William T. Vollmann on Courage and Betrayal
Interview with William T. Vollmann, August 2006. Transcript
O.K. - First, I want to thank you for the book, Europe Central. I really like it, I think it’s a great book. And I want to ask you: your previous novels as I know were about North America. Why did you decide to write this one about Europe?
W.T.V – Well… First of all, I think I’ve always been interested in the Other, you know, whatever the Other is. One of the reasons I’ve written about neo-nazi skinheads, prostitutes, so on and so forth, is because I want to understand people who’re unlike me. I have written some books set in Asia, and it occurred to me that an American perspective on the war between Germany and Russia might be valuable simply because I’m an outsider and it might be a different book if a German or a Russian had written it. And I also feel that the United States is showing so little empathy toward the rest of the world these days that I feel it’s my duty to try to show a little bit.
O.K. – I have to disagree that this novel would be different if a Russian wrote it. Because what struck me the most is that this novel sounds absolutely true to a Russian ear. It really feels as if some Russian has written it.
W.T.V – That’s great! That makes me so happy!
O.K. – It’s really so, and it’s amazing, because before that I never read a novel written by a Western writer [about Russia] that wouldn’t have some misconceptions, some misplacements of facts, maybe tiny, but… It always shows that a Westerner wrote it. But this one is absolutely as if a Russian’s written in. I know that you’ve made huge amount of research, but the research doesn’t explain it for me. How did you manage to do it? Even some intonations in the novel are Russian.
W.T.V – Oh yeah, that’s true. I had fun trying to capture those. But when I was younger, I was very sympathetic to the idea of Communism. And I still am. It’s just very, very sad that the execution of this noble idea involves precisely executions of people so often. But for me, I guess, I like to imagine Shostakovich as being originally someone who could really believe in the Stalinist slogan that things are getting better, life has become better, comrades, life has become more joyful, and that he could begin by being very naïve and hopeful and optimistic and really tried to do his best for the Revolution. And then I think when The Lady Macbeth disaster happened and he suddenly realized what a terrible peril he was in and so many people were in, his whole life changed and then changed again with the Nazi invasion, when he probably said: “Allright, I have to put some of this stuff behind me and stand behind my country”. And then, after the war was over, he became progressively more disillusioned. So the way I look at it, you know, this is such a tremendous human story. The story of his life, how he had to hold on to the little bit of integrity that he could in his art, and let everything else go as he aged. This is sort of how I imagine myself into this story, imagining what I would do if I were Shostakovich and what things I would let go. I feel so bad for him. He was put in a situation where it was impossible to stay pure. And when I thought about it, I realized, this is the situation of almost everybody in that war. Somebody who were, let’s say, a boy born in Germany such that he was 14 or 15 years old in 1940 – what options did he really have? What options did someone have in Stalingrad on either side? The idea that basically ordinary or even good people have to sometimes spy on each other in the interest of evil regimes – that’s the spark that made me really, really try to do my best in this book.
O.K. – Some people have to spy and some people comply with it and they do. Some people prefer not to do it and they perish. Do you think that an artist who understands his importance for culture should try to save his life even by compromising? What do you think is the moral side of it?
W.T.V – I remember reading repeatedly that people would say the bravest thing that you could practically do would be to abstain. You couldn’t speak out against something, unless you were willing to be killed or imprisoned. I feel that Shostakovich did keep his integrity in his music. And for me, when I listen to for instance the opus 110 or or the 8th string quartet or even the 8th symphony, I feel that these pieces are great works of art, which don’t just speak to me – they scream to me. They scream with anguish and they make me feel terrible in the best possible way. I listen to these and I think: Oh my God, what awful times he went through. He is accusing his times, and this music is universal, it accuses all war and all repressive ideology. And I think that his music will survive and be immortal. So he is a hero to me. And on a more practical human level it’s also the case that he did help some of his students and other people at some risk to himself. I think that he came out of it fairly well. It’s very sad that he joined the party, but I see courage and resolution as being a finite quality that can be exhausted. And when people get beaten down by fear of grief or even old age, they become weak. And I think it is important for us to understand and be compassionate.
O.K. - What do you think happened? In Stalin’s times he took more moral positions, and after that he joined the party, after this huge pressure had been somewhat lifted, he signed a letter against Sakharov… Why do you think it happened not in Stalin’s times, but in relatively liberal times in Soviet history?
I think that it might have happened because his wife Nina died and he felt alone. I gather that she was always the one able to stand up and say “No!” For him. And it was very hard for him to say “No”. One of the most comical aspects of his character in a way is something that is a part of my character too: they would tell him to make some kind of change and he would say, okay, never mind, I’ll do that in my next symphony. And of course he would never do it.
