100 books
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307 voters


“Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”
― Culture and Value
― Culture and Value

“I believe that the reason there are millions of planets is the same reason there are millions of eggs. To allow for failure. There must be countless experimental stations like this one. The only thing that is not expendable is the experiment itself. Our notions of our own uniqueness are precisely that. Our notions. We will not be missed. When we have slaughtered and poisoned everything in sight and finally incinerated the earth itself then that black and lifeless lump of slag will simply revolve in the void forever. There is a place for it too. A nameless cinder of no consequence even to god. That man can halt this disaster now seems so remote a possibility as to hardly bear consideration.”
― Whales and Men
― Whales and Men

“Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.”
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
― Beautiful World, Where Are You

“I say it's extremism to decimate pine forests, denude the desert grasslands, seed the steppe with cyanide bombs, send Bull Hogs into pinyon-juniper stands and turn birds to red mist. Ecosaboteurs destroy inanimate objects. The real extremists among us destroy life for profit.”
― This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West
― This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West
“We ain't nothin but a nation of goddamn chickenshit horseshit tattle-tale pissy-ass whiney, fat, flabby out-of-shape Facebook-lookin damn twerk-fest, peekin out the windows and slippin around listenin in on the cell phones and spyin in the peephole and peepin in the crack of the goddamn door and listenin to the fuckin shit rock, you know Mr. Putin please, show some fuckin mercy - I mean c'mon drop the fuckin bomb won't you.”
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(proto-)Modernism: Proust, Joyce, Musil (& Cervantes, & Sterne &...) et al est'd August 2017 by ATJG, esq. ...more

This corner of goodreads shall serve the needs of rainbow readers of Mr Vollmann's indulgent body of work. We welcome the veteran and the fresh flesh ...more

Discussion of the late author's work and life. ...more

This group is for people who would like to read through Larry McCaffery's list of 20th Century fiction: The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English- ...more

A micro reading=group ; a daughter group of Vollmann Central. We will be reading several essays from volume VI of RURD, from "The Muslim World" and "N ...more
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