Not all accounts are as inspirational. The retelling of Shostakovich's personal life and musical career (varying with the Communist political climate, the composer faced periods of condemnation and rehabilitation, especially with his Leningrad Symphony, performed in the city under German siege) is potent and poignant in his long resistance to Stalin, but he ultimately finds himself acquiescing and toeing the party line.
Unfortunately, Vollmann adds a little insult to the injury with his conjuration of a love triangle between Shostakovich, Konstantinovskaya and documentary filmmaker Roman Karmen, which meanders melodramatically throughout the book, with weepy and overlong "As-The-USSR-Turns" histrionics.
Indeed, one of the undeniable overall problems with Europe Central lies in its unwieldy, gargantuan length and tendency to belabor. A distinctive Vollmann trait, to be sure, but at more than 800 densely packed pages (including 50 pages of source notes), parts of this often-repetitive tome could have benefited from a little slash-and-burn editing without losing one umlaut of Sturm und Drang effect.
Still, life is messy, war is messy, and a project this grand and all-embracing calls for at least a little literary overkill in order to convey the totality and extent constituted in a time of unforgiving Russian winters and a steadily evolving Gotterdammerung, and in a place where "We have a Motherland and they have a Fatherland. Their child is Europe Central." Vollmann conveys it all with great insights as always, punctuating his incisive analysis with masterful prose – here a mythopoetic Whitmanian yawp, there a Joycean stream of consciousness or even "Blonde on Blonde"-era Dylanese to strangle your mind--but ultimately, in a style and in a passion and commitment all his own.
ED:PUB-TAS
Article comments