narrative voice veers between tour guide-speak and backpacking sociologist, with the occasional lyrical paean to a lady of the night. As a result, Imperial County is a place that few will have the stomach to visit, and Imperial a book few will be willing to read. (powerHouse is publishing a book of 200 photographs Vollmann took during the course of his research: $55 [200p] ISBN 9781576874899.) Photos, maps. (Aug.)
Coffey is executive managing editor atPW.
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Award-winning writer Vollmann (Europe Central) spent more than ten years researching Imperial County, CA, and the result is this complex, detailed, but often frenetic look at Southern California's border region. Vollmann uses Imperial's history to explore larger issues, such as immigration policies. Unfortunately, it appears that Vollman wanted to include every nugget of information he discovered-every interesting anecdote, roadside sign, or newspaper advertisement-and cram it all into this book, with the rationale for arrangement mostly unclear and with no synthesis or analysis (though plenty of his own bias). For example, he includes a series of hand-drawn maps at the beginning but waits until the final pages to explain them and put them into context. In addition, at least 12 different font types and sizes were used throughout, which only proves distracting. Overall, this book suffers under its own weight-it comes in at over 1300 pages, and evidently no index is planned. Perhaps Vollmann's accompanying photo book, to be published simultaneously by powerHouse (not seen by reviewer), would be a better purchase for interested libraries. Not recommended, though Vollmann fans will still ask.
—Mike Miller
Vollmann (Riding Toward Everywhere, 2008, etc.) has yet to meet a subject he cannot convert into a tome to rival the Manhattan phone book. So it is with this long, strange trip through California's Imperial County. "At four-thirty in the morning the air smells sulphurous and sweet like Karachi, and a bird sings." Readers sensitive to the possibilities of poetry in prose will value a book, no matter how long, that contains that line. Those who value honesty in reportage will admire Vollmann's admissions of time voluntarily spent among drifters, meth-heads and demimondaines: "Only now do I feel capable of writing novels about American street prostitutes, with whom I have associated for two decades." Readers who seek a view of the U.S.-Mexico border beyond talking-head banalities will smile at subheads such as "A Clarification About Whiteness" and "My First Tunnel." Vollmann's latest doorstopper has endless moments of virtuosity and points of interest, and even if there are limits to patience-one senses that Vollmann prizes extra-long books as a means not of overwhelming the reader but because he lacks a shutoff valve-his book captures perfectly the sun-stricken, toxic landscapes of inland Southern California. This is a place far from the beaches, Mediterranean villas and tony restaurants on the coast, a place of astounding pollution, horrific smells (of which Vollmann provides a Homeric catalog) and hundreds of ways to die (ditto, most featuring drugs, cars and bad guys). Why do people go there, then? They're mesmerized, perhaps, as Vollmann clearly is, by the unlikely possibilities of a place such as Duroville, a collection of broken trailers on the shores of the fetid Salton Sea, orMexicali, where Chinese keep portraits of the Virgin of Guadalupe on their walls and so outnumbered Mexicans that they were once outlawed. Magnificent, impressive and utterly unique. A word to anyone seeking to follow Vollmann's path, however: Get your gamma globulin shots, and write shorter.
"Obsessive, strangely engrossing . . . a combination history book, documentary, autobiography, and topographical survey." —Time
"Vollmann has penetrated the soul of a place that is like few others on earth, but whose hardships and triumphs tell you something universal about the durability and ambition of the human spirit." —The Economist
"No one who reads this singular, significant book—half Michael Harrington's The Other America, half James Joyce's Finnegans Wake—will contemplate NAFTA, illegal immigration, or a trip to a 'Southside' brothel without thinking of [Vollmann]." —The Washington Post
"Tracks the battles, real and metaphorical, that define Imperial County—battles over immigration and water, identity and the reach and limitations of political power. The book is perhaps the clearest expression of Vollmann's career-long commitment to immersing himself in complexities." —Los Angeles Times