O.K. ― That was the way all Russians acted. Even I acted like that in school.
W.T.V― (Laughs) Yeah, I think that’s true. And I sometimes do the same thing with demanding editors. Of course, for me the stakes are much lower, no one is going to hurt me. But I’m guessing that he got tired and he probably started to feel that his moral principles were less important and that he would compromise regardless. He seems to have become more and more gloomy and cynical the older he got. I can’t say I blame him.
O.K. ― Do you think that if Stalin liked his opera Lady Macbeth and if he got the Stalin Prize, do you think he could become a true supporter of Stalinist regime until the end of his life? Like Rolan Karmen who always got prizes and never was punished?
W.T.V ― My impression is that when he was a young man, he was a fairly sincere communist. He was talking about writing a whole cycle of operas about the situation of women from capitalist times until socialism was achieved. I think that Lady Macbeth, Katerina Ismailova, is a sincere and very avant-garde attempt to portray the bleakness of the life of a woman in Carist times. Even a relatively rich woman. I think if he’d been left alone, he could have continued to express his support for the utopian side of communism in his avant-garde formalist way. Unfortunately for him and for the Soviet Union, those sorts of directions were abruptly disallowed. I’m sure after that he felt very very differently about communism or at least about Stalinism. I doubt that he ever liked capitalism either. He probably felt extremely grim and hopeless about everything.
O.K. ― In the Soviet Union Akhmatova is considered a dissident, and Shostakovich is mostly considered a conformist. And Akhmatova, as you’ve written in your book, wrote some poems praising Stalin. What do you think is the difference between them?
W.T.V ― I think the difference is that a poem as Akhmatova’s Requiem is so clearly anti-Stalinist and perhaps anti-Soviet, whereas music can have any sort of interpretation. At one point people might say that the Rat Theme in Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony describes the idiocy of Hitler’s fascism, and then at another time it might be said that actually it’s about Stalinism, or both. Akhmatova did not have that luxury: her words are much less ambiguous than the music can be. In my opinion both of them compromised to survive and both of them were in their way dissidents. Stalin could promote the 7th Symphony and say, Yeah, it is about Hitler. Obviously, he couldn’t promote Requiem and say that it is about Hitler.
O.K. ― As I understand, in your novel you hardly use Volkov's book which is the most famous, though the most controversial as well, source of information about Shostakovich in America. Why? What do you think of it?
W.T.V ― I did use it a little bit. And, you know, who am I to say how genuine it is. The only thing that I can say as a literary writer is that some of the terms of phrase in that book seem to me very, very similar to the terms of phrase that Shostakovich actually used when he was quoted in other sources. And actually, the epigraph to the book, The majority of my symphonies are tombstones, I think that comes from Volkov. I wouldn’t be surprised if Volkov embellished or exaggerated some of the things that Shostakovich said, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t. I just don’t know enough. What do you think?
O.K. ― I don’t know either, because I’m not a big specialist on Shostakovich. The Volkov's book is about all I read about him, so I’m not in a position to decide. His book about Brodsky sounded very true. And Shostakovich’s book… It seems to me as if someone of them, either Volkov or Shostakovich, was trying to picture Shostakovich being more dissident than he actually had been. That’s what I felt about it. But which one of them, Shostakovich or Volkov, I do not know.
W.T.V ― The interesting thing about Shostakovich, or one of many interesting things, is that he was such a private secret person. I understand of course, that it was part of the national character too in those days, that people couldn’t afford not to be secret, they had to be so afraid of talking to anyone about anything. But even so, his life remains such a mystery, and to me that made him all the more fascinating. Just imagining this person who was so guarded, and you wonder what really lies in his depths. One of the characteristic speech patterns that he had would be not finishing a sentence. And stammering a little bit and then changing the subject. So I thought, well, this book in a way is about various attempts to deal with horrible events, and what my Shostakovich character continually does is to start talking about something and then all of a sudden realize that he’s saying something terrible or dangerous that might get him in trouble, Or something that is very, very close to a subject that causes him pain. So, quickly he stops and changes the sentence and goes in a different direction. And then runs in some other awful monstrous thing that tortures him equally. So much of the time he just lurches from one sad topic to another. The Volkov’s book suggests somebody who was dwelling on things like this. It’s not a hopeful book at all. The Shostakovich of that book has just given up and is very bitter and resentful about almost everything.
ОК ― The language of Shostakovich: the way he thinks, the way he speaks in your book is very convincing, and very Russian as well. What were your sources? How did you learn about those little details of Russian life, how Russians speak and all that stuff?
