The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War
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William T. Vollmann. (2015). The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War. Penguin Publishing Group.

William T. Vollmann. 2015. The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War. Penguin Publishing Group.

William T. Vollmann, The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War. Penguin Publishing Group, 2015.

William T. Vollmann. The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War. Penguin Publishing Group, 2015.

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The Dying Grass

fullDescription

"The reading experience of a lifetime ..."—The Washington Post
The National Book Award winner takes readers inside the epic fighting retreat of the Nez Perce Indians 
In this new installment in his acclaimed series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the Nez Perce War, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the U.S. Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn as they fled from northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border. Vollmann’s main character is not the legendary Chief Joseph, but his pursuer, General Oliver Otis Howard, the brave, shy, tormented, devoutly Christian Civil War veteran. In this novel, we see him as commander, father, son, husband, friend, and killer.
Teeming with many vivid characters on both sides of the conflict, and written in an original style in which the printed page works as a stage with multiple layers of foreground and background, The Dying Grass is another mesmerizing achievement from one of the most ambitious writers of our time.

reviews

1. • premium: True
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     May 25, 2015
     The Nez Perce War of 1877 lies at the center of Vollmann’s epic new novel, the fifth volume in his series Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes, and the first since 2001’s Argall. Not surprisingly, given its length, it also offers a panoramic view of the era and the decades leading up to it. Seventy-plus years of abuse toward the Nez Perce are stingingly presented in a chapter of quotations from famous Americans of the time period. Vollmann’s prose is evocative and often lyrical, trailing down the pages like free verse. Scores of characters in different but interconnected settings contribute to a tapestry, much like that of John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy. In the spring of 1877, General Oliver Howard is viewing a “city of tents” called The Dalles, formerly a Native American stronghold and bazaar for various tribes. Howard becomes the nominal protagonist, more accurately the book’s linchpin, as the war proceeds on multiple fronts. By July, what has been projected as an easy fight becomes a nightmare of small skirmishes against the resourceful Nez Perce, led by Howard’s archenemy Chief Joseph. He and his tribesmen call the Americans bluecoats. Ultimately, the superior resources of the U.S. Army prevail, in a war of attrition hastened by infighting among the tribes. To his credit, Volllman is as interested in context and history as in storytelling. Almost 200 pages of notes, maps, and background documents follow the narrative proper, encouraging a deeper read. This massive novel is sometimes challenging, but ultimately rewarding. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House.

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     Starred review from May 15, 2015
     The indefatigable, seemingly inexhaustible Vollmann (Last Stories and Other Stories, 2014, etc.) returns with another impossibly long-and peerless-book, this one an epic study of the Nez Perce War of 1877. That war is largely forgotten today, and though Chief Joseph is among the iconic Native American leaders of the 19th century, not many people could tell you why, notwithstanding Robert Penn Warren's elegant narrative poem about him. Vollmann restores that history with an onrushing immediacy that takes on all the contours of a good Greek tragedy, complete with hubris born of supposed military superiority and an avenging angel taking wings in the form of the flight of an arrow. Vollmann's central character, though not always at the center of events, is the American general Oliver Otis Howard, who pursues his prey, Chief Joseph, with the studied strategy of a game of chess ("Is Staunton's chess chronicle still of use to you?" "Sure is, sir. It's not a bit outdated.")-a good ploy if you're at a chessboard, perhaps less so if you're on a field of battle with an opponent who doesn't play the game. Howard is self-deprecating and cautious, quick to accept responsibility for failures in the field. Less so are his subordinates, including one Lt. Thellen, who falls at the battle of White Bird Canyon, the highest-ranking casualty there; Vollmann provides him with a compelling back story that includes a close association with a fellow officer: "I have imagined," he writes in one of several appendixes, "without knowing for a fact, that they were close friends." If not every moment of the narrative can be backed by historical documentation, Vollmann's vivid reconstruction is believable and achingly beautiful, as often rendered in a kind of poetry as in ordinary prose: "he spies out the dark-tipped wings of the otherwise white snow goose, / the black beak and white breast of the long-billed curlew / but no brothers or enemies." Telegraphic and episodic-so much so that it recalls the later work of Eduardo Galeano-Vollmann's saga is a note-perfect incantation. Stunning.

     COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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     Starred review from June 1, 2015
     Vollmann's Seven Dreams, a epic sequence of novels about the European colonizing of North America, has been compared to Moby-Dick, Wagner's Ring cycle, and the big novels of John Barth and Thomas Pynchon. But Vollmann attains his own form of monumentality by virtue of assiduous research and compassionate imagination. Seven Dreams begins with the arrival of the Norse Greenlanders in The Ice Shirt (1990). In Fathers and Crows (1992), French Jesuits attempt to convert the Huron Nation. The Rifles (1994) dramatizes British explorer Sir John Franklin's legendary Arctic expedition. Argall (2001) purports to be The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. In The Dying Grass, the fifth dream, Vollmann takes on the plangent complexities of the 1877 war between the Nez Perce and the U.S. Army. Initially triumphant, the Nez Perce are forced to retreat, fighting all the way. They cover some 1,200 miles, desperately crossing Montana and nearly reaching the Canadian border. To understand the magnitude and significance of this grim journey, Vollmann followed in the footsteps of the Nez Perce and traversed the vast historical record. The result is a colossal, ravishingly descriptive, adeptly omniscient novel in which each page correlates to a mile of loss. In the tense, avidly realized opening scenes, as the Nez Perce and white officials attempt to forge treaties, Vollmann considers with foreshadowing resonance the pitfalls of translation, not only of language but also of worldviews and faith. Talks break down after the arrest of the outspoken elder Toohoolhoolzote, who bluntly declines to grant the Government in Washington the right to think for the Indians. The Nez Perce leaders sense that fighting the whites is futile, but the younger generation refuses to be corralled like animals in a small place. The enormous cast gradually comes into focus. Vollmann insightfully portrays the war's most famous and revered figure, Chief Joseph, but he gives more space and weight to lesser-known individuals, including the chief's wives, Good Woman and Springtime, and his beloved, courageous young daughter, Sound of Running Feet. The pivotal character is General Oliver Otis Howard, the presiding officer, a Civil War vet who lost an arm, who cherishes his family, and who tries to live up to his abolitionist values and always do the right thing. (The men mock him as Goody-Goody Howard. ) But he is also impatient, arrogant, obdurate, and capable of the worst hypocrisy, betrayal, and revenge.Long volleys of dialogue zigzag across the page like high-voltage epic poetry, interrupted by stretches of inner monologue. Stories and lies are told, observations made, gossip shared, love expressed, rage articulated. Official documents, letters, and diaries are worked into this panoramic collage of landscape, consciousness, violent conflict, racism, rapaciousness, heroism, and grief. The battle scenes are visceral and riveting. The camp scenes are rendered with tenderly intimate detail as the women erect shelter, collect water, gather and prepare food, mend, braid, care for the young and aged, the sick and injured. Vollmann foregrounds these ordinary and precious aspects of life, which persist even in war. Here, too, are the complications of ambition, jealousy, conscience, duty, and profound conundrums. Whose side is God on? Which God? Are we not all human? Are some of us more human than others? The grass is dying; so, too, the Nez Perce way of life. Vollmann's rampaging, reflective, absurd, ironic, tragic, and poetic epic is supported by a painstakingly compiled chronology, glossaries, and copious notes. Yet for all this documentation, this is a work of grand invention,...

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     February 1, 2015
     

     Not your standard historical: Vollmann here continues his "Seven Dreams" series, an examination of the clash between North American natives and colonizers that began in 1990 with The Ice-Shirt and now encompasses five volumes. The last title was 2001's Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. Here, we see the 1877 Nez Perce War through the eyes of Gen. Oliver Otis Howard, a troubled yet devoutly Christian Civil War veteran who led the U.S. Army in its pursuit of the Nez Perce, which dealt the army its worst defeat since Little Big Horn. Readers of Vollmann's National Book Award winner, Europe Central, will know to expect a layered treatment, heightened language, and an illuminatingly different read.

     Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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"The reading experience of a lifetime ..."—The Washington Post
The National Book Award winner takes readers inside the epic fighting retreat of the Nez Perce Indians 
In this new installment in his acclaimed series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the Nez Perce War, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the U.S. Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn as they fled from northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border. Vollmann’s main character is not the legendary Chief Joseph, but his pursuer, General Oliver Otis Howard, the brave, shy, tormented, devoutly Christian Civil War veteran. In this novel, we see him as commander, father, son, husband, friend, and killer.
Teeming with many vivid characters on both sides of the conflict, and written...

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