review: The Lucky Star by William T. Vollmann

A monstrous, massive, shimmering, hideous spectacle of cynical beauty. Through a hypnotically repetitive structure of sexual encounters, drug use, sadomasochism (in the traditional sense), and nights tricking at the bar, is built the message: love is all that makes life worth living; and yet with love, through love, despite love, you can't escape anything at all, not one thing. In fact, love often makes things worse, or is your whole problem in the first place. But even knowing that changes nothing.

Let's start with style: a strangely timeless magical realism of the gutter, thickly embroidered with allusions to ancient Sumerian and Egyptian religious texts, the early Christian mystics, Colette, homophobic midcentury quack psychiatrists, and the multiferous sufferings of the ever-present Judy Garland and the frequently-present Natalie Wood. Elaborately claused, jewel-like, multi-faceted and multi-pleated sentences that unfold and unfold, splattered with semen, vomit, pussy juice, and bottom-shelf whiskey. Great reams of the best sex writing I've ever read. Beautifully observed dialogue with no quotation marks, in what feels like an in-universe choice by the semi-omniscient narrator who nonetheless makes no claims to journalistic integrity. Jab after jab of painful emotional realities, which get steadily carried away from you by the waves of the prose, until the next one comes. Three examples:

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