W.T.V ― It first started when I was in Spain for the translation of one of my novels over there. And I was in an airport looking for something to read. There was an oral history of Shostakovich, which I bought. It was a series of descriptions of him all through his life by other people. They would often quote certain characteristic things that Shostakovich said. I thought: Wow this is so interesting! What a unique way of speaking this man has! I decided I wanted to learn how to mimic it and create this kind of speech. And once I did, then I began to realize the power of the unstated. The power of the repressed. And who’s to say if the real Shostakovich actually repressed things the way mine does? But to me it was an element of… a way of adding an additional tragic element to his character by using this speech to suggest that he was trapped at almost every turn.
O.K. ― Do you think that in historical perspective it’s important why he wrote some symphony, some piece of music? Right now in Prague there are posters of concerts that will be played here to celebrate Shostakovich's 100th anniversary. They will play all kinds of music: the 10th Symphony, the 7th and The Song of the Forests. Maybe in 100 or 200 years nobody will care if The Song of the Forests has been written to praise Stalin. Everybody will just forget about it. Is there a difference if some piece of music has been written against or in praise of a tyrant?
W.T.V ― I think that ultimately the only thing that will last is the artistic quality of the pieces. If you read Virgil’s Aeneid, you find out that in the end it is basically a propaganda tract for Rome. I think that if the music is good in and of itself, then eventually the circumstances of its composition become less and less important. I think Malraux said something like: All that we have retained from Aeschylus is genius. At some point 100 or 200 years from now only the genius of Shostakovich will remain. The context will be lost. During the siege of Leningrad the 7th Symphony was considered to be great music. It seems like fewer people consider that to be great music now. People don’t remember the siege of Leningrad, unless of course they happened to live in that area. In the States for instance, what I see the most often are the preludes and fugues. There are at least three recordings that I know, all very very different. They’re beautiful and yet very very chromatically complex works that repay a lot of listening. So perhaps it’s those that would go down into the future, more so than say the 10th Symphony that you’ve mentioned. It’s hard to know.
O.K. ― What do you think of the relationship between the power and the artist? Russia has a complex and difficult history, and in Russia many people believe that authoritarian times, tyrannical times, totalitarian times are the best times for creators or for artists, because artists become more concentrated, either praising something or collecting themselves to stand up against something.
W.V. – Right. Well, I think that some of the most powerful Eastern European literature that I have read – you know, people like Konwicki, the early Kundera, people like this succeeded precisely because their region was oppressed, and I think that the later books by Konwicki that I have read as the situation in Poland improved are not as great as, for instance, A Dream Book for Our Time. You may be right in that any sort of traumatic event can be used by an artist to create something very, very moving, and if that traumatic event is caused by human beings, by dictators, then people might have all the more reason to do it. You know, Requiem was a very, very brave, powerful poem, which even now, and even in translation can bring tears to my eyes. So, I guess I agree with you.
O.K. – Speaking of Eastern Europe, the name of the novel is Europe Central. I wonder why in this novel there is hardly a word about Central Europe proper, like Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland. Did you choose this name on purpose?
W.V. – In the novel, there are two competing regimes, you can almost call them empires. Each one wants to devour the other one. Nazi Germany wants to say: I am Europe, I am at the center of the world, I’m going to control everything in Europe as much as possible, and Russia as well. And then, after Stalingrad and Kursk, the Soviet Union was saying: well, guess what? I’m going to come into Europe, and Europe is going to become a Stalinist satellite. So, each one of these regimes was using the name of Europe, but basically, Europe was just going to be annexed territory, and each one wanted to become the center and turn Europe into the periphery, to use Marxist terminology there.
O.K. – As I understand, you have German ancestors. Is it true?
W.V. – Oh yes, that is true. My last name is German, and there is some German blood on my father’s side.
O.K. – Why did you choose a main character – because I believe Shostakovich is the main character – not from the German side, but from the Russian side? I mean, it’s not like you had to because you have German ancestors, you don’t have to write about Germans, but anyway – why did you choose a Russian, not a German, as the main character of the novel? Why did you choose Shostakovich?
W.V. – You know, in Shostakovich I can really see myself. I am an artist in my own way, and I’m a little bit of an idealist, as I believe that Shostakovich originally was, and when I imagine myself in his situation, I wonder what I would’ve done and whether I could’ve done nearly as well as he did. I relate to his sadness, and I have to say, too, that I haven’t spent much time in Russia, I’ve only been there two times, but each time, I feel a tremendous sense of rapture and excitement. I would love to get deeper into Russia, and writing about Shostakovich gave me an excuse to at least imagine myself into Russia a little bit.
