the unaccommodating nature of Vollmann’s books is what many of his readers respond to. His books are too long in the way the Petronas Towers are too tall, the way foie gras is too rich: the manner of their excess is central to their essence. Vollmann is neither a readers’ writer nor a writers’ writer but a writer’s writer, which is to say William T. Vollmann’s writer. The point he comes back to in conversation, again and again, is how fortunate he has been to maintain his independence in a literary culture that can be hostile to such independence. “The reader that I write for will be open to beautiful sentences and will try to see why I’m doing what I’m doing,” he told me. “That’s the reader that I love and the reader who loves me.” I’ve read a great number of Vollmann’s books, but I’ve skipped around in many of them, too. Fathers and Crows is one of my favorites, yet I’ve read less than half of it. You don’t go to Vollmann for structure or old-fashioned storytelling; you go to Vollmann for the sentences, the mood, the experience. You go to Vollmann for the same reason certain people chase storms.