"For we all must build our worlds around us, bravely or dreamily, as long as we can we shelter ourselves from the rain, walling ourselves in gorgeously." (53)

The true cleverness and weight of this novel comes after the main story has ended and the book lists a sociological glossary of terms used in the book, then proceeds to outline generalized descriptions pulled from Vollmann's presumed field work in SF's tenderloin among the pimps and prostitutes in the area. The moment you read this last part is the moment you understand how Vollmann's stolen stories worked to create the narrative you just read. His own abstractions, like Jimmy's desperate attempts at forming Gloria, are how he wrote the novel and are, of course, also a construction.

The insight forced by the end bring the novel around to many interesting ideas mainly plotted around constructions formed from abstractions: gender identity, heroism, love, even adulthood.

"That’s what being a kid is about, pretending. You’ve got to pretend you’re this, pretend you’re that, pretend you’re a grownup, pretend you’re not, pretend you’re somebody else. –That’s right Melissa, sighed Jimmy to himself sitting on his bed, and when you’re a grownup you’ve got to pretend you’re with somebody else. What a lot of work and trouble everything is." (91)

...and how could I possibly read a work like this without thinking of Marx's dialectic of abstract and concrete labor? By slicing down a cross-section of San Francisco's tenderloin and showing us its layers, Vollmann can't help but reveal the origin of the discarded in the exchange of bodies for cash, bodies which can transform and distort.

"…and then the light dawned on Candy: to get money she only had to threaten to leave, to become unavailable and therefore perfect like Gloria, and then she glowed with the light of a good thing coming to an end and easily achieved that perfection and they paid her and paid her." (152)

The prose here is poetic, and rises above the murk of its gritty subjects. Take lines like the following: "In the windowpanes of bars all around the blue neon Budweiser signs, reflections made cool jungles in which blurs pursued blurs."(58) Has there ever been a more perfect description of a dive bar late at night. The poetry of this novel is that it takes descriptions of the area and turns them in on the characters so that you aren't reading about a Budweiser sign, but Jimmy's state during a night of habitual drinking.

I discovered this author through a trustworthy reviewer on this site and I am so grateful. Vollmann has already begun to influence my own work and I intend to read a lot more of his generous oeuvre.