Butterfly Stories

by William T. Vollmann

Book Overview

Heralded as "one of America's most intrepid fictional frontiersmen" (Publishers Weekly), William T. Vollmann has few equals on the literary landscape. Called a cross between William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, he explores the dark margins of society with a rare and ferocious imagination. In his newest novel, he takes what may be his most daring tour of this world of harrowing, essential truths. Butterfly Stories follows a Henry Milleresque narrator...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802134009
• ISBN13: 9780802134004
• Release Date: August 1994
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 281 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Choose to avert your eyes, or turn them willingly towards disturbing new realities...

William Vollman has to be read, and read more. The question is more which Vollman to read than whether to read Vollman at all. His works can be loosely divided into the historical (the Seven Dreams series and the recent philosophical work in violence, Rising Up and Rising Down) and the journalistic fiction (including Butterfly Stories and Atlas and Whores for Gloria). But the work of cultural archaeology that Vollman is performing can be located in all his works. He is bringing that which has been buried by long years of cultural blindness and prejudice into the light. With great patience we will learn to think "person" when we hear "prostitute", instead of just shaking our heads at what we know only as some abstract category of social depravity - a prejudice that many might protest but secretly be a party to (myself reluctantly included). In the introduction, honest Vollman makes his plea for suspension of judgment on his blatantly controversial cast of characters: "In case any of you readers happens to be a member of the Public, that mysterious organization that rules the world through shadow-terrors, I beg you not to pull censorious strings merely because this book, like one or two others of mine, is partly about the most honest form of love called prostitution - a subject which the righteous might think exhausted with a single thought - or, better yet, no thought at all - but the truth is that there are at least thirteen times as many different sorts of whores as there are members of the Public (and I think you know what I mean by members). Shall we pause to admire them all...?" And from there, Vollman plunges into a heart-wrenching story of alienation, desparate love-seeking, and reality-smashing encounters with a tumultuous underworld of eager and elusive women. We follow the protagonist, the journalist, from his school days, to a trans-European train ride, to the brothels and discos of Thailand and Cambodia, returning to an estranged home, and the subsequent delirium of desire and uncertainty. Here is a story about love and loneliness, ethics and humanity, pleasure and pain. It is a story about willful self-destruction and about grabbing for assurances on the way down. It is what you will let it be. Either way, Vollman is a master.

A diificult and well written novel that is not for everyone

'Butterfly Stories' is a unique literary endeavor by one of the most underrated writers of our times, William T Vollman. Many people may have moral issues with this book since the protagonist'and from what I understand, Vollman himself'is an enthusiastic whore chaser. But moral issues aside, one can't ignore the quality of Vollman's prose, the gripping honesty and lyricism of his story, and the fact that his is a novel of ideas. The story begins with a young boy who calls himself the butterfly boy, living an odd and tormented life in the American suburbs. Sensitive and appreciative of women at a very early age, the butterfly boy is scorned and rejected by his peers. His childhood is characterized on the one hand by the brutal treatment he receives from the school bully, and on the other hand by his remote sense of beauty. One morning the butterfly boy observes a beautiful butterfly whose image remains with him for the rest of his life. It is presumably for this reason that he calls himself the butterfly boy. When he reaches adulthood, each successive phase of the butterfly boy's life is characterized by a new appellation. For example, he becomes the boy who wanted to be a journalist, the journalist, and finally the husband. As the boy who wanted to be a journalist, the narrator travels through Southern Europe with an odd group of people and no prospect of getting laid. As the journalist, he travels with a photographer through Thailand and Cambodia pursuing prostitutes with a sportsman's gusto. The journalist and the photographer plug their pray with an odd code of bravado that prohibits the use of condoms and practically embraces its suicidal consequences. Shortly before returning to America, the journalist falls in love with a beautiful Cambodian prostitute. Once at home his becomes singularly obsessed with returning to Cambodia and joining her, at which point he refers to himself as the husband. The novel concludes with the would-be lovers reunited but hardly with the cliched happy ending that one might hope for. Intellectually navigating a novel about prostitution is as tricky as cruising the red light district itself, and Vollman does his best to steer us to the right places in his story. In the preface of the book Vollman acknowledges the stigma of prostitution and challenges the reader not to fall pray to mere public opinion. In other words, if you're going to have issues with this book, don't do so just because it is about [prostitution] and [prostitute] chasing. Fair enough. One of the central themes of this book is an examination of the nature of power and the will to torment. When he is repeatedly brutalized by the school bully, the butterfly boy considers the possibility that he is something of a problem-solving element in the bully's life. The bully has no sense of self and can only grasp his identity by examining the results of the actions he perpetrates on his subject. The goal isn't so much to hurt the butterfly boy as to study the

