Europe Central

By: William T. Vollmann

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

National Book Award, Fiction, 2005

In this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the 20th century.

Assembling a composite portrait of these two warring leviathans and the terrible age they defined, the narrative intertwines experiences both real and fictional: a young German who joins the SS to expose its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich laboring under Stalinist oppression. Through these and other lives, Vollmann offers a daring and mesmerizing perspective on human actions during wartime.

©2005 William T. Vollmann (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Throughout, Vollmann develops counternarratives to memorialize those millions who paid the penalties of history. Few American writers infuse their writing with similar urgency." ( Publishers Weekly)

Powerful

Any additional comments?

The book is difficult to sum up, but it is a powerful work and well worth the time it takes. Vollmann is an amazing writer, and should have more works on audible. I recommend reading this alongside Postwar by Tony Judt, with the same narrator.

The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.

"We have a Motherland and they have a Fatherland. Their child is Europe Central."
― William T. Vollmann, Europe Central

This book reminds me of some mad Nazi experiment (or Soviet torture) grafting the madness of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and the darkness of Littell's The Kindly Ones. From the first chapter it grabs you grotesquely by the balls and just won't let go. Vollmann wants to hear you scream and then wants to write the score of your scream, the ghost notes of your warped night tremors.

The spine, the backbone, of this novel is woven the life/stories/stutters of Dmitry Shostakovich (yes THAT Shostakovich) writing his opus of lust, his opus of war, his opus of death. Fighting, passively, always passively against the crushing weight of Soviet oppression. The more the institution would grind on him, push him down, the more his art would squirt out. Art finds a way. There is the love triangle between Shostakovich and Elena Konstantinovskaya and Roman Karmen. This is Vollmann bending history to fit his novel. He isn't trying for close. He isn't aiming for clarity. He is composing with this novel. He is grooving.

The way I floated with this novel was to imagine it as a giant expressionist painting with Shostakovich in the center (or, perhaps, a symphony or musical development? Others have said yes, so I'd recommending reading their reviews if you prefer a symphony to an expressionist painting). It is full of demons and parables. Full of Totenkopfverbändes decorated with rubies, snow, skeletons, zombies, bombs and planes. There are mass graves and one can get quickly lost in death and the cold. There is a certain direction, only because time and history both have a direction, to the painting. It is scrolling left to right. But reading Vollmann is not a journey of art. It is a dream, a nightmare. It is a primal scream trying to clear out the cobwebs of the 20th century. It is Hieronymus Bosch's Purgatory, Hell, and all three panels of the triptych Garden of Earthly Delights sewn together with teeth, hair, and cobwebs and repainted by a German Expressionist or Soviet "nonconformist" artist.

'Europe Central' isn't history, but history isn't history. When so many people were killed, buried, burned -- we lose all sense of identity and truth. In Central Europe/Europe Central during that period right before, during, and after WWII myth seems almost as appropriate as any official history. The demons that whistle to you at night are just as convincing as the frozen chickens of day.

Again, I'm trying to wrap my head around it all. It is crazy. I am crazy. Two of the quotes from the book that helped me the most were:

"According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, our planet's most pronounced topographical features compromise an approximate mirror image of the crust's underside. The steppes of the Ukraine thus roof the crating platforms which replicates them, while the Ural Mountains not only project into the sky, but in equal measure stab down like gabblers trained upon the magma on which our contest uneasily slither. To me, the thought that this world is doubled within its own red, liquid hell is a profoundly unnerving one. Chaos seethes beneath my feet" (page 694).

“Most literary critics agree that fiction cannot be reduced to mere falsehood. Well-crafted protagonists come to life, pornography causes orgasms, and the pretense that life is what we want it to be may conceivably bring about the desired condition. Hence religious parables, socialist realism, Nazi propaganda. And if this story likewise crawls with reactionary supernaturalism, that might be because its author longs to see letters scuttling across ceilings, cautiously beginning to reify themselves into angels. For if they could only do that, then why not us?” (27).

I will end this now, before I get swallowed up again by Vollmann's Airlift Idylls and Steel in Motion one more time and fail to find my way to the surface again. One note on the audio. It would have been perfect, but there were just a bit too many edits/corrections in the finished audiobook. A word was replaced, pronounced, etc., by a different reader (or a different sounding reader). It was a bit distracting.

Might appeal to Soviet history experts

This is a long book, and I often found myself wondering if I really needed to finish it, when I spent so much effort trying to understand exactly what was happening, to whom.

It's a glimpse into the struggle between Communism and Nazism/fascism, and the people who were caught in the middle. One of the central characters is the Russian composer, Shostakovitch. His story seems to pick up, and then fade throughout the book.

The book is nearly 32 hours long, and I felt like I spent a good bit of it wondering who the narrator, or narrators (not the reader) were. From whose point of view or perspective were these stories told? Nearly 32 hours later, I still don't know for sure.

The story shifts around quite a bit, and describes life within states struggling to survive, or conquer. Namely, Russia and Germany during the years of WW II and the post-war era. In that respect, it provides insight into life on the ground for citizens caught up in the political struggles that surround them.