O.K. – Where in Russia have you been and when was it?
W.V. – Oh, let’s see. The second time I went to Afghanistan, it was during the Taliban time, I was briefly in Moscow, and then I was in Petersburg, and, actually, just last summer I went back to Petersburg for two or three weeks. I was invited to be a sort of a faculty guest for a writing program there. And I really, really loved it. I’m finishing up a book about poor people, and one of the chapters was about some babushkas begging near the Cathedral of the Spilled Blood, and I interviewed them and interviewed their families in certain cases and learned a lot from them. But I would love to go back.
O.K. – You’d like to go back to St. Petersburg, or you would rather go to some outlying Russian regions, like the Urals?
W.V. – Anywhere. Anywhere in Russia. And I would actually enjoy traveling extensively and getting a sense of what it means to be Russian now. I mean, what a huge area and what a beautiful landscape! The little I’ve seen, I think it’s so great. And I get a kick out of the way that people are, that the Russian women are stern and tender at the same time. The Russian men are some of the toughest-looking people I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world, and the fact that so many people can quote Akhmatova – everybody, you know, taxi drivers, prostitutes, - I always admire people who love poetry enough to memorize it.
O.K. – Do you think that they really like poetry? Maybe they just learned it in school and remember some lines, because the last time – at least, for me, the last ten or fifteen times – it doesn’t seem that Russians read very much now. It’s certainly not as it used to be before.
W.V. – I’m sorry to hear that. Of course, it’s got to be worse in my country, where nobody remembers anything. (laughs)
O.K. – About your country – I had a short correspondence with Kate Beckinsdale, and she thinks that Europe Central, the novel, corresponds with the modern United States. Is it true? Because, well, it’s hard to believe that it’s really such a bad situation in the U.S. now.
W.V. – Yeah, of course I don’t think it’s that bad. I think, you know, you have a foolish, wicked president with some foolish, wicked people who are helping him to do some terrible things. It’s shameful to me that my country supports torture and has entered into an unjust war, but even so, I would not compare us to Nazis or Stalinists, and in fact, Americans do make sort of a cameo appearance in Europe Central towards the end with the Van Clyburn character, and to me, that’s more characteristically American that mostly our sin is not the sin of unilateral violence – which is one reason why I’m so disgusted with this president. Our sin tends to be the sin of forgetting. When I visited Iraq between the two Gulf wars, my neighbors in Sacramento had no idea that we were still at war with Iraq, still sanctioning and blockading the country, and they were amazed that anyone in Iraq would be angry at us. That’s the American sin, and I think that’s very, very different from the way that things are in totalitarian countries, where you’re constantly reminded to hate this person or that country.
O.K. – It seems to me that forgetting is the common sin for every nation except maybe Germans, because Russians are very likely to forget what they have done to other nations – to Central Europe, to Afghanistan, and thinking that it’s just the past, why should anybody be angry with us. I think it’s maybe only Germans who have learned to remember what they did.
W.V. – Yeah, that’s right. When I was in Berlin a couple of years ago, I have to say I was very impressed that there were monuments everywhere: to Jews who were deported from this spot, and the Wannsee conference happened at this spot and so forth – and I felt that the young people were very open about it. So, I thought that that was good. As far as the other general phenomenon you mentioned, of course, human nature will always be such that if we have done a bad thing, or taken something from someone in the past, that’s the status quo, and if someone else has done a bad thing to us, then of course we’re more inclined to remember it and demand our rights, because human beings are fundamentally selfish.
O.K. – Have you been to the Wannsee SS house where they made that final decision?
W.V. – Yes, I have. Have you been there?
O.K. – I’ve been there, and it’s a very strange feeling – like some condensed evil stayed there. It was very strange for me.
W.V. – Yeah, it’s a very beautiful place.
O.K. – It’s very beautiful, it’s very nice, but… I didn’t even know that it happened there, I found out only after two days, but anyway, it felt somewhat creepy.
W.V. – Oh, it’s extremely creepy, absolutely. I think it’s terrific that they have turned that place into a museum.
O.K. – About America – it seems now that about all of the modern generation of big American writers except for those named Jonathan now live in California. Never before, even in Californian heyday, California was the center of American literature. So, why is it happening now?
W.V. – That’s hard to know. People sometimes say that California, for whatever reason, anticipates the trends of other parts of the United States. But I imagine it’s just an accident, and at some point, the writers will be in a different place – you know, if we’re going to talk about superstructure, let’s say, then of course this phenomenon is more likely to occur where there are a lot of publishers, and the East Coast and the West Coast have lots of publishers, so it’s more likely to happen there than in the Midwest, at least for now.
