The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

Book Overview

A rich, haunting novel of street life in San Francisco's Mission District, from the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central In The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann uses the story of two... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670891673
• ISBN13: 9780670891672
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 780 Pages
• Weight: 2.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.3" x 7.0" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

"I don't want to be flogged out of my sordid niche"

Where to begin with this post-modern bible of Canaan? What a beautifully ugly opera of San Francisco's Tenderloin; paean to society's wretched refuse! Yet another majestic, narcissisticly groveling novel is unleashed upon decent society by William Vollmann - this particular volume reveling in its own destitute spirit. With lines like, "A piece of my soul I'll sell you, by all means; like other prostitutes I've been amputating meaty hunks of myself for all comers ever since the Vice Squad shut Eden down" (754) how can you go wrong? Come follow Henry Tyler as he runs from Jesus . . . and "Brady's Boys", the vigilante do-gooder thugs using his name in vane. Loaded boxcars of similes and metaphors that only Vollmann - under the influence of the Comte de Lautreamont - could concoct (neon signs shine like "stars", books open their "thighs", "octopus minded" wives grapple husbands, "I Ching ideograms" can be deciphered in the grating of Chinatown windows . . . ) specter through the shadowy night-scapes of the Royal Family; meanwhile, readers crouching like bats in hidden tree-perches of library-ensconced safety are vicariously aroused by the lightening-charged atmosphere of danger where magnificent train-wrecks of love and hate lurk behind each new chapter heading. Yes, turn the page! Admittedly long and occasionally tedious in its relentlessness, as are most of Vollmann's epic novels, at times I wondered how & why I kept reading despite the total sensory assault of being barraged by broken sentences tracing the stumblings of broken people whose addictions and predilections for hate and filth are dumped on the reader's mushroom head page after page afer page as though . . . I was one of them! Was it literary S & M from which I could not extract myself? Had I turned into a mushroom; a writhing (book) worm perhaps? Reading a book is certainly no substitute for actually observing and experiencing people, places or events yourself (which Vollmann obviously has) but The Royal Family is indeed magical in bridging this chasm. It precipitated several coffee-induced bouts of paranoid page turning through ungodly hours of the night, chased by first-thing in the morning fixes of mercifully short chapters strung out on the page like lines of coke; the come-down temporarily stayed by random, unconscious paragraph glances until . . . yet another craving strikes! The sun descends, and you somehow find yourself on a bar-stool next to Vollmann tossing down a couple-few drinks, and you converse with your new-found "family". What more can I say? Any book that does this to you - makes an event out of reading, consuming chunks of your life, twisting the world around you into strange, impending car-crash scenes you never noticed before but cannot now look away - must be locked up and secreted away at once! No, I can't really advise reading about whores, pedophiles, pimps, crack-addicts, the homeless, jobless, and other pathetic losers groveling in their own degr

Sordid, gritty depictions of "the life" in San Francisco's underworld

The first fifty pages of "The Royal Family" reads like the opening of a Dashiell Hammett novel (the seedy ambience of "The Glass Key" specifically comes to mind). Henry Tyler, a down-and-out private investigator, has been hired by a shadowy patron to find the "Queen," the self-appointed sovereign who oversees and protects the street prostitutes who haunt the Tenderloin's crack hotels and dark alleys. Even the last line of the first "book" (of which there are 36) has the feel of a noir thriller. Tyler attempts to pick the lock leading into the parking garage where the Queen is rumored to be hiding: "The lock opened on the fifth bounce. He stepped into the opening light." In spite of this nifty, almost melodramatic hook, Vollmann has something else in mind instead of yet another piece of detective fiction. In addition to Hammett, influences extend to other San Francisco-area writers, first to the gritty realism of Frank Norris (as Tyler, like Vandover and McTeague before him, plunges into the underworld, taking most readers where they've never dreamed of going) and then to the desolate vitalism of John Steinbeck (when Tyler flees the Bay Area and mingles with the train-hopping hobos of the Central Valley and beyond). Along the way, the prose invites comparisons to Hubert Selby, John Rechy, and--yes--Thomas Pynchon. And I'm not even sure to which American literary tradition one might assign the book's vaguely supernatural elements. While Vollmann has a dedicated "cult" following (and, although this is my first sampling, I'm nearly ready to add my name to the registry), there are two things that will probably keep his novels from garnering the wider audience they deserve. The first is their length--and this is especially true with "The Royal Family." Between sketches of the various destitute streetwalkers and drug-addled pretenders, he throws in just about everything: from a journalistic reflection on the mechanisms of the bail bond industry to a brutal satire on the commercial fantasias of Las Vegas. This isn't simply a novel, it's a Commitment. Still, I agree with Vollmann's decision to resist his editor's insistence to cut the book--the sections I admired or enjoyed will be different from the ones another reader will prefer. Better a smorgasbord than Lean Cuisine. Yet the aspect of Vollmann's fiction that will probably keep him from ever getting an NEA grant is his willingness to explore and even to empathize with the most odious of characters. (And I don't mean to include in this caste the various prostitutes, since, if anything, the author--without glorifying the life--paints a sympathetic picture.) Among all the lowlifes to choose from here--and there are plenty--the creature that will give me nightmares for years to come is Dan Smooth, a pedophile who is exploited by the local authorities for his "professional" expertise yet harassed by the feds for their revulsion to his self-confessed illness. Smooth's fantasies are uncomfortably explicit