Not being a student of history, I looked up some of the characters on-line while listening to the book, and found that those characters and events were factual. Other aspects of the story - the loves and intimacies of the characters, I assume are fictionalizations created by the author. Perhaps they are based in factual events.

I found the line of the story, or stories in this book quite difficult to follow. There would be sections of the book describing particular players and events during the war that kept my interest for extended periods, and this was what kept me going through to the end. But there were long sequences when I felt lost in the book, too. And those where the sections that kept me questioning why I was even continuing to listen.

The book does describe the terrible and unstable circumstances of daily life. The terrors perpetrated by both Stalin and Hitler upon populations wishing only to continue day-to-day life. The senseless death of millions. The book provides insight into and understanding of cultural differences, too, between Germany and Russia, and the incentives of soldiers and civilians to fight during the terrible war years.

A central theme of the book seems to be the constant spying and surveillance of everyone. The constant uncertainty of whom to trust, and what to say in a sea of constantly changing, swirling waves of political realities. The difficulty of daily life, the starvation and deprivation of citizens is also examined in detail, looking at the lives of specific people in different walks of life.

I thought there were valuable insights, too, into the forces driving both Hitler and Stalin, and how those drove the war, but also the national capacity to wage, and to win a war.

Shostakovitch seems like a central character, at least to me, in no small part because of his position as an accomplished and famous composer, always caught in a web of changing and unidentifiable political directives. His life and times seem to have been very much defined by the political powers and demands around him, as he tried to walk the tightrope in the middle, and write his music to express his own views of what was happening around him. Often, the successes and problems were merely matters of interpretation, and he seemed well suited to be a chameleon when it came to interpretation, that allowed him, against all odds, to continue working in the Communist state during, and long after the war ended. A prime example of "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

I gave this book three stars because I thought it contained important historical information I was never aware of, and helped with an understanding of that history and the two countries involved. But that value was tempered by the fact that there were so many places in the book I just wasn't sure of what was going on, who it was happening to, or who was telling the story.

In the end, if the book ever answered the oft repeated question, "What was that sound?" I guess I missed it.

Life-changing novel, Awful Narration but, U know

This novel is easily the closest book of 21st century to achieve similiar successes as War & Peace. Each chapter follows a real person and their experience w/ Totalitarian Gov't in 20th century.
Just mind-blowing but with that said, narration & production therein was Simply Awful. You can easily tell where the reader stops and picks upicks up, where he uses the wrong name and later inserts the name of the city or a person said correctly. That correctly. It gets quite annoying but if you have the text, it's easy to get over.
Please, take the dive and be amazed but give this novel at least 4-5 hours as it's not an easy read. nor are most of the worlda greatest pieces of literature.

A Must Listen

This is a very fine audio book - well read and engrossing. I have given it one less star than the ultimate because you cannot listen to a book like this will all the concentration necesary.
Long, sometimes repetative, often messmerizing - Europe Central tells the story of men and women caught up in the greatest struggle of the 20th century - the struggle of the individual to survive in a dictatorial world.
Each of the central characters are given his or her own section - book length parts - to tell thier stories. The Russian composer D. Shostakovich is the spine of the book. His story is a primer on how an artist survives in sea of repression: learn to hold your breath under water. Others make significant appearances including General Paulus in a haunting set peice on the Battle of Stalingrad. The "Sleepwalker" (Hitler) and his Russian counterpart - Stalin - pervade the work as they did the first half of the 20th century - and still influence how the world operates.
This book is a lenghty journey - you will not be the same at its end as you were at its start. Isn't that what great literature is all about?

Extraordinary

Just an extraordinary thing - difficult to explain. But it does capture people at the extremes of history. Very well narrated.

Great story, subpar narration

While the story of Europe Central is great the narration is sorely lacking. Ralph Cosham is a narrating legend but here he turns in a bland and unemotive performance that really robs the story of a lot of its power. Worse than that though is that there are frequent and noticeable line replacements throughout the book that are distracting and irritating. The replacement lines often sound quieter, fuzzier, and never match the tone or delivery of the rest of the sentence. It’s a huge black spot on the enjoyability of what is a great work.

Novel Shows How a Murder Could Seem Merciful

In his 2005 National Book Award winning novel, Vollmann alternates story lines between Nazi Germany and the former U.S.S.R. (via Shostakovich) at a frenetic pace--despite its over 800 pages--to demonstrate how these bloody totalitarian bastard regimes forced their citizens to make no-win moral decisions.

Seems Pure Evil gets even more sick pleasure from maiming and splintering souls of innocents than in murdering them.

A need-to-read novel to remind us what history and time have somewhat obscured.

I wasn't smart enough

What would have made Europe Central better?

This book would be better had I taken a 20th century Russian History class with an emphasis on person involved in the Russian Revolution and a minor in Music and Classical Literature.

Any additional comments?

Why do buy and read literature that wins the National Book Award? The subject matter is inaccessible, the prose is incomprehensible, and I wallow in the regret that I am not smart enough for such offerings. Woe is me.

My First and Last Vollman Book

Would you try another book from William T. Vollmann and/or Ralph Cosham?

I could not finish this book. It may be an unfortunate happenstance that this was the first William Vollman book that I’ve attempted to read. It is so poorly written and uniquely uninteresting that I will never attempt another of his works.
Recommendation: NO