SOURCE: "Skinheads, Punks and Dropouts," in Book World—The Washington Post, July 30, 1989, p. 5.

In the following review of The Rainbow Stories, Clute criticizes Vollmann for the cluttered, "overwritten" quality of the work, claiming that it obscures the merits of many of the stories.

There is not much that William T. Vollmann does not ask of his readers, and not much that he is unprepared to give. Whether these gifts will be accepted is another matter. They include passion, amplitude, a deep love and knowledge of the underside of urban life in San Francisco, a muscular grasp of large issues of the imagination, and a dark and gruesome humor; but they are packaged in a text that is hugely overwritten, callow, logorrheic, unkempt and undeft and incontinent. The Rainbow Stories is not an easy read.

Some hints, therefore, might help novices to get through the racket of Vollmann's post-modernist...