SOURCE: "The Grail at the End of the Pass," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 19, 1992, pp. 3, 10.

In the following largely positive review of An Afghanistan Picture Show, McGowan argues that the power of Vollmann's writing—which here concerns his trip to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the early 1980s—is partially blunted by his failure to address certain crucial underlying assumptions and motivations.

In his introduction to a 1984 fiction collection, Slow Learner, Thomas Pynchon admitted that he had been jarred by reading stories he had written more than 20 years earlier. At first, the pretension and the goofiness of his efforts made him want to gag and call rewrite; then, in a mood of middle-aged tranquillity, he settled into an acceptance of the younger writer he once was. "I mean, I can't just very well 86 the guy from my life," he explained. "On the other hand, if through some as...