SOURCE: "New American Gothic," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4626, November 29, 1991, p. 22.

In the following review, Hawthorne commends the surreal nature of Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs.

William T. Vollmann is not the first writer to declare that words are cold and dead, though it's difficult to imagine anyone working harder to recall them to life. For Vollmann is nothing if not ambitious. At thirty-two, he has three big books behind him—a novel (You Bright and Risen Angels, 1987), a collection of stories (The Rainbow Stories, 1990), and the first volume (The Ice-Shirt, 1990) of a projected seven-volume "symbolic history" of North America (Seven Dreams). (The second volume, Fathers and Crows, is due out next year.) It is said that he attends his readings carrying a gun, presumably loaded, and attired in a SWAT uniform decorated with painted iceberg and prostitute motifs. And, for $4,000, he will sell you a hand-printed...