Article: Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs.(Brief Article)

Vollmann's newest book is, like The Rainbow Stories, a linked collection of novellas and stories, and like his earlier book is peopled mostly by the demimonde of San Francisco, with a few set in Third World locales. "These stories are all epitaphs," Vollmann writes in an author's note, and there is a valedictory, memorial air hanging over most of these pieces as Vollmann tells autobiographical tales of people he's known. His photographer friend Ken Miller appears in many of them - Dean Moriarty to Vollmann's Sal Paradise - as does the mournful Elaine Suicide, the focus (heroine is hardly the word) of the two longest and best stories in the collection, "The Ghost of ...

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