Exhausting and Exhilarating

I welcome a new Vollmann book the way a 13 year old awaits a new Harry Potter novel. I finished The Royal Family last night, after taking my time over several months. For me, the highlight of the book is in the last 100 pages, the extended final act. The "Coffee Camp" sequence moves beyond the Tenderloin territory familiar to Vollmann readers since THE RAINBOW STORIES and encroaches on a realm both utterly familiar and totally new. The closest thing I can compare it to is the "wandering" portions of SUTTREE. If the rest of the novel had been this dense and addictive, I'd probably have read it in a week...but it was good to have something to savor.

Vollmann in L.A. / This book.

My wife and I had the pleasure of seeing William Vollmann read from this book at Skylight Books in LA last week. He read the chapter about Beatrice, a Mexican woman who becomes a prostitute and whose life goes from poverty to complete despair and madness as she becomes a prostitute and addict. It is not my favorite part of the book, but it was great to see Vollmann and hear him read. Afterwards he answered all of our questions (Next book in the 7 Dreams is done; it will be out next year and is about Pocohantas. He has finished a 4000 page (!) non-fiction book on the justification of violence. and get this - his favorite book of recent times is called A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis. The book is out of print, but if you have a good used store (or just a good store) you may find it. I'm fascinated by what Vollmann thinks is really good writing: He also mentioned the Japanese writers Mishima and Kawabata, and in Eastern European authors the 20th c. What else? I think he also said he was working on a book about the small countries of Eastern Europe in and after World War II. It was great to meet him after the questions. He was genuinely interested in what other people were reading and seemed like the kind of guy I'd love to hang out with for a while and have a few drinks in a crummy bar while arguing about good authors. His favorite books of his own are The Rifles and Butterfly Stories. The underage prostitute he rescued in Asia several years ago while writing for SPIN is married and doing fine (she is now 16 or 17?)Royal Family; Very large book. After 350 pages I'm losing my breath and it is not yet half over. There are some very fine characters who walk very fine lines; chief among them is Dan Smooth; a pedophile who works for the feds. Yes, it is more straight forward than the Seven Dreams books or You Bright and Risen Angels. The sentences don't go on for days as much, but I don't think he has abandoned his experimentation as much as he has not found it appropriate for this one. So far, I think it a fine work about the love of loss, descents and fate, and - as usual - incredibly harsh realities ignored by most of us becuase we have the luxury of doing so. Thank you Mr Vollmann for coming out to our local book store. Thanks for continuing to write. Take care.

Vollmann Returns

The first thing which surprised me about this novel was that while Vollmann seems to be writing with a mixture of his straight-forward prose and more lyrical poetic imagery, this was actually a book which I could see the casual reader actually getting into. Maybe its just me, but the opening scene with Domino immediately drew me in and kept me shirking my duties at work to find out exactly what Tyler and Brady were up to. Vollmann deserves a wider audience, and despite its graphic content which may offend many, I believe this book has a chance at finding that audience.