How to break your own heart

Not for those with faint hearts or correct politics, William Vollman's "Butterfly Stories" is a surgically accurate portrayal of a man's search for the one person who can capture his heart for keeps, as this will prove that he actually has one. A cautionary tale about the dangers of chasing experience and affection with a demagnetized moral compass, the novel describes one character's slide from a lonely, girl-crazy and ill-adjusted childhood (as the Butterfly Boy) to a lonelier and girl-crazier adulthood (as the journalist) in which he is gainfully if dubiously employed but has little else going for him, it seems. Except that he feels, and he needs. Driven solely by emotion, this boy-cum-journalist spans several continents, a failed marriage, the BBC, STDs, and a rogue's gallery of prostitutes, drug addicts and hotel clerks on his way to the killing fields of Cambodia to find his true love. Old-fashioned, boy-meets-girl story? Yes, of a sort. Hackneyed? Hardly. Through Vollman's raw (some might say base) observations, we see the twinned horror and joy the journalist finds in love and power and the modern consequences of a lack of restraint in both areas. The view is a dim one, but worth a good look. Possessing a painfully acute self-knowledge, Vollman's journalist does not fall prey to the common afflictions of the rest of us at the end of the milennium. He is not unsure of his own desires, or his place in the world, or the worth of a soul defined by advertising slogans. But while he knows exactly what he wants, he is strangely bereft of the will to survive. Ironically, it is this pervading sense of helplessness that makes the book a compelling read. Drawn in Vollman's inimitably fine spare strokes, "Butterfly Stories" is a worthwhile but exhausting journey through realities that many would like to deny. The sex is frank, unromantic and plentiful, the settings are sleazy, and the characters are firmly resolved not to grow from their experiences. But there is humor mixed with the sadness, and glimpses of surprising beauty that allow the reader finally to understand why the journalist is compelled to make the choices he does. It will never make Oprah's list, thank goodness, just like Phnom Penh will never be a Club Med vacation spot. But reading this book is a bit like walking through some of that tragic city's ruined neighborhoods. You wish you were anywhere but here, you wonder how anyone could live like this among the trash and the leprous beggars and the pools of raw sewage. Then, suddenly glimpsing a broad dark face with a dazzling open smile you wish, just for a second, that you could.

Sick and sad

Although I must admit that I consider this one of Vollmann's "lesser" works, I can't dub anything he writes bad, for Vollmann at his worst still gives would-be--and most popular--novelists a seminar in writing: pages lush with imagery; his masterful prose; ingenuity in plot construction without resorting to the convoluted seamlessness of most postmodern novelists. It's just that he seems somewhat rushed in his delivery, that occasionally his ingenius metaphors are replaced with what appears to be crassness if only for the sake of being crass. (And there isn't anything wrong with this; I guess I just expect something more from Vollmann.) But then again, the life of the Butterfly Boy, the protagonist, is a vulgar and sick and sad life. The novel--yes, Butterfly Stories is a novel--is an overview of the Butterfly Boy's life, from early childhood disappointments to crossing Europe by train with an eccentric cast of characters to whoremonging in Thailand on a quest for true love, a quest that culminates in his contracting AIDs. Although Vollmann may not have reached the standard to which I am used to reading, this novel refuses to be shelved, drawing the reader in to its lonliness and desperation