O.K. – Do you think there is some artistic opposition between East Coast and West Coast?
W.V. – I think so. I think that in the East Coast, people are more conscious of the past, for better and for worse. In the West Coast, because there is a little bit less memory, there’s a little bit less emphasis on pre-existing class structures that there can be, in a way, more freedom. And there can also be more narcissism, so we can’t say that one is better than the other.
O.K. – You wrote nine novels, and most of them are really big. You wrote some books of stories – the huge Rising Up and Rising Down work, it’s really big, and two non-fiction books, as I know. And it all was completed in nineteen years. And you do a great amount of research for every book, as I know – looking for facts, checking everything. How do you manage to work this much?
W.V. – Well, you know, it’s something that I love to do. It makes me happy to do it, and I also – I love to read, and I’m a fast reader, and for me, whenever I can, I buy the books that I would use in my research, and then I can keep them for years, and if I want to look at them in the middle of the night, I can. I remember – I think I was in high school, my father was a professor in Indiana, and there was some kind of exchange with some faculty from the Soviet Union, this was in the 70s. They came over, and they – I remember they looked at my books, I had a lot of books even then, and they were kind of disgusted, I think. They thought that it was very wasteful and selfish for one teenage boy to have all these books, when other people couldn’t use them. And they were right, in a way. But libraries in the U.S. are nothing good. The hours are constantly cut back, and so that’s my secret – it’s to keep my books and keep them for years. Many of the books that I used for Europe Central are books that I had since the 1970s, and I know those books pretty well.
O.K. – Do you read modern Russian literature – like, Russian literature of the 20th century? And if yes, what do you read and what do you like?
W.V. – Well, let’s see, it depends on how modern. I do think that Akhmatova is a great poet, I like Mandelshtam very much, I’m very impressed with Vassily Grossman’s Life and Fate, and have recommended that to a number of people. And I wish that my Russian were better. When I was in college, I took a year of Russian, and I can sound out Cyrillic in signs and so forth, but that’s about all that I can do now.
O.K. – What do you think of the state of modern American literature? Is it a good period for it, or moderately good, or bad?
W.V. – I would say it’s a pretty bad period right now.
O.K. – But why? There are so many good writers.
W.V. – No. Well, I think that maybe the forced violent engagement between the U.S. and the rest of the world – there is so much of the world – will eventually benefit American literature, because writers and readers are going to be forced to think a little bit harder. But for a long time, there has been a narcissistic trend in American literature. All you read about is American characters doing American things. And to me, it’s a little bit like going to see a Hollywood movie and after a while, you think: “Hmm, there are about six or seven plots, or kinds of plots, and sometimes they change this plot element or that plot element, but I can guess what’s going to happen next.” I think that the situation of American literature would be much better if American writers got out more and went to other places. You know, surely there must be some great novels about to happen about Iraq, and Afghanistan, and September 11. And I am hoping that someday, there will be great literature about the terrible things associated with Chechnya.
O.K. – But, well, Russian writers mostly write about Russia, Americans mostly write about America – it just seems normal to me, and I don’t know what you think about it, but I think that Flying over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a great book, and it’s not about some big event, it’s about some small event in a mental hospital.
W.V. – That’s a wonderful book, absolutely, and, of course, that was a different time that that was written. You asked about my opinion of the state of American literature now. But I think that is a wonderful book. I think, actually, Sometimes, a Great Notion is also a very good book – those are, I guess, two best books. And Cormack McCarthy is obviously a fantastic writer, he is one of my favorite American writers.
O.K. – Are there some American writers of today that you could recommend?
W.V. – Well, McCarthy is still alive, although I think his last book was weak. But, you know, all his other books, I think, are wonderful.
O.K. – The last, traditional, question is what are you working on now.
W.V. – I’m getting ready to start one of my Seven Dreams novels. It’s going to be about the Nez Perce Indians and the attempted escape of chief Joseph from North-Eastern Oregon up to the Canadian border. I’m almost finished with a non-fiction book about Japanese Noh theater, and I go to Japan every year to work on that. My book on poor people is about to come out, and a long non-fiction book about the California-Mexico border and both sides of it in history – I’m hoping to finish up by April.
O.K. – Are you feeling that you are finished with Russia, or you maybe will write some books on Russian and European topics later?
W.V. – I would love to write some more books about Russia. And, actually, when I was in Petersburg, I started writing a poem about the Summer Garden, and I’m having a lot of fun with that. But I would like to just spend a month in some place in Russia sometime in the next couple of years, and really get to know some people, and try to increase my understanding and write something, accordingly.